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Minimum laptop specs for production
Posted: Sun Jul 26, 2009 11:11 pm
by j-sh
So im thinking of upgrading my laptop cuz at the moment it grinds to a jittering halt whenever things get a bit complx in ableton
So im looking at pcspecialist.co.uk to build a custom laptop, with a budget of about £500
at the moment the specs im thinking of getting are:
Processor:
Intel® Core™2 Duo Mobile T6400 (2.00GHz) 800MHz FSB/2MB L2 Cache
Ram: 2GB CORSAIR DDR2 667MHz SODIMM
Running on windows Xp, with a 160gb internal hardrive alongside my 500gb external
Most of this stuff is complete jibberish to me so i was wondering if anyone could tell me - is this gunna be enough to run ableton live rewired with reason, quickly and easily
cuz at the momnt my computer is too slow to get ideas out!
all of that comes to about £474 which i realise isnt alot, but im a student so im skint basically all the time!
Any help would be awesome becuase i literally have no idea about this stuff
Posted: Mon Jul 27, 2009 3:06 am
by idlemode
i would say that should work well enough with ableton. i run on similar specs.
but for an even better experience and to be able to have more vst's open at the same time etc consider a memory upgrade, now or in the future to 4gb ram. will make a big difference in performance.
Posted: Mon Jul 27, 2009 8:31 am
by deadly_habit
lol that def will work
you said min specs i mean shit i can run on a [entium 2 like 600 mhz and 512 ram
Posted: Mon Jul 27, 2009 9:39 am
by JFK
Yeah that will be fine mate. I run on almost exactly the same specs, the only difference being I have crappy Vista.
Posted: Mon Jul 27, 2009 9:44 am
by j-sh
thats the thing, XP doesnt support 4 gb of ram. I could choose to have it with vista but i have never heard a positive word about it.
At the moment im working with a 585mhz processor with 512 ram and i literally cant finish tunes on it!
Cheers for the replies, any other thoughts?
Posted: Mon Jul 27, 2009 3:17 pm
by stappard
J-sh wrote:thats the thing, XP doesnt support 4 gb of ram. I could choose to have it with vista but i have never heard a positive word about it.
At the moment im working with a 585mhz processor with 512 ram and i literally cant finish tunes on it!
Cheers for the replies, any other thoughts?
As far as I could see when researching my laptop purchase, its all in the processor for music production, so if you can get an 8000/9000 series Core 2 Duo for that money, go for it...
Posted: Mon Jul 27, 2009 9:25 pm
by zion cluster
A few things that come to mind:
Reason does not run multi-processor, so whatever dual core you have, Reason will only be able to use a max of 50%. Probably not an issue if you're just rewiring it into Live.
Live is a CPU hog, just because of what it can do, and that it has to be ready to go all the time.
GET A GOOD GRAPHICS CARD. Seriously, Laptops with bad gpu's can be crippled for audio.
Use a cut down OS. There is a great one based on XP SP3 here:
http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=30162
This will cut down on all the bloat and shit, making sure your computer can dedicate all its power to audio.
Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2009 4:57 pm
by djdickclark
i havent heard anything good about vista either, but i'm on it as we speak, and haven't had probs, idk

Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2009 6:06 pm
by hurlingdervish
i haven't had any problems with vista, but then again alot of people do.
i quite like being able to search things really quick with the windows button.
i heard some drivers don't work though
i dont know where you will find a laptop without windows vista/7 though...
Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2009 9:07 pm
by bobbytron
how about a second hand macbook? that will piss on everything i picked up white macbook with the 2.4 processor and 2gig mem for 550
Posted: Sat Aug 01, 2009 10:28 am
by mickledan
http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Laptops/ ... ctId=37272
ok so it has vista on it but if you source the drivers you can easilly put xp on as it should be