My current system - based on an Athlon64 3000 (1800mHz, 512k cache), on-board graphics, 1.5gb RAM - can (surprisingly) do a decent amount of what I want but you can also see it starting to struggle at times.
It would be great to get an idea of what sort of CPUs I should be looking at. AMD or Intel - either will do. Obviously I’ll be moving up to multi-core - but how many? Would four be significantly better than two for the above kind of set up? I know it should in theory but no idea how that works out in practice.
Well I think any computer of the last 3 years should be up the task - I was building a computer with a Intel Core2Quad CPU with 2,4 GHz and 8 GB of Ram.
Works very nice with ardour (btw I am using AVLinux - because it “just works”).
My already old Athlon X2 5600+ with 4 GB of RAM (paid 390 euros two years ago) can easily do what you described above, so if you buy a quad-core it can handle more than what you can desire.
If I were you, I would go with a Phenom II, even the X6 are cheap enough for a home computer. I always preferred AMD over Intel, having tried both of them extensively. Reasons are various, and I don’t want to begin an Intel vs. AMD war. Obviously about this point each person have a different opinion.
For the RAM, 4 GB can easily handle your setup, especially if you optimize your Linux distro (e.g. with a lightweight window manager). On my netbook with 1 GB RAM, I managed to set up a modern Arch Linux system that itself sucks less than 35 MB of RAM - and I am certainly not a super-expert user, so I am sure it could be settled even better.
Useless to add, get a decent sound card, but I think you already own a good one.
Thanks it’s very helpful to know that four cores aren’t essential for this kind of workload and just about any modern-ish chip will do. I do kind of prefer AMD. At the moment they seem better value for money plus they have some energy efficient 45W CPUs - I like to build a low power system if I can. Easier to keep quiet.
A Core Duo or AMDx2 should be ample, if you do other stuff like Video Editing/Encoding you may want to spend a little extra on a Quad. I have had good luck with both AMD and Intel but I would caution you to spend decent money on a motherboard, since AMD are known as ‘low rent’ sometimes they come bundled with horrid motherboards that are cheap junk. I would suggest trying to get a mobo with firewire and check with ffado.org if the firewire controller is supported so you have an option to use a firewire interface in the future, also be careful about onboard video chips quite often they are cheapie derivative chipsets that aren’t well supported by Xorg and optional proprietary Linux Video drivers.
My previous DAW had a Pentium D, which is a dual-core CPU. My current DAW has a Phenom II x6. Both of these do well for me running Linux as a pro-audio production system with Ardour, Rosegarden and other stuff. I don’t have any xruns (of course, there is more to xruns or lack thereof than the CPU, but a good CPU doesn’t hurt).
I’d like to revive this thread — nearly a half-decade has gone by since the last posting and Ardour has the most power its ever had before.
Given the state of the technology, and the capabilities/demands of Ardour right-here right-now, what’s a good modern AMD processor choice that balances power with affordability?
@paul correct…
I would argue that currently Intel processors are better as they handle FPU calculations much better. So a quad core Intel may perform better for audio than a 6 core AMD… @anahata, there are some great firewire devices out there, but not many firewire native motherboards had good chipsets… a third party pcie firewire card is often better, and it’s one size fits all, I found a TI chipset worked better with my Focusrite io device, but the VIA chipset works better with my A&H desk.
I have both Intel and AMD old and new and I would highly recommend, if possible, spend the extra cash and go with Intel. There is no comparison when it comes to performance and efficiency. All my Intel machines without RT kernels and no tweaks being done I get no xruns at all. I run Arch on my machines. Even my AMD FX4100 and GA 990FX mb gets the occasional xrun and I spent some money building that thing. My $30 Dell Latitude laptop with an Intel Duo Core is preferred over my AMD FX4100 machine for recording with Ardour.
but can be handy.