mitchiemasha
The sales are coming and business expenses to spend...
Looking at new laptops around the £500 budget. Ideally i5 with SSD 500GB. My question isn't going to be which one! Why such slow base clock? Obviously to save power unplugged but we're always plugged in. 1.6 is laughable. My current DJ laptop is an i5 3rd gen 3230M 2.6 - 3.4 turbo and it was only £400, there's nothing at a reasonable price even close. I always thought speed stepping was bad for audio/asio etc. If we lock max performance what will they base at, mine bases at 2.6, not the Turbo, so wont they base at 1.6?
I know there's more to it than overall clock speed but what are we to do? I'm tempted to use a tower instead, leave it at the venue, alongside the jukebox PC.
Any thoughts appreciated
Looking at new laptops around the £500 budget. Ideally i5 with SSD 500GB. My question isn't going to be which one! Why such slow base clock? Obviously to save power unplugged but we're always plugged in. 1.6 is laughable. My current DJ laptop is an i5 3rd gen 3230M 2.6 - 3.4 turbo and it was only £400, there's nothing at a reasonable price even close. I always thought speed stepping was bad for audio/asio etc. If we lock max performance what will they base at, mine bases at 2.6, not the Turbo, so wont they base at 1.6?
I know there's more to it than overall clock speed but what are we to do? I'm tempted to use a tower instead, leave it at the venue, alongside the jukebox PC.
Any thoughts appreciated
Posted Fri 25 Oct 19 @ 7:08 am
kradcliffe
How the machine handles audio latency is probably more important than the clock speed.
Posted Fri 25 Oct 19 @ 7:31 am
mitchiemasha
kradcliffe wrote :
How the machine handles audio latency is probably more important than the clock speed.
Whilst that's kind of true, it doesn't help us get to the answer. If everything is working as it should, the faster clock speed means it will handle things better, tighter buffers etc. A bad machine, conflicting drivers, IRQ's etc will bring a faster core to it's knees but, those same issues would bring a slower core to it's knees sooner. Core speed is important, especially with audio.
The base clock speeds are so low. Unless I spend upwards of £900 on a laptop, i feel like it's a step down. I need to know more about how the turbos work on today machines and VDJ's interaction with it. Without the ability to OC, I believe these i5's will sit at 1.6, which is really bad IMO, regardless to other performance features and tuning.
When I bought my old laptop it was a similar issue (but not as bad), it took a lot of searching to find the one that had the faster i5 in the non premium laptop. At my price point most had the slower i5 but other extras i didn't need.
Posted Fri 25 Oct 19 @ 11:20 am
locoDog
You're reading the small print but not putting it together.
base speed is in small print so they can put battery life in large [just marketing], a machine can run on turbo all day if the software calls for it
base speed is in small print so they can put battery life in large [just marketing], a machine can run on turbo all day if the software calls for it
Posted Fri 25 Oct 19 @ 11:53 am
mitchiemasha
Thank you. that's what i need to know.
How do we go about setting that up on the laptop? Is it automatic? Set in high performance mode, I've never seen my current laptop use the Turbo. Isn't speed stepping bad for VDJ?
I know about Cstates etc in a tower set up but unfamiliar with laptops. My studio machine is an, i7 9700k, OC to 5.0 undervolted with curve off set, extra cooling with NVMe Pro drive, my current understanding is unless you OC, once locked in performance mode, it's the clocks base speed.
How do we go about setting that up on the laptop? Is it automatic? Set in high performance mode, I've never seen my current laptop use the Turbo. Isn't speed stepping bad for VDJ?
I know about Cstates etc in a tower set up but unfamiliar with laptops. My studio machine is an, i7 9700k, OC to 5.0 undervolted with curve off set, extra cooling with NVMe Pro drive, my current understanding is unless you OC, once locked in performance mode, it's the clocks base speed.
Posted Fri 25 Oct 19 @ 12:11 pm
locoDog
mitchiemasha wrote :
How do we go about setting that up on the laptop? Is it automatic? Set in high performance mode, I've never seen my current laptop use the Turbo. Isn't speed stepping bad for VDJ?
It's auto, set windows to high performance in power options, when/if vdj wants more power it gets more power. Speed stepping was an issue years back but that was years back.
Posted Fri 25 Oct 19 @ 1:14 pm
Adion
And a lower overall base speed means a higher potential single-core speed.
Anyway, a 1.6Ghz base speed should still be plenty fast for audio without making any changes.
Anyway, a 1.6Ghz base speed should still be plenty fast for audio without making any changes.
Posted Fri 25 Oct 19 @ 1:33 pm
kradcliffe
I run VDJ on a GPD Pocket with an Intel Atom 1.6ghz processor.
It's connected to a DJ2GO2, plays video out all night whilst streming remotely to an ipad through RDP and it works perfectly.
It's connected to a DJ2GO2, plays video out all night whilst streming remotely to an ipad through RDP and it works perfectly.
Posted Fri 25 Oct 19 @ 2:47 pm
mitchiemasha
Ok thank you. I was a little confused due to never seeing my laptop utilise the Turbo, it always sits at base, no matter what i do, unless I take it out of high performance mode, then it will step.
I use a Denon MC7000 and buffer set to 512
I use a Denon MC7000 and buffer set to 512
Posted Fri 25 Oct 19 @ 4:02 pm
groovindj
I think it's related to how commonplace laptops are nowadays. At that end of the market, they're aimed at domestic users who want to browse the web and use their email.
This is why there are even "laptops" that don't run Windows, just a basic OS for people who want a computer, but aren't into computers. They want it for social media etc because they don't want to miss out on Facebook :-)
The machines for "power users" (i.e. people who actually want to run a bunch of different software) are in the higher price bracket. The ones I was looking at the other day, with i7 and dedicated GPU, were getting on for £2000.
As the sayings go, you can't get something for nothing, you get what you pay for, and so on.
I bought an i3 laptop a couple of years ago, choosing one with 2.5GHz CPU over the slower ones - and it's sluggish as anything. In fact my 10 year old Sony VAIO (1.6GHz) is nippier. :-)
This is why there are even "laptops" that don't run Windows, just a basic OS for people who want a computer, but aren't into computers. They want it for social media etc because they don't want to miss out on Facebook :-)
The machines for "power users" (i.e. people who actually want to run a bunch of different software) are in the higher price bracket. The ones I was looking at the other day, with i7 and dedicated GPU, were getting on for £2000.
As the sayings go, you can't get something for nothing, you get what you pay for, and so on.
I bought an i3 laptop a couple of years ago, choosing one with 2.5GHz CPU over the slower ones - and it's sluggish as anything. In fact my 10 year old Sony VAIO (1.6GHz) is nippier. :-)
Posted Fri 25 Oct 19 @ 4:31 pm
mitchiemasha
groovindj wrote :
I bought an i3 laptop a couple of years ago, choosing one with 2.5GHz CPU over the slower ones - and it's sluggish as anything. In fact my 10 year old Sony VAIO (1.6GHz) is nippier. :-)
I bought an i3 laptop a couple of years ago, choosing one with 2.5GHz CPU over the slower ones - and it's sluggish as anything. In fact my 10 year old Sony VAIO (1.6GHz) is nippier. :-)
That's crazy, what chip was in your sony? But i wouldn't expect much from the i3, didn't they not have turbo so 2.5 would have been the max. This would of been clocking a lot slower in normal usage.
Posted Fri 25 Oct 19 @ 6:49 pm
groovindj
Core 2 Duo T5500.
The Sony originally had Vista on it (yuk!) but I swapped that out for XP, which was on it until recently, when I had to upgrade the OS to get the drivers for my controllers installed.
It's now got Windows 8.1 which is the highest I could go without getting lots of driver flags. I did get Windows 10 on it (and it ran) but there were so many yellow triangles in Device Manager I decided against it. :-)
It's probably just got better hardware in it compared to the new one, which was a lot cheaper.
The Sony originally had Vista on it (yuk!) but I swapped that out for XP, which was on it until recently, when I had to upgrade the OS to get the drivers for my controllers installed.
It's now got Windows 8.1 which is the highest I could go without getting lots of driver flags. I did get Windows 10 on it (and it ran) but there were so many yellow triangles in Device Manager I decided against it. :-)
It's probably just got better hardware in it compared to the new one, which was a lot cheaper.
Posted Fri 25 Oct 19 @ 7:30 pm
kradcliffe
I too have a core duo Vaio from 2010 and it's quick as hell. Really sad that Sony stopped making them as they were by far the best DJ machines out there with super low latency.
If I didn't need a 2 in 1 for my main setup I'd probably still be using it now.
If I didn't need a 2 in 1 for my main setup I'd probably still be using it now.
Posted Fri 25 Oct 19 @ 8:05 pm