Re: OT: Power PC Laptop

["Ricky Graham" <rock.guitar.guru@btinternet.com>]

Thanks Rainer. That's extremely helpful. I had also read that Windows 7 
appears to be the most stable operating system, especially when running 
Ableton Live. I own a Fireface 400 audio interface and intend to use this 
unit with the chosen laptop system. The ADK laptops certainly look 
interesting. Thanks for the link.

Best wishes,

Ricky


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Rainer Straschill" <moinsound@googlemail.com>
To: <Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com>
Sent: Sunday, February 07, 2010 5:32 PM
Subject: Re: OT: Power PC Laptop


> Ricky Graham schrieb:
>> I'm considering a power pc laptop (i7 Quad core 8GB). I'm looking at 
>the 
>> HP DV7t quadcore series. Does anyone have any knowledge of any HP as a 
>> live performance machine?
> Guess you're referring to the (Clarkfield) 720QM - which by its 
>standalone 
> price in the "processor power per money" is second only to the i5-520M, 
> however even beats it in the available notebook systems (the performance 
> increase by roughly 45% comes with a price increase in the 20% range).
>
> The multicore vs. single core argumentation, as someone else already 
> mentioned, is not as simple as suggested I'm afraid; there's a lot of 
> things to factor in - apart from the softsynths and effects he mentions, 
> also the VST host and the operating system, together with the specific 
> kind of processor you're using.
>
> From a purely theoretical approach, for Windows users the best way to go 
> is Windows 7. The reason: Windows 7 is the first (Windows?) OS to 
> efficiently make use of the (i7) hyperthreading architecture - with XP 
>and 
> Vista, you might end up with not-multicore-optimized applications 
>possibly 
> running slower on a i7 architecture than on a i5 (or older) one. This 
> however has been addressed in Windows 7.
>
> Another important factor is the VST host: even if the individual plugins 
> do not make use of multicore architecture, it is often sufficient if the 
> host does: say you're running two softsynths and four effects, then the 
> host can easily distribute those evenly among the cores if it has that 
> feature.
>
> Finally, the i7 architecture allows to boost cores specifically if 
>others 
> are unused: taking again the Clarksfield example of the 720QM, if you're 
> only running two cores, you get a 798MHz boost on those - and if you 
> assign your (not-multicore-enabled) application to one core and the 
>sound 
> driver to another one, you can redline the application core and still 
>run 
> extremely low latencies...
>
> This is, basically, all a lengthy email to tell you that I don't have 
>any 
> experiences with the dv7 family (or HP notebooks in general). One thing 
>to 
> look for for audio hardware (just mentioning that in case you're not 
>aware 
> of that) is a characteristic called "DPC latency". Basically, it means 
>how 
> long it takes for some procedure calls to be processed, and for proper 
> audio stuff, this should be constantly below 1ms.
> Alas, only a few sites have started to test for that (e.g. 
> notebookcheck.de - German), and typically the manufactures don't. But if 
> you have the chance to have a look at the dv7 in a shop, be sure to run 
> the following program:
> http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml
>
> And btw, by just looking through some forums, I saw the following 
> recommendation:
> http://www.adkproaudio.com/laptop2.cfm
>
> Anyone got experience with those?
>
>          Rainer
>
>
>
> -- 
> http://moinlabs.de
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>