DAW Laptops 2012 (Intel Ivy Bridge) chooser topic

[golemus]

There is a lot of discussion and topics about DAW laptops but because there has been a pretty big change in Intel CPU/Chipsets recently I think the new Ivy Bridge laptops deserve their own topic. I am in a search for a new good DAW laptop and I think many others have the same problem. As you know, Ivy Bridge came to market in about 04-05/2012

Most people seem to agree that currently the most powerful and pretty much only alternative for serious DAW working are Intel i7/i5/(maybe even i3) processors so this topic is only about them and their plaform Ivy Bridge. AMD, Intel Atom and other alternatives should get their own topic in my opinion for not to fragment discussion.

Those of you that have already bought an Ivy Bridge laptop and used as a DAW or with audio interface, please share your experiences, how they are working, what problems might have risen, etc...? Do you have good enough USB slots to find a low latency slot for audio interface without needing to enable/disable devices every time when using DAW...? How low latency do you get and do you see latency spices in DPC...?







First the chipset, which is arguably the most important part inside a laptop. Ivy Bridge platform seems to have 5 chipsets: HM75, HM76, HM77, UM77, QM77 and QS77. Here is a topic about their differences:

http://www.cpu-world.com/news_2012/2012 ... psets.html

Here are some new laptops that I found categorized by the chipset they use:

HM75:
???

HM76:
Asus N56VZ, N56VM

HM77:, Macbook Pro 2012, Macbook Pro Retina, Thinkpad E530, Aspire S5, Aspire V3, Asus G55VW

UM77:
??? (ultrabooks..?)

QM77: Elitebook 8570p, Thinkpad W530, Dell Latitude 6430

QS77, Macbook Air 2012



Is some of these chipsets perhaps not very suitable for a DAW laptop? I assume that UM77 and QS77 are not the best alternatives because they are optimized for low power usage instead of performance but how about differences between QM77, HM77 and HM76...?

I assume that HM77 would be a safe choice as Macbooks have the same chipset, but how about the others? QM77 seems to have some business features (active management technology), could they be a burden for DAW performance..?

There has been reported problems with USB3 slots connected to audio interfaces, do you think that these problems apply equally to all of these chipsets? And do you think there might be difference in chipset drivers stability and upgrade frequency for DAW performance (based on history and sandy bridge and earlier chipset generations..)?


Then the processor, I would go for a quad core, alternatives seem to be 3610QM, 3612QM and 3720QM, the last one being fastest and rarest.










Then the display adapter, here is what I found:

Geforce GT630M: Asus N56VM, Thinkpad Edge E530
Geforce GT650M: Macbook 2012 15" and Retina, Asus N56VZ
Geforce GTX 660M: Asus G55VW

Nvidia Quadro NVS5200 Optimus: Thinkpad T430, Latitude 6430
Nvidia Quadro K1000M: Thinkpad W530

Radeon 7570M: Elitebook 8570p

Most of them seems to be now Nvidia. What do you think about this? I suppose ATI Radeon has been traditionally recommended for DAW but do you think that you can now trust Nvidias solutions..? Which of these might be problem causers?







Which are known to be the worst problems that transform a useful laptop into something that cannot be used as DAW, and how likely do they still exist in these new 2012 laptops? Here are problems that I have heard of

- WLAN adapter that causes DPC latency spikes even when disabled from device manager and turned off from the button. Or some other device that does the same thing
- Too few USB slots available that do not share IRQ with some vital system device (like display adapter, or even worse, SATA controller), I would need at least two good slots, one for audio interface and one for external hard drive
- some device whose manufacturer does not do enough effort to get its drivers stable --> mysterious crashing
- USB3 slots incompatible with audio interfaces. How likely in these laptops is that you can use the remaining USB2 slot for audio interface?
- other problem devices whose problems don't vanish even by disabling them, Ethernet? Bluetooth?, Webcam? Fingerprint reader?, Smartcard reader?, Touchpad?, Proprietery FN-key shortcut driver...? What else..?
- Fan noise. At least my laptop has very high fan noise in DAW usage, I have to turn monitors very high when mixing and get tinnitus after composing sessions.



- macbook retina. I am a bit sceptical about it, tried in a shop a retina macbook and normal 2012 macbook and the retina web page scrolling was much less smoother than in the normal macbook. This is so new technology that do you already want to add it to bring potential instability to your configuration? Not talking about that win7 bootcamp in such a high resolution without some special solution would make everything so small that they are impossible to use





Any experience of USB3 performance on these? Most of them don't have esata anymore (Latitude and Elitebook are only ones) and I am wondering how much my computer will slow down with small files, cache, temp folders, etc... if I switch from eSata to the new native Ivy Bridge USB3..?

[jcschild]

going to simply this for you..
you can spend all the time in the world looking at specs
on what would think is a perfect speced system it boils down to several things.

1) DPC latency, regardless of specs this has to do with many things including and probably the most important bios of said laptop.
most laptops out of the box have crap DPC. some can be fixed with numerous tricks/tweaks others are hopeless.

2)your ability to know what to do to fix these issues if they can be fixed at all..

lastly the newer ivy and chipset for them have little performance gain if any over previous gen sandy..
pretty much the only change is with ivy, for near the same price you get about 200Mhz more power.

how much is your time worth buying and sending back laptops until you get one right...

lastly only a quad core is a good purchase

Scott
ADK

[Throbert]

Yes, I need to find out if your bios alows me to get a realy low DPC latency and where can I get that spec........hello.......


hell I can't even find one with an express slot.

[schnapsglas]

Too generic reply but I often find that

1. Only few actually uses computer to full potential. You can do a lot with a dual core, although quad would be good. I agree it comes down to whether you know what you are doing or not. That tends to make the biggest difference I think.

2. I would recommend Ivy in general over Sandy because of lower power usage and just because chipset supports USB3 native, and so on. But what do you want to use USB3 for? For an interface? I would look at specific interface because I am sceptical over who actually needs it for their setup at this point, unless you are talking about external storage.

[golemus]

1) DPC latency, regardless of specs this has to do with many things including and probably the most important bios of said laptop.
most laptops out of the box have crap DPC. some can be fixed with numerous tricks/tweaks others are hopeless.

This is the first time I hear that BIOS could affect DPC latency, I realise that you are from a firm that is specialized into these issues but I would still like to see some reference about a case or something where everything else was OK (including components and their drivers) but it was actually a bad BIOS that caused latency issues.

2)your ability to know what to do to fix these issues if they can be fixed at all..

For the last 2 years I have spent so much time in optimizing my bad behaving computers that I consider myself pretty good in doing this.. .

lastly the newer ivy and chipset for them have little performance gain if any over previous gen sandy..

I am also aware of this that so it is on the hardware level, but how about drivers? Newer drivers tend to be always better (except for the beginning phase when they might be buggy).

From my point of view one of the greatest changes when moving from sandy to ivy is the native USB3 that is integrated to the chipset. I want to have USB3 in my laptop but 3rd party USB3 tend to have compability problems (I didn't get NI Traktor Audio to work at all with Asmedia USB3, best bet would be Intel USB3 but as we know even it has had compability problems with audio interfaces. Hopefully that situation is better now? And I guess the native USB3 should perform better than 3rd party USB3 although I am waiting to see some latest benchmarks how big the difference is when processing small files.

how much is your time worth buying and sending back laptops until you get one right...

You are right about that, except AFAIK most of laptop sellers would not even take the laptop back after you have broken the seal in it (unless it is broken of course).

But yeah, must say that I am also interested about pro audio laptops, if there is some firm that sells them in northern Europe and has 2-3year, onsite/24h repair warranty with reasonable price (a few years ago I took my laptop for repair like 5-6 times and every time I had to wait for several weeks and after that I decided that ever again a laptop without 24h onsite . I suppose ADK has presens only in US or so it appeared from your homepages.

[golemus]

Almost forgot one important factor:

- Fan noise. At least my laptop has very high fan noise in DAW usage, I have to turn monitors very high when mixing and get tinnitus after composing sessions.

[jcschild]

Yes, I need to find out if your bios alows me to get a realy low DPC latency and where can I get that spec........hello.......


hell I can't even find one with an express slot.

we have one!

[jcschild]

Actually we ship worldwide..
also Scan UK sells our laptops (older they have not ordered any of the newer ones yet)

if you had to take a laptop in for repair 6 times i think i would have thrown it thru the stores window..

i doubt you will find 24/7 3yr in home repair. and if there is something wrong they will have to order a part (they never carry motherboards or screens with them (the rest is easy fix) so your in home repair will still take weeks.

and i would hate to pay for that service..

This is the first time I hear that BIOS could affect DPC latency

actually its more to do with the bios than anything else by far.

look the average user is about getting on the internet and being mobile thus long battery life.. the manufacturers do EVERY thing they can to trim power use, in order to say we have great battery life..

so in doing so they are hurting performance and the ability to use the laptop as an actual workstation..
they do things like reduce power to the firewire and usb ports and the express slot (if there is one) and so much more like this i can list..

so yeah it is all about the bios..

[golemus]

2. I would recommend Ivy in general over Sandy because of lower power usage and just because chipset supports USB3 native, and so on. But what do you want to use USB3 for? For an interface? I would look at specific interface because I am sceptical over who actually needs it for their setup at this point, unless you are talking about external storage.

1. I have a 256GB SSD so I don't think all projects would fit there simultaneously, even to get sample libraries to fit is a challenge. I would need to transfer projects to/from external drive.
2. Sometimes I might need the laptop for DJ gigs and my collection would definitely not fit to the SSD so there I would need also a fast external drive. The collection cannot be in a harddrive that is in CD-ROM bay because sometimes I might do gigs with another laptop (in conditions where I would not dare to bring my main laptop).
3. Sometimes (e.g. when travelling) I might need the computer for things unrelated to DAW working and need USB3 there.
4. I actually would prefer esata for all of this but they seem to be more and more extinct in the cheaper laptops.

[jcschild]

oh and USB 3 external drives are faster than eSata.. eSata tends to share a USB slot which can cause issues for audio..

[Throbert]

Yes, I need to find out if your bios alows me to get a realy low DPC latency and where can I get that spec........hello.......


hell I can't even find one with an express slot.

we have one!

So does Lenovo. I can get their W530 with a scremming i7 and plenty of RAM and an e34 slot

[Ashe37]

Then the display adapter, here is what I found:

Geforce GT630M: Asus N56VM, Thinkpad Edge E530
Geforce GT650M: Macbook 2012 15" and Retina, Asus N56VZ
Geforce GTX 660M: Asus G55VW

Nvidia Quadro NVS5200 Optimus: Thinkpad T430, Latitude 6430
Nvidia Quadro K1000M: Thinkpad W530

Radeon 7570M: Elitebook 8570p

Most of them seems to be now Nvidia. What do you think about this? I suppose ATI Radeon has been traditionally recommended for DAW but do you think that you can now trust Nvidias solutions..? Which of these might be problem causers?

First I've heard of it, but anyway... since any laptop i own needs to be useable for 3d apps as well as music apps, ATI is a no-go and i trust their drivers as far as i could thrown them. Your graphics card should have little or no affect on your system as a DAW.

[golemus]

oh and USB 3 external drives are faster than eSata.. eSata tends to share a USB slot which can cause issues for audio..

Check this out, 7min 10s: (if you have not seen it yet):



In that benchmark transfer of small files is almost twice as fast with esata than it is with USB3. Although this benchmark has been done 2 years ago so I would really want to see a similar benchmark done today with todays drivers and the Intel native USB3 if the difference is still that big:

What do you mean by sharing a slot?

In my laptop (Lenovo SL510) the eSata harddrive is under the chipset SATA controller. SATA controller unfortunately does share IRQ with the second USB2 controller and the slot is of course combined eSata/USB2. But as I connect audio interface to the first USB2 controller/slot that has its own IRQ (23) I haven't noticed problems in with audio interface, altough I do have problems with MIDI controllers (APC-40 for example) as I need USB hub to connect all of them simultaneously and, all USB hubs nowadays are USB2 and the devices are so assigned to the same IRQ as SATA.

[golemus]

Actually we ship worldwide..
The form in your homepages did not offer a field for a country (only a stet) so I assumed that you don't or if you do it will be expensive and complicated
also Scan UK sells our laptops (older they have not ordered any of the newer ones yet).

if you had to take a laptop in for repair 6 times i think i would have thrown it thru the stores window..

Believe me things like this came to my mind, although I think I took it there "only" 4-5 times. In the end they gave me a new laptop as a reclamation (2.5 years after I bought the original one). They (Fujitsu-Siemens) had huge quality problems at that time and the motherboard of my laptop was changed 6 times in total, once 2 or 3 times in a row! (even spare part motherboard was faulty ). Understandably it took like 1-2 years from that time and you couldn't find Fujitsu-Siemens laptops anymore from stores, I wonder why

i doubt you will find 24/7 3yr in home repair. and if there is something wrong they will have to order a part (they never carry motherboards or screens with them (the rest is easy fix) so your in home repair will still take weeks.

Lenovo has this kind of warranty, but you have to pay extra for it for cheap laptops, I did buy it. And I think that the warranty includes that if they cannot repair it in 1-2 days they will give you a spare laptop for use until they have it fixed. And most importanty you have to do nothing, they will pick it up from you and bring it back, I sooo much hated it that I had to drive many times to other side of the town for computer maintenance.Asus has something similar too, although I doubt that it is as good as for Lenovo.

This is the first time I hear that BIOS could affect DPC latency

actually its more to do with the bios than anything else by far.

look the average user is about getting on the internet and being mobile thus long battery life.. the manufacturers do EVERY thing they can to trim power use, in order to say we have great battery life..

so in doing so they are hurting performance and the ability to use the laptop as an actual workstation..
they do things like reduce power to the firewire and usb ports and the express slot (if there is one) and so much more like this i can list..

so yeah it is all about the bios..

Sounds plausible. But you would think that a well designed system would disable all such power optimizations when you have power cord connected to the laptop. You could assume that most quad core laptop buyers know what they are after for, CPU power without compromises. Not much more good reasons to carry much bigger and heavier laptop when there are smaller dualcores, ultrabooks and tablets.

Of course if we are talking about a good DAW laptop when using it without external power, then that is of course another problem in its own. For me at least 98% of the time I compose with my laptop it is connected to mains so it is not of that big importance how good performance it has on road without power.

If this anyway applies even when the laptop is connected to mains, is it always impossible to disable this behaviour from the OS side?

[Ashe37]

So the guy thinks firewire is 'unreliable' and 'has never really used firewire', and 'doesn't even know what that would connect to' (the 4-pin firewire port), couldn't get firewire working (despite that I've used it for years on many different machines including transferring gigs and gigs of footage files betwen Macs and PCs), and we're supposed to buy what he says... uhm, yeah.... sorry, inability for him to get firewire working makes all of his results suspect. Especially considering the fact that i have literally learned two new (to me) renderers just to get the new Tom's tests together.