tweaking a PowerPC G5 & virtual drums

[davidp158]

I am looking for advice on virtual drums that will work best with my limited system. I have studied the forum trouble shooting posts, which have helped me fine tune my G5's stability quite a bit. Aside from frequently loosing the ability to adjust settings on plug ins while tracks are playing, PTLE 8.0.1 seems to be working OK.

My current Mac:
PowerPC 5G 2.5GHz
8 GB RAM (System Profiler doesn't indicate if the RAM is ECC or not)
OS X 10.5.8
ATI Radeon 9600 XT video card w/126MB VRAM (does a faster graphic card help?)
2 internal drives; 1 for OS & APPS, 1 for session files. (I will purchase an external Firewire drive for virtual instrument samples.)

My PTLE hardware:
Digi 002 control surface (firewire)
Digi ElevenRack (USB)

In my searches through this forum, I've read many posts suggesting that PTLE 7.4 is better suited for PowerPC machines than PTLE 8. I do value stability, and could (begrudgingly) go back to PTLE 7.4, but my Eleven Rack requires 8.0.1 for editing Eleven Rack "rigs" and use as a PTLE interface. Does it makes sense to have PTLE 7.4 (and maybe a different OS) for the 002 on one hard drive partition, and PTLE 8.0.1 and OS X 10.5.8 for the Eleven Rack on another hard drive partition? If so, any suggestions for how to best set this up, or things to look out for?

Until I can afford an Intel Mac, I'd like to find a virtual drum instrument for PTLE that will run on my PowerPC G5. My initial needs are to play back drum pattern loops, and hopefully editable loops for song writing. Many virtual drum instruments allow you to adjust individual drums (levels, pan, EQ, pitch, effects, etc.), but I presume those features put a lot more strain on the CPU. As my G5 isn't ideal for virtual instruments, I'm hoping to find a virtual drum instrument that will have minimal CPU strain, and/or the ability to reduce the strain by disabling features (smaller kits, less sample levels, selectively disable effects/features on specific drums). In most cases, I want the ability to compose drum patterns, or edit existing patterns. In some cases, I may only be playing back pre-recorded stereo drum pattern loops. Once I have my drum part arranged, I will bounce it to a stereo region, and disable the virtual drum instrument to regain system resources.

BTW, I have NI Battery v2, which I haven't tried Battery v2 with PTLE8.0.1. Any thoughts on upgrading Battery v2 to v3 ($99), or considering other virtual drum machines? I downloaded the NI Battery v3 demo, and it seems to work well with my ElevenRack and PTLE 8.0.1. I tried the BFD Lite that came with my Eleven Rack and PTLE 8.0.1, but it was very unstable on my G5.

Any suggestions on other virtual drum instruments and maximizing my G5 would be greatly appreciated!