Upgrade? hope not yet

[Jmorrison]

I am using a P2-350 mhz with 256 meg RAM and a voodoo3500 agp. I am also using an ethernet and adaptec 2940uw card with a glyph hard drive (which for some reason doesnt work), and of course, the digi card. So all my pci slots are taken, there are no conflicts to speak of and I have the recommended amount of RAM. Dont tell me I need a new motherboard and processor.

[Digi Engineering]

Ok, I won't tell you that.

The PII-350 is a bit slow for real-time audio processing, but it should work (you won't get as many plug-in instantiations as you would on a faster CPU).

Eric Day
DAE Engineer

[Jmorrison]

Okay, I knew I was running a dinosaur. So what are the recommended motherboards or processors?

[Digi Engineering]

Check out our compatibility documents. Click on the "compatibility" link at the bottom of this page.

Eric Day
DAE Engineer

[bstaley]

Digi:

I know it's been asked before and you've always give the "Clinton-esque" answer. Please tell us roughly how many plugins we should be able to get for a given processor speed. For example:

A PII 400 w/256megs RAM should get approx. (5) four band EQs.
A PIII 600 w/256megs RAM should get approx. (15) four band EQs.
A PIII 800 w/256megs RAM should get approx. (25) four band EQs.

Can you give us anything along those lines to help us out please. If somebody doesn't need to get 30 instances a plugin, maybe they don't have to shell out the money for the 1000mhz CPU. Maybe a 600-700 would do them just fine. It would be nice to know before we spend more money to know if we are getting what we need.

I'm planning on upgrading my PII 400 to a PIII 700 but it would suck if I got home and found out it didn't make enough difference and I should've waited to get something faster.

[Digi Engineering]

bstaley,

The only data point I have for you is from my Win98 PTLE development machine, which is an IBM Intellistation M-Pro with a 400mHz PII processor and 256mb RAM. With the CPU usage limit set to 75% I was able to get 45 instantiations of the 4-band EQII plugin. When I bumped the limit up to 85%, I could get 58 4-band EQIIs, but the user interface started to become choppy and difficult to use.

My experience with faster CPUs is only indirect, so I don't have any exact numbers for you. CPU power is the main performance metric when it comes to the plug-in capacity of the system, so a significantly larger number of instantiations should be possible on a 600mHz or 800mHz machine.

Eric Day
DAE Engineer

[bstaley]

That's more like it. Thanks. I can't get anywhere near that amount with my PII 400. I'm only running 128 megs of RAM though. It must really make a difference.

Is anybody else out there running a 600-800 that can post some comparative data?

[mark king]

I have a 650 and I gave up after putting 4bandeq on all 24 and then adding 2 D-Verbs and 4 Delays. I seemed to have power to spare. When my new card arrives I will do a full test. I do think RAM is very important. I use 256Meg