Hi…
Im totally new to using vst for live work amd would like some advice on what spec to look for when buying a laptop to run gig performer and vst as my love rig in my new rock covers band.
Please help as its all getting a bit confusing lol
Hello @JayJ,
I’m pretty new here myself. Are you’re a Windows user? You may want to check out a recommended read with this article on optimizing your Windows PC.
Also… here’s an older thread discussing the same question:
Thanks guys for info so far. Im beginning to wonder if i dont know enough about computers to actually be able to use a laptop for live performances. Man its just so confusing
Within your desired price range look for these basic specs:
- base CPU speed (not the turbo-peak)… the higher the better! (Don’t care too much for the number of cores!)
- RAM size … wouldn’t go below 16GB (prefer laptops with the possibility to change/add RAM-Modules)
- SSD-drive at least 1TB
This would be the “engine” of your new laptop… then you might want to have lots of USB ports (maybe a thunderbolt port), a RJ45 network port (not only WiFi), display- and keyboard size which suits your needs. And maybe don’t buy it from the cheapest discounter in town…
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Thank you.
Would you say the following is a reasonable set up thats a future proof for a couple of years?
i7 processor
16gb ram
512 ssd
1tb external hdd.
Its the processor speeds etc i dont understand
Which one and running at what frequency (GHz)?
It’d be the same if one was about to buy a fast car and only asked “should i take a 8 cylinder engine?”
You would automatically ask about the displacement capacity and how much horsepower this engine will have…
Same with CPUs… OK, you mentioned an i7, which would be a good model row, but there are many diffrent builds! That’s why i recommended to have alook at the base speed of the CPU.
Maybe it would be the easiest way, if you would just tell us your price limit and the shop where you’d like to buy it… then we could just point the finger at a specific offer.
How about that? 
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Ill grab the spec of what im looking at.
Im hoping for around £800 - £1000max.
Also does gig performer run ok on windows 11?
There should be no issues… i know that several users already run GP4 on WIN11.
Oh, and i wouldn’t go for “Gaming Notebooks”… in most cases you will purchase a high end graphics chip which is for your use case mostly useless - there is actually no heavy graphics use in music software.
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Does this look a good choice ?
Seems not to be too bad…
i personally would rather go for one of these (just for the specs):
(1TB SSD/16GB RAM/i7 1185G7@3GHz (4.8GHz turbo)/thunderbolt ports
MSI Prestige 14 A11SC-015UK Core i7 16GB 1TB SSD GTX 1650 14" FHD Win10 Home + Gaming Laptop | Ebuyer.com
or
(fastest i7 model of that generation):
Acer TravelMate Vero TMV15-51 Laptop, Intel Core i7-1195G7 2.9GHz, 16GB DDR4, 512GB SSD, 15.6" Full HD IPS, Intel Iris Xe, Windows 11 Pro (ebuyer.com)
…but for the Acer i would try to find more detailed specs somewhere else first… the don’t say too much about it.
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I run GP on 2 laptops and 1 desktop running Windows 11 without any problems. 
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Thank you
Im going to order the first one i think
Yeah, might be a good choice.
You can add my latest i9 11th gen desktop specifically built as an audio workstation, my HP dual Xeon workstation, and my i7 9th gen NUC. All run W11 and all run GP4 (and previously v3), with no problems.
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I know a year is a long time in the laptop world, so I’m wondering if this spec is good enough to last me a few years on GP4. Am just starting on the VST journey to move away from my Kronos.
Personally, I’d get at least 32 GB of ram, especially if you like sample libraries.
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I found some tests here:
DPC Latencies
In our standardized latency test (web surfing, YouTube 4K playback, CPU load), the Zenbook shows problems with increased latencies. This is due to kernel driver and ACPI drivers. The present driver configuration is not suitable for real-time audio applications. During video playback, there were 132 skipped frames. But this reflects the present configuration; things may look different if the driver setting is changed.
Link: Asus ZenBook 14X OLED Review: Games & Strong 3K Colors - NotebookCheck.net Reviews
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My first impressions:
The specs in writing do not look bad: 20 core cpu (6 performance cores with their hyper-thread cores and 8 efficiency cores), DDR5 memory (no speed mentioned though).
The performance-efficiency combo, however, is new territory: the performance cores plus their threads are comparable to my gen 10 cpu and I get away with it easily (just guitar vsts, a drum vst and as of lately also a bass-vst), but you might have to assure the right core affinity (this can be done using taskmanager or by using the ‘start’ command in a batch file), otherwise you might find GP running on the slower efficiency cores.
By the looks of your question, I guess you’re a keyboardist, so I wonder will 16GB be enough? It can’t be replaced as it is soldered.
EDIT: by guitar vsts I mean guitar fx, being a guitar player.
Keep us posted of the journey 