the compatibility issue with amd cpu/chipsets is a myth. It used to be a marketing trick intel pulled out when amd cpu's surpassed intel in performance back in 2004/2005(athlon 64/FX cpu's). Blaming amd cpu's/chipset with today's standards(2011) is simply irrelevant. I have several systems, 8 systems at home in fact. I know I'm crazy about PC's. 3 of them have an Amd CPU/chipset combination and 5 of them have Intel cpu/chipset combo. Which one is faster?, it's all relative, my main desktop has an hexa(6)core CPU from AMD (1100 model)($189) overclocked at 4.4Ghz Do you think this will be fast enough for an exclusive DAW system(reaper in this case) with 16Gb DDR3 RAM and dual sata 3.0 SSD drives? It's actually overkill. Most of us really need to think twice before throwing you money on overrated and expensive Cpu's. In my case I carefully choose the CPU that get me the best performance/ratio for my money. All current DAW's support 6-8 core CPU's. The trick here is to learn how to tweak to get the most of your system, there is a minimum system requirement for DAW use, for reaper a dual core intel CPU 1.3Ghz or higher will do the work, for Amd a dual core amd cpu 2.0Ghz or higher should do the trick. Amd has some low performance CPU(as the c-50 series) you should pass on those. the ones around the Amd's E-350 CPU's should be the minimum to consider.
All intel offerings including old dual core cpu's as: core duo, core 2 duo, P series and new ones(around sandy bridge) as core i3, i5, i7 will do the job and might be even overkill in some cases specially around i7/extreme CPU, but if you can afford it, then do it. But my advise to you would be to get any laptop with the fastest CPU you can afford, same applies for desktop systems, then get the largest SSD drive you can afford and you are ready to go. Everything else can be upgraded. If you are about to get serious with a dedicated DAW system, then there is only 1 option for the OS(PC world), windows 7 64 bit so depending on your laptop you can upgrade to 8, 12 or 16Gb later on.
There are many things can affect the performance on certain laptops systems, still you won't find a laptop out of the box good enough for exclusive DAW use, there are some exclusive brands that offer custom built laptops systems but that will cost you almost 2 grand a laptop system.
In my case, When I get a new laptop the first thing I do is to wipe out all the info that comes with, format the whole hard drive and perform a clean installation from the scratch, but before that I go the bios and download the latest bios if any and disable sound,firewire,ethernet ports,printer ports,com ports and everything else I don't really need , then your are ready to go.
the second thing I do is to replace the hard drive and get the biggest/fastest SSD I can afford.the hard drive is the slowest component on any computer system.
third I get a good powered usb hub, I only buy laptops with expresscard ports and laptop supporting ram upgrade up to 8gb/16Gb, this might be a tricky part, sometimes the laptop chipset technically supports up to 8/16gb as the popular intel h55 mobile chipset, but the bios limits any possible RAM upgrade, the expresscard port is crucial for me, it allows me to use a powered usb 2.0 expresscard where I will plug the powered usb hub, this usb connections thru the expresscard will be pulled out directly from the pcie bus from your laptop motherboard, so technically no other usb ports will be used and no usb bandwidth will be shared under any circumstances.
lastly, I find out which one is the main port on the laptop, then make sure only one(1) usb port is going to be used(main) by the usb audio interface, the remaining ones(2-3 ports) will be simply left alone(unused) to avoid compromising the bandwidth from usb ports(480mpbs usb 2.0 limit)specially if you are planing to do multitrack recording(8 or more simultaneous tracks)
and also I manually removed all unnecessary services from windows 7
and keep up to date all drivers on the laptop system, this is a must step for DAW setup, there are some great software that will handle it for you as genius professional from driver-soft.
my 2 cents from someone who has been working with hardware and software(PC systems) for 21 years.
Last edited by superpowter77; 10-19-2011 at 08:33 AM.
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