New PC

Cubase
1

I’m looking for some advice on upgrading my PC. I currently use a Q6600 2.4 Quad Core and when I load 2 sessions of Gplayer (fully loaded orchestra) and 2 sessions of Miroslav (orchestra) with about 4 Melda Convolution reverbs running in FX Tracks My CPU usage bounces between 30%-50%.

If I upgraded to an i7 Quad 3.6 would that decrease my cpu load by a significant percentage or would it only have a slight difference?

I don’t want to drop 400 bones and find my Q6600 was only 5% less powerful than my new rig.

My other option is to buy a Asus deluxe motherboard and Overclock my Q6600 to somewhere around 3.8 ghz. That’s a cheaper option and it may be just as fruitful. To be honest I don’t know and I’m hoping someone who’s already done massive homework or has good experience and wisdom here might help.

2

Steve, I’m with 4 gigs in Xp32 and XP64 (dual os). But I’d happily upgrade my ram if it will improve performance. There doesn’t seem to be any performance boost in XP64 using the 1 gig of ram.

And thanks for the advice. I’m all ears.

3

Steve, Perhaps that’s a better solution for me as well. I’m running serveral instances of Gplayer (one instance is loaded with strings, another with brass, another with percussion) and then I have 1 miroslav running.

I run into problems when I get the convolution reverb in the mix. I narrowed it down to 3 resting in an FX tracks and using sends from the outputs of the VST instruments.

I also found that bumping down to 49KHZ cuts my CPU usage in half. But I love the quality of the 96khz.

Maybe simply having 2 Q6600’s is better than 1 i7?