Skip to main content

I've been looking at getting a computer for dedicated digital recording. My benchmark for processors has been a 3.2 GHz Pentium 4 with HT. Does anyone know if a 2.8 GHz Pentium D delivers comparable results?

Does anyone know if Cubase LE and other commonly used recording software (especially soft synths) are multi-threaded, and thus able to take advantage of the Pentium D's dual cores?

Any advice is appreciated!

Topic Tags

Comments

Calgary Wed, 12/14/2005 - 13:58

Hi Willy. You can definitely run Cubase LE well on a 2.8 with a decent motherboard, hard drive and a GB of RAM. Although 3.2 is much better, especially if you need a lot of tracks/VSTs in real time. I'd get the 3.2 personally if I had the option. :cool:

As for Cubase taking advantage of the dual core this might shine some light on that in that the audio engine in Cubase and Nuendo appear to be more or less the same:
http://recording.org/resources/recording-computers.300/

I'm very interested in that topic also, if you find any good related links please post them.

:cool:

McCheese Wed, 12/14/2005 - 14:01

Calgary wrote: Hi Willy. You can definitely run Cubase LE well on a 2.8 with a decent motherboard, hard drive and a GB of RAM. Although 3.2 is much better, especially if you need a lot of tracks/VSTs in real time. I'd get the 3.2 personally if I had the option. :cool:

As for Cubase taking advantage of the dual core this might shine some light on that for you in that the audio engine in Cubase and Nuendo appears to be more or less the same:
http://recording.org/resources/recording-computers.300/

So you're saying a 3.2 is faster than a dual core 2.8? What are you smoking and where can I get some?

Calgary Wed, 12/14/2005 - 14:02

Oops, I typed it backwards. Sorry. I meant the exact opposite obviously. I type a lot and sometimes make mental mistakes like that. My bad. Thanks Mayor McCheese.

I would obviously take the dual core if I had the choice. FWIW I used to be die hard Intel but I think I may check out AMD next time. 8-)

Calgary Wed, 12/14/2005 - 14:56

What can I say McCheese, I'm always busy, often trying to do several things at once, sometimes I make mistakes. I do my best not to make errors, but they happen anyhow so all I can do is apologize and move on. It's no big deal to me, it happens to everyone. There's certainly no constructive value in you getting hypersensitive about it, so relax... 8-)

I was just offering my opinion on the topic and posting the benchmark link as I thought it might be of some use to the post creator. 8-)

Calgary Wed, 12/14/2005 - 20:51

Yes absolutely. Greg is right. Which is exactly which I never say "faster". I just felt the dual core is "better" suited for typical DAW/VSTi operations solely based upon a handful of benchmarks I've read from Google. I have no firsthand experience with dual core CPUs. Next purchase for me will likely be a dual processor machine using single cores. I've read that's the best value currently.

The point about software not exploiting dual core chips also accounts for many instances where a dual core will not outperform. From what I've read, to exploit dual core chips software must be based on independent threads in order to distribute the workload uber efficiently, i.e. faster than clock speed alone. But most software isn't made that way yet. At least that's my, very cursory, understanding of it. I'm no expert though so I may be wrong.

8-)

anonymous Thu, 12/15/2005 - 02:36

Stumbled upon this thread accidentally while searching Yahoo!, but let me chime in:

The 3.2 Ghz Pentium 4 Extreme Edition w/ HT will kick the living dog crap out of a Pentium D or standard P4 at the same clock speed, and it's currently probably the most powerful processor Intel makes. In benchmarks, it trounces comparable P4's, Athlon 64's, dual 2.4 Ghz Xeon's and dual 2Ghz PowerPC G5's. It's the CPU you want if you're doing intensive gaming, graphics rendering, or anything else that needs lots of processing power (like recording audio, for example :) ). It uses dual cores, Hyper Threading, a 2 MB L2 cache, and features an additional 1 MB L3 cache, and an 800 Mhz FSB. If you build a system around that processor with a decent motherboard, 1-2 GB of RAM, and a couple high capacity SATA 150 (Mbps) drives, you will be able to easily handle any recording task. It will cost you a little bit more for the Extreme Edition processor and a good motherboard (for God's sakes don't cheap out the mobo. I've made that mistake too many times. You're spending that much on a really kick-ass processor, break down for the extra 100 bucks and get a motherboard that will do it justice), but it will be well worth it. If it takes you an extra few months to come up with the extra money, don't settle in the name of expediency. You will thank yourself later.

Guest Thu, 12/15/2005 - 06:08

horsecrap!

that highly over priced piece of poo cant touch even a pentium D 820
never mind its counterpart 3.2 (not extreeme).
the added cache makes little differance for audio. other than sucking your wallet dry.
now for gaming yes as 99% of games arent multithreaded.
as for graphics/video editing again a dual core kills it.

dont know where your getting you info...

and if you want to talk about single vs single core nothing touched the AMD FX 57.

Scott
ADK

x

User login