Which Win Notebook is recommendable

congrats… give us a full report!

When I first discovered GP I installed it on an Intel NUC i7 - and that was yeas ago with Version 3 and the NUC wasn’t new then - and it ran fine. I also ran it on a Dell Z420 workstation with little noticable difference. Due to other considerations and age I build a new small form factor rig (itx) which I am still using and happy with. I don’t think GP would be an issue with a modern NUC, it depends what else you are doing with the platform and it’s potential resources/limitations. Having said this and being a hard core PC user all my life - but immensely liking the various iPads I have had, next time I’m going to try a Mac Studio (probably) as a dedicated music machine, with all the other things you can’t do with the Apple ecosystem left on my PC projects.

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I have a NUC as home theater PC. It’s a machine that has all features to make it a good GigPerformer workhorse. All drivers made by Intel, low risk of driver bad interaction, no limitation on bios (new notebooks are not this way to protect them from thermal issues).
I think that it’s intrinsically a much better machine for this purpose than a gaming notebook

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I would absolutely agree with that. Couple that up with a good lithium battery UPS and you have the best of all worlds.

OK, I ended up buying an OK but definitely non-gamer-level Windows laptop (after seriously considering stretching the budget to a bare minimum 2020 MacBook Air instead). LatencyMon says it’s OK. But is there any other good GP stress test for the computer that I should run before the return window is gone? My GP use to date has been pretty light.

I am using a recent AMD based laptop (16GB) and an 8-yr old intel based (8GB) laptop as backup. Even the old laptop is handling gig-performer fine. For a windows system the key is to do a clean windows install, obey the optimization guide and avoid installing software that you don’t need for gig-performer.

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First rehearsall with a Geekom IT11 i71195G7 and it worked flawlessly. :+1:

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Chiming in here with a link that is helpful for windows laptop purchases:

Besides this, make sure your seller has an open return policy. Then simply open the computer, get it up and running and install latencymon. I bought my Acer after returning a Lenovo laptop and then browsing the list linked to above. I believe it’s constantly updated.

Lenovo I couldn’t get to give me good latencymon results, tried the ususal suspects of powere schemes, optimize for background tasks, no unneeded apps at startup, still not good. The Acer runs for latencymon for hours on end with no interrupt spikes, always giving a thumbs up for audio performance.

Best of luck to anyone out shopping!
Once again, open no questions asked return policy. And USE it! Don’t be ashamed to bring the third laptop back if you can’t get it to work.

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Fully agreed. Never buy a windows notebook before trying LatencyMon.
I had extremely bad experience with a powerful gaming notebook that had terrible performance in LatencyMon. The only solution was to sell it!

@npudar @dhj

I would like to share a link with you regarding some interesting technical details about windows pc/laptops.

Basically what this guy explains is, the way windows and manufacturers integrate the hardware (low level drivers and its performance), can lead to high DCP calls, meaning breaks in audio, no matter how fast a cpu in a single core or how many cores it has

Time ago there was some intel 10 gen laptop made by xmg brand

These laptops were optimized for very low latency (less than 2 ms) so it could be comparable with some mac for real time audio. But looks like the new cpu generations have made some changes on the micro architecture and does not allow some optimization for audio performance.

I have had different laptops and i can say that i have been lucky with the latency, and those models have never been top performers. But even a gaming laptop that are meant to be good performers (for gaming) can have problems by handling real time audio

The moral of the day for me now is “go for a mac”

I hope it makes sense.

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Exactly my experience. I had an Asus i7 of 7th generation and it was good. Not perfect but good enough. This led me to buy an MSI with i7 11th generation, and it was a disaster.
So I switched to MacBookPro and I am quite happy.
Video is not accessible from Italy. Can you give me some details to look for it?

If you are asking details about specs , it will be almost impossible.

Part of the troubleshooting in windows is to locate what driver has high dcp’s with software like latencymon. You need to run your desire audio software and latencymon to monitor the drivers performance. If you are lucky, and if you fond the problematic driver, maybe a driver update or even a bios update will solve the issue.

The last resource that can help people looking for windows laptops is the next link that l forgot to share

This site is the only one that reports the overall system latency on windows devices.

I hope the moderators take a look to it and maybe prepare and pin a topic about the windows laptops, as it will be very helpful for everyone in the future.

Regards

I was trying to get access to the video you posted. In Italy I cannot access to it.
Your further contribution is useful anyway

If you are really interested to watch the video, i am uploading it to my youtube account, but because is not my video, i am sharing it only to the people that has the next link.

Its only for your information and interest. No idea why is blocked in Italy.

Regards

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Now I got it
Many many many thanks!

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This video is an excellent explanation. It should probably be pinned someplace and be required viewing for anyone looking for hardware advice!

I’m running GP on an old (2017) HP Zbook with dual-Xeon processors. I bouth this refurbished and put an M.2 boot drive in it. It works very well, it’s very low latency and I run some very audio system resource heavy plugins on it. It’s also my midi-hub, all my midi devices plug directly into it via USB. My audio interface is a Motu M4 and this plugs into the thunderbolt ports and works very well. Zero issues with this old computer (except the battery life which is because of the P5000 GPU in the computer).

For PC laptops, I’d see if the builder/seller is willing to run LatencyMon on it before you purchase it. A company like Boxx, Origin, Razar, etc… might offer that up as a pre-sales option.

And of course, if you are buying a machine for GP and some DAW useage, be sure you can return the computer if it doesn’t test well when you recieve it. Have your ducks in a row and configure it ASAP, test with latencymon, test it to the level of latency you are happy with, etc… If it doesn’t pass with flying colors, return it.

And a note about Macs vs. PC’s, etc… Apple also adjusts a lot of stuff under the hood so that the processors are not always running at full strength and they change things in the firmware to keep you from actually metering what the processor is truely doing so this is not unique to PC builders.

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I agree. Very well explained.

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There are basically no reviewers using latencymon in laptop reviews.

The only source that usually reports latencys is, as i already linked before, the notebook check site:

It could be useful to pin this site as well, cause it might guide to buyers the right equipment.

Cheers

Hiya. I agree too that this would be invaluable in the Tips and Tricks category and also included in the Hacks compilation. Useful for both desktop and laptop users, HOWEVER - the statement on the XMG Audio website is really significant - e.g. “The introduction of Modern Standby and related changes to power management architecture on laptops are making it impossible for us – and as a matter of fact, for every other manufacturer – to release a laptop and genuinely call it “audio-optimized” at this point. This is in no way related to Windows 11 itself, which the new machines will be running – it’s due to changes on hardware level that need to be adapted to step by step.”

Extrapolating from the XMG explanation, it would appear that the core issue is how these laptop manufacturers are implementing power management architecture on their hardware, and according to XMG, there isn’t a solution. The first stop for new PC laptop buyers should be the Latency ranking list backed up by being able to run latencymon on a prospective new purchase if possible. Also of note is that XMG and a number of other manufacturers do have current audio processing PCs for sale, but all are desktops!

On a related note, I have seen a number of papers and publications recently on the new Apple silicon and AMD architecture. RISC is having a revival - who would have predicted that after all these years. Some of the most impressive videos were on comparing smart phones for real time audio and video processing and noteworthy that some of the phones blew the performance doors off some pretty high end laptop and desktop offerings. In particular, the new Apple silicon architecture has a definite design advantage with respect to audio processing IMO. If you are going to use a laptop as a dedicated device, I would suggest that Apple products deserve a good look for this purpose at the current time. All I’ve ever had is PC products for many decades other than my current iPad, but if for nothing else than to give them a try, my next device will definitely be an Apple product, maybe later this year. Some of the new monitors have absolutely seamless KVM capabilities built in enabling a user to have his or her cake and eat it too.

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Exactly my experience. New i7 CPUs on notebook have bios that prevent stopping energy management that insert idle cycles. This is terrific on audio (big bumps) and you have no way to control that.
I tried several tricks inside windows registry, buy old tricks don’t work and I wasn’t able to find new one working.

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