Hardware required for Diva, what are you using?

[lectropunk]

hi .. I only have cubase 6. For a few weeks. And im really inerested in diva, but also dune.. My laptop is a toshiba i-5 .2.6 ghz . So i wont be able to use divine mode.. i think cubase 6 can freeze midi . If i can freeze diva cud i use divne mode.. Thanks in advance

[xh3rv]

Diva has a nice feature of setting off-line render quality. I'd imagine you can handle fast or certainly draft mode in real-time (you might want to get comfy with the demo here), but freezing in divine is possible and even easy

[VitaminD]

I held off upgrading as long as I could from Win XP and AMD Athlon X2 - I was hoping to wait for Intel's Romley platform for the desktop.

I saw a leaked Intel Roadmap that mentioned Romley-EP Platform using Sandy Bridge_EP for workstations in 'the future'. The chart ended in 2011.

I have the PDF but I can no longer find the URL reference. The PDF is called Intel Public Roadmap expiration Q3, 2011.

These are just marketing talks, but still it gives us a view to the future.

This is an interesting point to me.

In the past week there have been news articles now claiming Ivy Bridge will only be around 8% faster than the current Sandy Bridge processors.

The larger 30% figure has now been stated to be strictly for the onchip GPU's performance.

The big gain for Ivy Bridge is supposedly less energy / more efficient design since the die is shrinking for it. I guess that also means people will overclock it even more though..


Still gonna wait... might as well at this point.

[aMUSEd]

I'm thinking seriously of getting a Mini Mac since my PC has blown up (literally; it gave a big pop yesterday and won't turn on now) - would that be adequate?

[arachnaut]

The big gain for Ivy Bridge is supposedly less energy / more efficient design since the die is shrinking for it. I guess that also means people will overclock it even more though..

Very likely, but still it depends on what the motherboard people do to support it. All the clocks are inter-related and usually derived from just a few basic clock settings. For example, if the CPU could be clocked 50% faster, then that clock might be divided by 50% to supply memory speeds. Something like that, anyway.

That's why I was so surprised to see quad channel memory - an easy way to double the memory clock for many operations (most things are sequentially fetched).

And the dynamic nature of the core i7 probably puts a lot of stress on power supply handling - Ivy Bridge relaxes that quite a bit - so these multi-phase power supply motherboards would not be so necessary.

Given all that, the volume market would drive cheaper motherboards with little clock changes. It is usually only the enthusiast's who buy the extreme parts, so it behooves one to follow the hardware trends and read part specs.

[arachnaut]

I'm thinking seriously of getting a Mini Mac since my PC has blown up (literally; it gave a big pop yesterday and won't turn on now) - would that be adequate?

I know nothing about MACs but briefly looking over the specs it claims that they use Core i5's at 2.5 GHz or a Core i7 at 2.7 Ghz which is only available by special order.

The memory looks a bit under-qualified (4 GB) if you want to use lots of samples. It can be upped to 8 GB, again a special order.

The hard drive is also 5400 RPM and it's rather small. Probably you could upgrade all that, too, and they even have an SSD option.

You'll have to compare prices and see what you could build for that amount, but it doesn't look very well suited for audio work in my opinion in the base configurations. This opinion has nothing to do with the software - just the hardware - no PC vs MAc issues are intended or implied.

By the time you add up all the extra stuff you'll probably want, it might not be so 'Mini'.

Someone with actual experience using them should pipe in some comments, my own opinions are just that.

[leggie]

The memory looks a bit under-qualified (4 GB) if you want to use lots of samples. It can be upped to 8 GB, again a special order.

Diva uses samples ?

[arachnaut]

No, it doesn't (and I wrote that not Stephen).

I understand this is a DIVA thread, but the question about buying a computer is much more general.

I know Stephen is a big Kore user and may also do work with Kontakt and other types of things that do use samples.

[mcnoone]

I'm thinking seriously of getting a Mini Mac since my PC has blown up (literally; it gave a big pop yesterday and won't turn on now) - would that be adequate?

Yes.
I think so anyway.
I have a macbook pro-coreduo2(2010)2.88ghz w/t 4gb ram.
It handles Diva really good...so a new i7 mini should have no problem.
Might wanna get 8gb ram, and a ssd though, to be sure.
That's what I wanna do to mine now.

[aMUSEd]

Thanks guys. The SSD is an extra 400 quid unfortunately but the dealer can put in another 4 GIG of RAM for just 40 so I will definitely do that. I'll probably keep to Kore and Kontakt on my Windows laptop so not too worried about the HD, its the cpu I was most wondering about. These are the new i5's right? Probably more powerful than the 1st gen i7 in my laptop if that's the case. Also the small form factor makes me worry a bit about heat.

[xh3rv]

The big gain for Ivy Bridge is supposedly less energy / more efficient design since the die is shrinking for it. I guess that also means people will overclock it even more though..

It's kind of a die scrunch as well, interesting stuff - Intel is using a 3D geometry for transistors which extrudes the current carrying channels upward into the transistor gate. This scale is so small that there are lower bounds to the volume of current for reliable operation, and the speeds fast enough that it matters how fast the fields generated by the gates permeate into the conductors. Packing things in volumetrically helps in both regards. This is where some tremendous gains regarding energy and heat come, and no one else is doing this in a large manufacturing capacity.

I get the sense that this really changes some basic design assumptions, and so some very interesting ways of taking advantage of Ivy Bridge won't pop up until Haswell, the successor to Sandy Bridge (Wikipedia has a good bit on that). (It also looks like some new instructions for the chip should be good for DSP, but the info is incomplete as far as I've looked)

[arachnaut]

Before we leave this hardware topic here are some interesting comparisons.

My motive is not to brag, but to convince others who have circa 2006 gear this is a good time has come to upgrade.

My old x86 system is a best-of-breed dual-core Athlon 2.2GHz from 2006.
It takes Acronis True Image 2011 (a 32-bit app) about 3 hours to image and validate the 96GB C partition.



The new system is core i7 running at 4.4 GHz, just built a few months ago.
It takes Acronis True Image 2011 (still a 32-bit app) about 30 minutes to image and validate the 70GB C partition.

[bobbybland]

Mac Pro 8 core playing Diva lovely here. Best Sounding plugin in a long time

[sovietpop]

My result with a Macbook pro core 2 duo 2.4 ghz
Logic audio 9
Fast track ultra 8r 128 buffer

Great = 7 voices max
Divine = 6 voices max

Thats weird becose others with core i7 are getting the same result.

[fmr]

My result with a Macbook pro core 2 duo 2.4 ghz
Logic audio 9
Fast track ultra 8r 128 buffer

Great = 7 voices max
Divine = 6 voices max

Thats weird becose others with core i7 are getting the same result.

To make direct had to head comparisons, one should agree in a common base of patches (one with short decay/release, one with long decay/release, and one with maybe two filter units (salem HP plus ladder, for example).
After estabilishing this base, all could test their machines, and post the results. Just a suggestion.