So I had been using primarily v1.52 on my G4 867 powerbook until yesterday when the power supply seems to have mysteriously died. I’ve been trying out the 1.8 betas and was really looking foward to switching over to RC1 since beta 8 already seemed pretty stable to me. Now I’m stuck with two really underpowered machines (a desktop celeron @ 450mhz and a pb G3 @ 400mhz) so I’m trying to figure out what to do about a system on a tight budget. for now I’m bouncing between 1.8 on the G3 and 1.52 on the celery, not at all satisfied with the performance of either, and switching back and forth from mac laptop 1.8 keys to desktop pc 1.52 keys…well… yeah.
Question is, now that SSE is required for the PC version of Renoise, what is the new affordable sweetspot for CPU power? I don’t want to run 5000 VSTi at once or anything ridiculous, just being able to sample some of the more power-hungry ones and bounce them to samples without the whole system choking would be a nice change for me. Is there any point in getting a good deal on say an older high-end Athlon/P4 system to tide me over until I can afford a dual core (someday… maybe, I hope…) or will a newer low end chip be a lot better for audio? Are people with aging P4s pretty happy with performance in 1.8 considering the age of the chip or already itching for more power?
(sorry for the rambling, i’m still frustrated that my only halfway decent audio machine is now a shiny aluminum paperweight.)