Hello: well, with win xp on my i7 based dual quad system, I can load up on soft synths and plugs to my heart's content and my cpu usage never goes above 20% at 128 buffers. One thing that does help though is the uad2 duo card which has great onboard dsp and an absolutely astonishing suite of plug-ins, especially if you're into vintage stuff. The neve and ssl channel strips are something else, and they have all kinds of vintage stuff like fairrchild compressors and rolland delays and chorus, as well as wonderful reverbs. I can use tons of stuff at once, I've never maxed up the card. Gord ----- Original Message ----- From: D!J!X! To: ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Tuesday, October 06, 2009 1:23 PM Subject: [ddots-l] Re: minimum computer requirements for sonar 8.5 While this is true, if you upgrade to something like win7 you could take advantage of the quads; it is the way to go. Having just looked at all these options with various of my clients before i built their systems last month, it makes sense to upgrade to a quad core system now, you can't beat the prices! Then you'll be future proof! Also, Sonar 8 has improved handling of the quad core processors, so even though plugs might not be able to do as well with them, Sonar can definitely distribute tasks out to all 4 cores, especially during cpu intensive tasks. One of the systems I just built included an i7 920 CPU, 4gb of ddr3 RAM at tripple channel throughput, with ht technology! Windows7 used those babies as if they were 8 processors, man! The joy of seeing sonar64 on that thing! I told them to upgrade their RAM, which is something they'll do when the resources become available; we make sure that the system we build for our clients don't break the bank :-) So basicly I'll tel you what i tell some of my clients: if you can and have the resources available, take advantage of the prices out there, upgrade the rig to something more current as the technology is being taken advantage of by sonar, and by the same token the system will be good for a few more years to come. You know how many of us have managed to run sonar 8 with the same setup we had on sonar 4 with just a few minimal upgrades? Well that's how this will kind of be, will last you for a few more versions of Sonar... If you or anyone else would like help/assistance on putting a new system together, feel free to contact me! HTH, D!J!X! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: ddots-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ddots-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John Fioravanti Sent: Tuesday, October 06, 2009 6:12 AM To: ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [ddots-l] minimum computer requirements for sonar 8.5 Hi: I'm using a Pc with the following spects with sonar 6 and am going to upgrade. processor amd afnold 64 processor 3500plus 2.25 gigaherts, ram 1 gig. I was going to upgrade to quad core; however, someone who knows what he is talking about posted a message on the midimag list which read: " Hey, the only problem not is that quad cores aren't really supported right by xp 32 bit, I understand that two cores is really only used, and with 64 bit, which will be king sometday, but for now, many dxi synths and effects won't work, so for now, better do dual boot or wait till 64 bit grows up and everyone catches up. Any thoughts on this? John Fioravanti