G4 to a G5

[dp3]

For those of you who have upgraded to a G5 with DP4, how many more tracks are you able to do from using a G4 with 3.1?

Did you notice a significant increase in performance? Were you able to run alot more plugins?

[kittonian]

As long as you purchase a top of the line dual processor machine with a very fast independent front side bus you'll be thrilled. For example, I bought a dual 2.5 with 4GB of RAM. The thing is unreal. The lower the processor speed the slower the front side bus (although all G5's have independent FSB's).

The track count will be the same or better than what you've got now (most likely better by far) and the stability of OS X, along with all the new software you'll be able to play with will all make the purchase worthwhile.

Hope that helps!

[dp3]

The track count well be the same??? It's pretty bad now. It'd better be better, way better or not worth it at all.

<small>[ April 05, 2005, 07:31 PM: Message edited by: dp3 ]</small>

[DrewNichols]

You will definitely get a higher track count. Epecially if you use a lot of plugins. If you put 10K rpm SATA drives in it, you'll do even better. On my dual 867 G4, I was able to squeeze out around 40-50 tracks at 512 sample buffers. Most of them with one or two plugins. I couldn't even think of using more than one softsynth without it pegging my processors. On my G5 dual 2.0 I run at 256 sample buffers, run tons of softsynths, with a lot more plugins, and peg my processors about half way. If I drop my buffers to 512 or 1024, it barely breaks a sweat. My point being is that you will be more than satisfied with the increase in speed.

<small>[ April 05, 2005, 07:39 PM: Message edited by: DrewNichols ]</small>

[bartmc]

I don't know about audio track counts, but I have a MIDI version of The Planets that uses 32 tracks of MIDI playing through 4 instances of Garritan Personal Orchestra, some of it very polyphonic. On my Dual 1.8 G5 with 2 gigs of ram, it plays all the way through with no problem. On my Dual 1 Gig Quicksilver G4 with 1.5 gigs of ram, it barely gets through the first 8 bars. Huge difference.

[kittonian]

Of course it will be much better but I don't want to tell someone it'll absolutely floor you. I have no idea what his track count is now and with a single 500 g4 running a stripped down os9 with dp 3.11 i was getting great track counts and doing just fine. Now that I've got a super powerful brand new G5 (in fact I bought 2 of them) there's nothing that maxes out my system, especially when I'm using outboard gear in the mix.

[aeon]

Originally posted by dp3:
For those of you who have upgraded to a G5 with DP4, how many more tracks are you able to do from using a G4 with 3.1?

Did you notice a significant increase in performance? Were you able to run alot more plugins?

IF u plan not to use soft synth, stick with a g4 with os9, that is my opinion.

[maintiger]

in my system, dual 867's I get 30+ tracks w/ plugs before thing start to slow down- when you start adding VI's that's where thing start going south, especially garritan, it seems to be a CPU hog. Mach five is not so bad, I runn 3-4 instruments then I start to freeze or bounce down.
Atmosphere, any more than 2 instances begin to give me the fits (and it takes a long time to open a project if am running garrita, mach five and atmosphere at the same time)

am seriously considering a G5 because of my VI's.
otherwise I am happy with my track count in the dual 867

[maintiger]

Oh yeah, and I maxed the ram out at 2 gig- it was a noticeable improvement

[dp3]

I have 2 uad cards, MH channel strip and waves plugs, auto tune. I can start to run into problems at 20 tracks using a combination of all these plugs.

With OS9, using uad plugs blocks access to the second processor. Have they fixed that problem with DP4?

[dp3]

Dudes, had this problem been fixed wit DP4??? Access to the second processor using UAD plugs???