Laptop buying guide

darkrezin · Post by **darkrezin** » Thu Feb 19, 2004 4:02 pm

Interesting, Sam. I would assume the 7150 is somehow better but well, the price for the Precision here in the UK is just stupid, so I think the 8600 with its 333mhz RAM and lower price (in the UK a 7200rpm drive is not an option, but I can always change that later) makes it a more than decent compromise. I still haven't bought one.. but I probably will in the next month or two. I'm still trying to decide whether to stick with the 64mb GeForceFX 5650 which I've safely tested with my brother's machine, or go for the 128mb Radeon 9600 Pro, which might be better, but also could lead to problems for all I know.

Regarding the P3/PM similarity, I'm aware of it.. and you're right, it seems way way better.. 1MB cache seems to be doing good things. They should start introducing these chips for desktops, due to the lack of denormalling. To be honest, the biggest disadvantage of my old Dell is that I can't upgrade the RAM beyond 512MB (Intel 815 chipset).. this is the limitation I feel most.

mythalethe · Post by **mythalethe** » Fri Feb 27, 2004 10:00 pm

I noticed on the magma website that the 4 PCI slot PMCIA model has room for a HD in the enclosure. Has anyone tried putting an extra high RPM HD controller in the fourth slot for recording, or would that kill the pci bus?

-myth

dehuszar · Post by **dehuszar** » Sat Feb 28, 2004 9:39 am

The 2 PCI box does too, but I haven't tested it. My goal is portability; throw everything in a backpack. The extra weight and fragility of desktop drives doesn't fit that profile so much. They have firewire drive kits which will run cables out of the Magma to your laptop. So you could take the hit off of your PCMCIA and put it on your firewire. Not sure how that will affect performance, though it might be an advantage depending on the mobo/cardbus combo.

Sam

darkrezin · Post by **darkrezin** » Sun Feb 29, 2004 6:31 am

I also removed the HDs from my Magma mainly because of the weight affecting portability. When I was using them, they were mainly for storage.. I don't do a massive amount of audio tracks, so I didn't need them for streaming. They will definitely take a substantial amount of PCI bandwidth.

The CB2 (2 slot) Magma chassis has a 3rd slot which is especially designed for HD controller cards- you can put either a SCSI one or an IDE one in there (I used the one which is recommended by Magma themselves).

Guillermo · Post by **Guillermo** » Tue Mar 02, 2004 8:09 pm

Magma has a Firewire kit that works with a standard IDE hard disk. The advantage is that HD doesn't consume PCI bandwidth.

dehuszar · Post by **dehuszar** » Wed Mar 03, 2004 1:04 am

Not necessarily... a firewire port on you desktop still affects the PCI bus. Only if the controller runs parallel to the PCI bus but not through it would your statement be true. In this case you'd alleviate some bottleneck strain off of the PCMCIA controller, which is good, but it's not the same thing.

Sam

Volkmar123 · Post by **Volkmar123** » Wed Mar 03, 2004 11:13 am

Good news for german users :

Die gute Nachricht wir haben bei Magma bestellt und können noch ein speziell für Creamware Karten angefertigtes Magma CB2
(also für 2 Creamware Karten) 50 Euro unter Neupreis abgeben.

Magma Rechnung und Zoll Rechnung
sowie Garantie etc. ist alles vorhanden...
und kann z.B. direkt im Rhein Main Neckar Gebiet abgeholt werden,
so dass auch die ewige Warterei (die hatten wir leider bei Magma) entfällt.

Tel.: 06241 74564
oder email Hallo@afrikaner.de
Cheers Volkmar Schurr

Guillermo · Post by **Guillermo** » Wed Mar 03, 2004 2:17 pm

On 2004-03-03 01:04, dehuszar wrote:
Not necessarily... a firewire port on you desktop still affects the PCI bus. Only if the controller runs parallel to the PCI bus but not through it would your statement be true. In this case you'd alleviate some bottleneck strain off of the PCMCIA controller, which is good, but it's not the same thing.

Sam

In the most of cases, the bottleneck is the CardBus controller, not the PCI bus of the motherboard. But it depends of architecture of the MB, of course.

Check this laptop, it's heavy, but it seems fast.
http://www.go-l.com/laptops/hollywood_s ... /index.htm

Sager and other companies have the same model, but without an Apple marketing style.

http://www.mtechlaptops.com/specificati ... epspec.htm

darkrezin · Post by **darkrezin** » Fri Mar 05, 2004 7:41 am

This laptop does look cool, and it also shows the Magma technologies as an option, which I've never seen for a laptop (although it seems you have to call them for any specific information).

However, I'm put off by the fact that it has an SiS chipset, and also the fact it is a P4... Pentium M CPU's are far less prone to denormalling, and the resulting laptop is much lighter.

Also, even though it shows the Magma technology as an option, there is no guarantee that it is good enough to run Creamware stuff on a Magma.

dehuszar · Post by **dehuszar** » Fri Mar 05, 2004 10:38 pm

Quite the contrary, I've tried several laptops that had the same or similar cardbus controllers, or one's that the people at Magma assured would give similar performance, yet the performance was all over the charts. The one laptop which finally gave me the level of throughput used an ASUS motherboard and was designed to be a Workstation (specifically graphics) laptop, meaning it would have to be able to throw tons of textures through the bus for unoptimized work in progress...

Mobo is, in my experience shopping around, testing laptops, and borrowing the experience of the Magma folks, equally if not more important FOR OUR CARDS!!! For the Pro-Tools of the world with on-board memory and the like, the need for the full bus is lessened, really only affecting track count more than reverbs and timing.

Sam

dehuszar · Post by **dehuszar** » Thu Mar 11, 2004 2:24 pm

Holy flaming sheep shit! Sometimes I hate the rate at which technology moves.

http://www.go-l.com/laptops/hollywood_g ... /index.htm

Anyone notice the little Magma board halfway down the page?

Sam

Guillermo · Post by **Guillermo** » Fri Mar 12, 2004 12:07 am

I was impressed the first time that I saw these laptop. Later, I noticed that other companies had the same products (Sager, Hypersonic, Eurocom, M-Tech and more), but cheaper! Go-L is only a reseller with a web page like Apple! It doesn't smell well...

Some very useful links about this:
http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=14210
http://www.techbits.ca/modules.php?name ... age&pid=20
http://plex.us/outbursts/liebermann.html

Be careful!

With the victims of Madrid.

zayne · Post by **zayne** » Fri Mar 12, 2004 5:58 pm

I'm a newbie, but I've been looking at buying a laptop for music too. I am looking at a Yamaha 01X, but I only remembered about Creamware today. I thought I'd have to keep the cards in my desktop though! Hadn't heard about Magma.

Anyway, I've also been looking at the Dell Inspiron 8600, although there are known problems with the machine relating to that noise that you heard (cycle hum). Dells have a problem with the power supply being not grounded and this causing a ground when plugged into another earthed device (I think this explanation is correct, although you should probably check the Sound on Sound articles). I've also looked into the IBM equivalent, the R50p, which seems like an amazing machine. I've still got to check the cardbus specs though. I'll let you know what I come up with. It has an amazing screen resolution and a great screen card (can't remember now what it is though - too late at night:-)).

I would like to hear more about the performance of the Dell Inspiron 8600, now that you've had it a while.

Cheers

Zayne

Guillermo · Post by **Guillermo** » Sat Mar 13, 2004 10:22 am

This page talk about the performance of some CardBus controllers:

http://www.digitaltigers.com/notebooks.shtml

darkrezin · Post by **darkrezin** » Sun Mar 14, 2004 5:45 am

On 2004-03-11 14:24, dehuszar wrote:
Holy flaming sheep shit! Sometimes I hate the rate at which technology moves.

http://www.go-l.com/laptops/hollywood_g ... /index.htm

Anyone notice the little Magma board halfway down the page?

Sam

The fact that it shows Magma technology does not mean anything for us.. just because it supports Magma (although they give absolutely zero information on the site) it does not mean it will work with Creamware cards in a Magma.

Also the laptop has an SiS chipset.. something which instantly puts me off.

darkrezin · Post by **darkrezin** » Sun Mar 14, 2004 5:50 am

On 2004-03-12 17:58, zayne wrote:
Anyway, I've also been looking at the Dell Inspiron 8600, although there are known problems with the machine relating to that noise that you heard (cycle hum). Dells have a problem with the power supply being not grounded and this causing a ground when plugged into another earthed device (I think this explanation is correct, although you should probably check the Sound on Sound articles). I've also looked into the IBM equivalent, the R50p, which seems like an amazing machine. I've still got to check the cardbus specs though. I'll let you know what I come up with. It has an amazing screen resolution and a great screen card (can't remember now what it is though - too late at night:-)).

I would like to hear more about the performance of the Dell Inspiron 8600, now that you've had it a while.

Cheers

Zayne

Well, I don't own the Dell (I'm testing my brother's) but when I tried it with my Magma and Pulsars, it performed great (You can see my post further up the thread). I'm not using it regularly (my brother uses it for mundane stuff and has installed lots of crap on it for this purpose) but I can definitely recommend the machine highly.

I did not encounter any ground loop/hum problems when running the Magma and the laptop from the same mains outlet.

huffcw · Post by **huffcw** » Mon Apr 26, 2004 10:12 pm

I have a Dell 600m with an 02Micro cardbus controller.

I was able to laod 6 MasterVerbs before getting an error.

If I am just loading synths, I can pretty much max out the DSP of the PowerPulsar without any problems.

Once in a while I will get a DSP overload error. But I used to get this once in a while when I had my PowerPulsar installed in a desktop PC.

So, it seems like I am getting pretty good performance so far considering it is not the TI cardbus controller. The computer uses a Centrino processor with an Intel chipset, so that may also be a key to getting fairly good performance (many laptops do not have an Intel chipset).

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: huffcw on 2004-04-27 09:19 ]</font>

huffcw · Post by **huffcw** » Tue Apr 27, 2004 8:23 am

By the way, I tested again with the wireless network turned off and was getting even better performance.

There must be a resource conflict with the wirless mini-pci, so leaving it turned off when using the PowerPulsar seems to be the best thing to do.

dehuszar · Post by **dehuszar** » Tue Apr 27, 2004 11:30 pm

Chuck Brost from Magma, has stated to me on many occasions that for all practical purposes, the majority of Cardbus Controllers will give you similar results, the bottleneck being the PCI bus on most laptops and not the cardbus. I'm waiting for the Opteron (not AMD64) workstation laptops with the updated cardbus spec, whenever it is ready.

Sam

darkrezin · Post by **darkrezin** » Wed Apr 28, 2004 3:38 am

Fascinating.

In any case I've always been happy with Dell stuff... I finally bought my own Dell Inspiron 8600 after clogging my brother's with drool.. and I'm very happy with it. 1 GB of 333mhz DDR RAM is so luxurious when you've been working with a chipset limited to 512MB for so long!