Laptop advice

[LouisD]

Hi All!

I was wondering if any of you could help me out. I'm looking to buy a new laptop that I can use to comfortably run GPO with Ove4. There are so many choices and I'm not sure what speed the CPU should be. What is the power of a Centrino 1.7Ghz compared to my current desktop's P4 2.53Ghz? Are they similar? What can any of you suggest?

I'll appreciate any help:) .

Thank you

LouisD

[rwayland]

Well, I wish I could help on this. I also have some slight interest in getting a laptop. However, the only laptop item I could comment on with any competence would be related to blue eyes and blond hair.

Richard

[Doralin]

Hi All!

I was wondering if any of you could help me out. I'm looking to buy a new laptop that I can use to comfortably run GPO with Ove4.
Hello, LouisD

I use Cubase SL3, KONTAKT2(VSTi), VSL(bundled with KONTAKT2) and GPO with IBM Thinkpad T41, Pentium M 1.7GHz. It's all too often confortable !
But, I have to set ASIO buffer size over 500 samples when I use built-in SoundMAX digital Audio with Asio4All driver. :(

I think HDD speed is more important factor if you will use DFD mode. 7200rpm HDDs are necessary, however, many laptops have internal 5400rpms. I use two 7200rpm internal HDDs, and sometimes music sounds staccato. :)

[rwayland]

Doralin, I noticed your location. If you happen to be poking around the harbor, and find a cornet mouthpiece that has been reposing on the bottom since 1952, you may claim it as your own. I have since replaced it.

Richard

[Doralin]

Hi,Richard

If I find your golden mouthpiece at Yokohama harbor, I'm going to make a report here. :D

[LouisD]

Well, I wish I could help on this. I also have some slight interest in getting a laptop. However, the only laptop item I could comment on with any competence would be related to blue eyes and blond hair.

Richard

That's gorgeous http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/images/smilies/biggrin.gif http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/images/smilies/biggrin.gif !!

[LouisD]

Hello, LouisD

I use Cubase SL3, KONTAKT2(VSTi), VSL(bundled with KONTAKT2) and GPO with IBM Thinkpad T41, Pentium M 1.7GHz. It's all too often confortable !
But, I have to set ASIO buffer size over 500 samples when I use built-in SoundMAX digital Audio with Asio4All driver. :(

I think HDD speed is more important factor if you will use DFD mode. 7200rpm HDDs are necessary, however, many laptops have internal 5400rpms. I use two 7200rpm internal HDDs, and sometimes music sounds staccato. :)

Thanks fo the reply. Is Pentium M the same as Centrino?? Forgive my total ignorance.

Kind Regards

LouisD

[Doralin]

Is Pentium M the same as Centrino??

Yes! "Intel Centrino technology" is consited of Pentium M, Intel Chipset, Intel wireless network and so on.

By the way, could it be that you are "Louis Dekker" who composed beautiful "Concertino for English Horn & Orchestra" in ACIDplanet ?
He is one of my favorite artists I added to List.

I recently uploaded "Notturno (Nocturne)" and "Siegfried Idyll" to ACIDplanet, which was sequenced using Laptop PC.

[Shazbot]

I'm running GPO and lots of other stuff just great on a Compaq Presario with an AMD processor. Good deals on those at Best Buy.

[LouisD]

Yes! "Intel Centrino technology" is consited of Pentium M, Intel Chipset, Intel wireless network and so on.

By the way, could it be that you are "Louis Dekker" who composed beautiful "Concertino for English Horn & Orchestra" in ACIDplanet ?
He is one of my favorite artists I added to List.

I recently uploaded "Notturno (Nocturne)" and "Siegfried Idyll" to ACIDplanet, which was sequenced using Laptop PC.

Thanks for the technology advice. I was never sure if Pentium M and Centrino is the same processor. So the million dollar question is: will I get the same or better performance in using GPO on a Centrino 1.7Ghz Laptop as on a desktop Pentium 4 2.53Ghz? Or can one not compare the two?

Thanks again for the replies. And BTW, it is me who wrote the English Horn Concerto using GPO. Thanks for listening to it.

Kind Regards

LouisD

[drdancm]

The Intel Centrino technology is based around Pentium Mobile and it is supported by an entire Centrino chipset. This processor uses much less power and therefore runs much cooler than normal "desktop" CPU'.

As you probably already guessed it outperforms non Centrino processors running at the same clock frequency. One reason it is so fast is that it has a huge 2Mb L2 cache (this is built into the CPU chip) compared to 512, or 1Mb on std Intel Pentium 4 CPUs. This Centrino CPU is so fast and cool that there are now some mfg who have designed and are making desktop motherboards that use these CPUs.

Unfortunately I can't give you a formula that compares performance of the the 1.7Ghz Centrino to a Pentium4 2.53Ghz. You might call Intel about this and I'm sure they will be happy to tell you or point you to a table.

I'm just setting up an Acer TM4062WLMi 1.73Ghz
w 512Mb RAM (2x256 unfortunately), 100Gb HD, 533 FSB, 15.4" 1280x800 Wide screen, WinXP Pro and dual DVD+/- burners for a client. An incredible deal for $1000. For GPO or JABB you would need to dump one 256Mb RAM module or both if you substitute one or two 1Gb RAMs.

You might also consider an AMD Athlon64. There are a number of notebooks that are considered desktop replacements because they are heavy and rather large, but very powerful and great for someone who wants some portability but plans on
plugging it into AC at the job site. Again prices vary.

What costs more is getting a reasonable amount of RAM. Often you get 2 x 256Mb, which means you almost always ditch at least one or both of these),
large HD, and DVD burner vs DVD play only (Combo DVD-CD means DVD playback only), and finally WinXP Pro vs Home. The XP Home is a crippled version of the Pro lacking in security options and generally has much less configuration flexibility.

I have used an Echo Indigo IO (PCMCIA card or PC Card) for GPO on a notebook and it sounds great.
It costs under $200.

http://www.echoaudio.com/Products/CardBus/IndigoIO/index.php

The drivers are continually updated and software support even for their old hardware is excellent.

I have not used any of the fancier Creative sound cards (consumer level game sound cards), but I think that under the EMU brand (EMU prof synth co. is owned by Creative) there are some similarly priced PCMCIA card(s).

Hope this helps.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

Dan

[LouisD]

Dan

Thank you for all that great advice. I'm not looking for anything particularly spectacularly powerful, I only want to have something at least capable of doing what my current ageing desktop can do. And if the M 1.75 can do the job with GPO, of course with adding 2Gb of Ram, then that is what I'm going to go for.

Thanks again:) .

Kind Regards

LouisD

[Doralin]

Thanks for the technology advice. I was never sure if Pentium M and Centrino is the same processor. So the million dollar question is: will I get the same or better performance in using GPO on a Centrino 1.7Ghz Laptop as on a desktop Pentium 4 2.53Ghz? Or can one not compare the two?

Thanks again for the replies. And BTW, it is me who wrote the English Horn Concerto using GPO. Thanks for listening to it.

Kind Regards

LouisD
I haven't ever used Pentium 4 2.5GHz, so my response isn't worth to million dollar question. :)
But, I will answer in so far as I know. I'm also very interested in this question because I'm going to buy a new Thinkpad T43 PentiumM 2.1GHz next month.

According to discussion "The Guide & Topic of DAW PC Forum (in Japanese)" which I take part in, PentiumM 1.7GHz is almost equal to Pentium4 2.5GHz on the ground of many users' sense of use. Many DAW users who have used both say PentiumM's capability goes near Pentium4's + 1GHz (or X 1.5) or more.

And, users' performance test using Cubase SX & 26 MIDI tracks of Steinberg's VSTi shows PentiumM 1.7 GHz is nearly equal to Pentium4 3.0GHz and Athlon 2700+. (See the "Screen Shot Level 1" (of Cubase's CPU meter) at http://kokujin.web.infoseek.co.jp/ )

But specialists say, when an application software uses Pentium's "SSE2 instructions" fully, PentiumM 1.7GHz is equal to Pentium4 1.7GHz.
Not unlikely, I guess Cubase & VSTi dosen't use "SSE2" fully.
Does anyone know that GPO's KONTAKT Player uses "SSE2" fully or not ?

[LouisD]

Thanks Doralin

Your response is certainly worth enough. I wasn't aware that there are M 2.1Ghz laptops...but then again I only saw what a couple of shops had to offer. Based upon the experience of the users you mention, I certainly feel more comfortable in buying a Laptop. I just didn't want to feel terribly disappointed after paying such a large amount of money, where, with half that amount I could have bought a really powerful desktop. But I want to get mobile, so I guess that's the price we have to pay:D !

Kind Regards

Louis Dekker

BTW I really liked your GPO ensemble building in the Wagner piece! Great Job!:) And you really did that on your laptop??

[AtmosMan]

Hey, I just saw this thread. I have done lots of research on your query of the Pentium 4 - Pentium M comparison. After several weeks of number crunching I have come up with a rough equation relating the two.

Bear in mind this equation is valid for GPO playback directly from RAM (no DFD) and with no reverb added! Things get messy when different reverbs are put into the mix.

Pentium 4 speed (GHz) = [Pentium M speed (GHz) x 1.5] + .4 (GHz)

Or in table format:

Pentium M (GHz) = Pentium 4 (GHz)

1.60 = 2.8
1.73 = 3.0
1.86 = 3.2
2.00 = 3.4
2.13 = 3.6
2.26 = 3.8


Hope this Helps,

-Brian

[LouisD]

Brian

Thanks a lot! That was exactly the kind of comparison I was looking for. And together with the experience that Doralin has had, I think I can make a pretty good decision about what to buy.

Thank you all!

Kind Regards

Louis Dekker

[Doralin]

BTW I really liked your GPO ensemble building in the Wagner piece! Great Job!:) And you really did that on your laptop??

Hi, louisD

Thanks for your listeninng and very kind review to my "Siegfried Idyll" with GPO.
I just only used a laptop Thinkpad and a portablel MIDI keyboard to do this from end to end, such as notating, writing modulation curves, mixing and mastering. And I didn't have to use "Freeze function" of Cubase this time.

I used nineteen GPO solo instrument patches with four KONTAKT2s as VST plug-in at DFD mode, and also used one garritan ambience reverb plug-in as send effect. My black laptop got a hustle on rendering it and stuttered in rare cases. :)

[joaz]

Hi Louis
I use Acer Aspire Laptop.Pentium 2.0M. It seems as powerful as my PC (P4 3.2gig)Both have 1gig ram.
The only difference is, my PC has a good soundcard that processes at 24bit.
I haven't got around to a good Soundcard for the laptop yet, primarily because the internal one when used with the free Asio4all app,
does a reasonable job.
I also use an M-Audio oxygen8 25 key keyboard, with 8 knobs for cc control.
Modern day laptops are surprisingly powerful, but the RAM is very expensive.
regards

[TomcatII]

Well, I'm not sure what you consider expensive, but a couple of weeks ago I bought two 1 gig Kingston brand SODIMMS (laptop memory) at Best Buy for $149 usd each to try in my 3 year old design Sony VAIO laptop, but the thing would only recognize 512mb on each chip, so I took them back and got a refund.

LOL, I was checking to make sure my laptop could only use a maximum of 1 gig of ram since that was the cheapest way out of my problem of not enough ram but Sony did in fact do something to/on the motherboard to keep it from seeing more than 1 gig of ram.

Tom

[LouisD]

Thanks Joaz and Tom for sharing your experiences. I about to give out a lot of my money:D , so I really appreciate all the good advice you all are providing. I already asked the computer shop how much they will ask me to change the Ram on one of the laptops to 2Gb, and it wasn't that much. It will add about NT$6000 to the price, which is about US$200.

Kind Regards

LouisD

[joaz]

Thanks Joaz and Tom for sharing your experiences. I about to give out a lot of my money:D , so I really appreciate all the good advice you all are providing. I already asked the computer shop how much they will ask me to change the Ram on one of the laptops to 2Gb, and it wasn't that much. It will add about NT$6000 to the price, which is about US$200.

Kind Regards

LouisD
Good price for the RAM Louis.Ram prices have always been volatile, so I would bite his hand off. :D