Making the most from a g4 400 mhz

[Jeff]

Hi.

Description: G4 400 mhz AGP, 704 mb ram, a Seagate 30 gb ATA/66, a Quantum 10 gb ATA/66, both on the ATA 4 bus, and a a WD 120 gb ATA/100 sitting over the ATAPI drive on the 3 bus.

My PCI slots are full: MOTU pci-324, 2408 mkII, UA UAD-1, and an additional ATI rage in the 4th slot. All i/o disabled for mixing except analog 1-2.

I am experiencing stuttering with Digital Performer v.3.11 even while using the UAD card plug-ins. I am maxing out my machine with audio because I am now getting clients that need more "done to them." I've been able to get about 33 channels going, more than I ever expected to be able to do, but am crapping out right when I'm trying to bus reverb sends (and only a couple). http://www.unicornation.com/ubb/icons/icon8.gif This is after a couple 1176's, LA-2A's, native eq's on everything, and sub-grouping. Maybe a waves pitch shifter, and the MW limiter on the drum mix bus.

I am planning on upgrading somehow through Mac Gurus, was looking at the Giga cpu upgrades after viewing more user forums than I can think of now. Up all night trying to find a solution.

Questions:
1. Would I be better off with a single 1.8 ghz or a dual 1.3 card with this machine and these ATA/memory and bus limitations? I'm trying to go cheap as possible, but would spend the extra for the dp if Digital Performer ran better (can be optimized for dual).

2. Will I be better off with a single ATI 9000 to get the other card off the pci bus? Removing the card and second monitor did not improve my audio performance significantly.

3. Would the single processor upgrade give me enough beef to upgrade to OS 10.3.9 and DP 4.6? It sounds like some folks are having success with the latter using a Giga 1.2 card, but I don't think their running as many tracks and plug-ins as I am.

4. Would the gain from getting an SATA PCI card be better than that of a CPU upgrade?

5. Would a CPU upgrade be unnoticed due to a slower ATA bus speed?

Sorry, I repeating myself here, but I'm in a client bind and would like something in the next few days, but am very tight in the money arena right now. Hoping for guidance.

Thanks,

Jeff - and I did get a lot from your forum and others. Just need some individual attn. as fast as possible.

[johnnytucats]

I can't answer all of that, but here's some info. If your audio is on that 120GB I'd move it off your ATAPI drive. That bus is REALLY slow.

I have that same G4. I guess you've checked the upgrade compatibility of your particular one. I have the 1.2 single Giga overclocked to 1.3. I don't have a UAD. I was able to run roughly 2.5x as many plugins in DP3.11 with the upgrade at 1.2. The 1.8 doesn't have a L3 cache, does it? I don't know the comparison between a 1.8 without one and a 1.2 with, when running DP. Also, the others here will have to tell you about dual upgrades.

No advice, just info. Good luck!

[Shooshie]

I don't know if this is possible, but if you can get your hands on DP version 2.7, you may be able to get better performance out of it. For me, that was the peak of performance in OS9. On a machine just like yours I was able to mix over 80 tracks with plugins. I had to do stems to get my heavier plugs (C4, RealVerb) to work at the time, mixing stems and bouncing them down, then mixing the bounced stems with those big plugs. But I was able to do it. You have to manually compensate for plugin latency.

Anyway, there's not much you can do to get your performance much higher on that machine, but here are a few:

1) Max out your RAM,
2) Strip down your system so that there are NO extensions running besides those essential to Apple and DP.
3) Make sure that audio is not going through the system bus. That is, keep audio on a separate drive from the system/application drive.
4) Turn off screensavers, energy savers, etc.

Shooshie

[studiodog]

This is after a couple 1176's, LA-2A's, native eq's on everything, and sub-grouping. Maybe a waves pitch shifter, and the MW limiter on the drum mix bus.

The Waves pitch shifter decimates my dual 867 in X.
Don't recall what the overhead was in 9 though...

<small>[ August 16, 2005, 05:29 PM: Message edited by: studio dog ]</small>

[ledhead]

I don't have all the answers too but I think the cpu upgrade is definively worthy specially if you want to run os x, otherwise you might feel like you're engineering underwater with your g400 since the os x eat more cpu then os 9. I also have the same machine with the single 1.2Gigadesigns chips overclock to 1.5Mhz and DP 4.5 is running smoothly on it without any problems. I don't know about the dual chips though.
I don't want to be rude but SATA PCI card would be useless with the kind of drives you already have since you would need SATA drive for it. Did you mean ATA 100or133 PCI card? If so this is surely a plus to these old G4.
Like -johnnytucats says move the 120Gb off your ATAPI drive to gain better transfer rate. Specially if your project is on it. I think the tranfere rate on the ATAPI bus is around 10Mb/sec compare to ~40Mb/s on the ATA 4 bus.

For emergency purpose I would personnally get a Giga chips upgrade and keep running on OS 9. I don't know if the giga 1.3 or 1.8 dual allows it though. I know it can on the 1.2.
Otherwise eventually getting a ATA 133 PCI card is also a good idea you could hook up the 3 drives on it with more speed benefit.

Hope it help and that my english isn't too confusing!

[Jeff]

All Y'all,

Thanks for the replies. Much I've already done, like minimizing extension, keeping OS/apps and audio on separate drives. The comment about the SATA card, I did realize I would have to get at least one SATA drive and maybe an adapter cable to use one of the bigger, newest drives I have.

But the part about the drive on the ATAPI bus woke me up with a shock in the middle of the night as being a stupid move. If it hadn't, two of you were kind enough to point that out.

I appreciate the info you all gave about your own upgrades and similar use issues. Inspires some confidence in just getting a cpu upgrade card and getting DP 4.5, which I've wanted anyway. I've seen a lot of people claiming the gigas work well in X with 4.5 and the UAD. No one seems to say much about os 9. But it's nice to get the feeling that the cpu upgrade alone might be able to swing the software and heavier OS X.

Thanks.

[emulatorloo]

Originally posted by Yerm:
I've seen a lot of people claiming the gigas work well in X with 4.5 and the UAD. No one seems to say much about os 9.

Giga has a disclaimer on their install literature that they dont test warrant or support 3rd party OS 9 software. . .just an FYI . . . .

Hope to reply to you w more stuff (I have an upgraded machine w Giga and also another w Sonnet) when I am not so tired from this endless day.

[emulatorloo]

I upgraded my Sawtooth machine recently. I had previously upgraded it with a Giga 1gigaherz processor.

I don't think I am running as many tracks as you. DP isnt my main app and was only one consideration in this last go round.

I decided dual would give me the most bang for my buck at this point.

I decided to go with the 1.4 dual giga 7455 based because I was concerned about the 7447A's lack of L3 cache. Per my telecon with GIGA, they said that the lack of L3 is equivalent to about a 18 to 20% performance hit. . .so that a 1.7 7447a would be about equivalent to a 1.4 7455.

I bought from macgurus, they were fine.

Interestingly my first dual 1.4 had the L3 cache fail -- DP did not care about the cache going (it worked fine) but my audio driver (MAUDIO) had fits with it! (giga did replace)

As to Sonnet and Giga, both are great companies and have great tech support if you need it. I would say in most cases you will not need it. FYI Motu recommends sonnet on their site -- apparently they test w sonnet and sonnet tests with them. So if you dont want to get into a big finger pointing game, Sonnet may be the way to go.

Now, for general advice to you.

10.3.8 was solid for me. 10.3.9 was weird. just not right. 10.4 solid fast stable I like.

MAX out your RAM. Buy from a dealer who has lifetime warranty, I have had great luck with datamem.com

Back up your drive before you install your new processor just to be safe (I used super duper). . .these two links give you some strategies for that:

http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/installing_tiger.html

http://www.lafcpug.org/tutorials/basic_tiger_upgrade.html

OK hope this helps -- just order something already!

[Jeff]

Many thanks for the finer points. I am aware that giga doesn't support OS 9, recently went to 10.3.9 for other stuff, dealt with firewire issues on drives accessed by both OS's.

Hoping that the cpu upgrade (1.8 ghz single) will work with OS9, DP 3.11, and the UAD card and give me some time to recoup the expenses before I do DP 4.5. I do like the reinforcement from all sides about UAD, giga, DP 4.5 and OS X panther upward.

Thanks again. I'm sure I'll be reviewing these posts when the card gets here.

BTW, I never see a RAM hit in the performance meter of DP. Any comments? I'm like less than halfway at any given moment in just what I allocated to dp. I would imagine that would mean that it's not necessarily hitting the ram at the OS level to do the processing. Yay or nay?

Jeff

[croyal]

However you upgrade, DP likes to see dual processors- so even your current machine speed but as a dual will give you marked increase in overall performance.You'll need DP 3.x as it supports dual processors- even though 2.7 was indeed faster with singles.

Also check out local music store chains for used Dual 450/500. There are lots around as displays are being changed to accomodate G5 setups. A friend bought one for under $400

Lastly- submix as much as possible to keep track count down. When you bounce down groups of tracks, duplicate the chunk, rename, and delete the source track(s) in that new chunk. You can always backtrack to the pre-bounce chunk, rebounce and paste the result into the current chunk. This will definitely save a few cycles. Sort of manual Freeze tracks for DP3- only better, because BTD is done faster than real time and the original stays intact.

Chris