Well I have a Dell Dimension 8100 P4 2.8 400Mhz 512MB RDRAM that I've been using as my DAW. While I am just a hobbyist, its still very frustrating to deal with bogging when I go heavy on the VST's, audio, effects, etc...
So obviously its time to upgrade. The question is:
Should I upgrade my RDRAM? I can go up to 2Gb on mine, and again, I'm only at 512Mb. Will this make a significant noticeable difference?
Or, should I scrap it and start a new DAW? My Dimension 8100 has an ancient 400MHz FSB! My P4 2.8 is the max CPU I can go with this. Also, RDRAM is pretty old.
THANKS!
Comments
Thanks for the advise. Unfortunately I use SE3 which doesn't ha
Thanks for the advise.
Unfortunately I use SE3 which doesn't have track freezing but I've learned some other tricks to save CPU power. I also have a UAD-1 card which I just got and am gonna start using more heavily.
I have a real problem opening and closing songs (takes forever sometimes) which sucks when I have people over and I want to go through them 1 at a time. I guess I should just export them to WAV and play them in my media player for those instances.
I also just got a 2nd HD. What would be the optimum setup for this? Should I have Cubase on one HD and my songs (.cpr files) on another? Should I have my VST instruments on one or another?
THANKS!
yes, I do this on my laptop, I run the audio files form an exter
yes, I do this on my laptop, I run the audio files form an external USB 2.0 drive with 300 GB at 10,000 rpm and the o/s and program from the internal 60 GB 7200 rpm drive, it helps a bit.
I ran SE1.07 and eventually upgraded to SX3. It was great as the track freezing and offline effects processing really saved CPU and ram in SX3 but even on SE1.06 I could get quite a few audio tracks so long as I didn't use too many insert fx or intensive vsts such as impulse/convolution reverbs etc (although some have a 'lo' quality option you can use to audition and then just switch up to 'hi' quality for the audio export mixdown.
the UAD card also helps as you don't need to run as many plugins within cubase.
Yes, Ram will make a difference. How many plugins do you need to
Yes, Ram will make a difference. How many plugins do you need to run. I run an Inspiron 9100 laptop with only slightly better specs (3.2 Ghz P4, 1 GB DDR 400 Mhz dual channel) and with track freezing and such can get A LOT of tracks out of Cubase SX3 and a few less but still good in Ableton Live 6 with plenty of fx. 512 mb in XP is not enough, windows xp can chew up 256 megs all by itself..