laptop and virtual dj

[salford1986]

im buying a new laptop what is the main part of the spec that virtual dj relys on most for it to run smoothly for video dj'ing

thanks

chris

[Jim - Scotland's Party DJ]

I'm not an expert by any means but I'd assume RAM is what you need to be looking at to make sure it runs smoothly with a bunch of things going on at the same time.

Processors and video cards probably come into play too but I'll let someone who has a clue what they're talking about in that area fill you in

[SC Events]

I would suggest at least 4Gb RAM and at least 2GHz processor. Anything more would be a bonus.

[Solitaire Events Ltd]

The VDJ website gives these specs.

MINIMUM system requirements:
Intel® Pentium® 4 or AMD Athlon™ XP
1024x768 resolution
DirectX compatible soundcard
512MB RAM
50MB free on the hard drive

RECOMENDED system requirements:
Intel® Core™ 2 or AMD Athlon™ X2
1280x1024 resolution
Multi-channel DirectX compatible soundcard
1024MB RAM
200MB free on the hard drive

Additional requirements for Video mixing:
2048MB (2GB) RAM
ATI™ or NVIDIA® video card w/256MB of Dedicated DDR3 RAM
Video card must support dual-screen output

Supported Operating System:
MINIMUM: Microsoft® Windows XP SP3 or newer
RECOMMENDED: Microsoft® Windows 7 Professional 32-bit

Microsoft® Windows 95, 98, ME, or older are not supported

[Glenski]

This will all depend on what you intend ti use VDJ for ?

Music - Video - Karaoke etc

Minimum really would be 8GB RAM - Dual / Quad Core processor - ideally an intel core i5 / i7 and a dedicated graphics card min 1GB
Also run a 64bit Operating System, this will give you scope to upgrade your RAM if needed.

Then there is the optimisation of your laptop for digital DJing

[Solitaire Events Ltd]

Minimum really would be 8GB RAM - Dual / Quad Core processor - ideally an intel core i5 / i7 and a dedicated graphics card min 1GB
Also run a 64bit Operating System, this will give you scope to upgrade your RAM if needed.

I run with a lot less than that and that is also not what it says on the VDJ website. (See above)

[DJ Jules]

This will all depend on what you intend to use VDJ for ?

Music - Video - Karaoke etc

Agreed, for playing music, Karaoke and just straight playing Video's you don't need that high a spec. If you intend to scratch Video's or use a lot of video effects with multiple video streams and/or 4 decks... then more power is needed!!

Minimum really would be 8GB RAM - Dual / Quad Core processor - ideally an intel core i5 / i7 and a dedicated graphics card min 1GB. Also run a 64bit Operating System, this will give you scope to upgrade your RAM if needed.

Just to point out, if your operating system isn't Windows 7 or newer, then the ceiling for memory use is going to be 3.4 - 3.6GB. Anything you put into the machine above this will be ignored.

I'm running with one of these with an upgraded hard disk (because I keep my music and video's on the internal hard drive) and it does absolutely fine for Music, Karaoke and video playback on 2 decks with the odd effect.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-EliteBo...item2a27cbfab0

To give you an idea of what the spec is like in that machine, I was looking at the CPU list the other day when looking for a new laptop for my wife and the above laptop has a P8600 processor which clocks in at 1495 using the Passmark scores which is equivalent to a high end i3 or a mid range i5.

A high end i5 or i7 wouldn't hurt though

Julian

[ukpartydj]

Minimum really would be 8GB RAM - Dual / Quad Core processor - ideally an intel core i5 / i7 and a dedicated graphics card min 1GB
Also run a 64bit Operating System, this will give you scope to upgrade your RAM if needed.

Then there is the optimisation of your laptop for digital DJing

I don't personally use VDJ or dabbled in Video DJing but I know my laptop uses 750MB when just loaded and 1.25GB when playing a gig (using traktor pro 2) do you really need 6.75GB to RAM to run the video side of things? I would say 6GB is plenty, not minimum. And as already mentioned processors vary a lot -

To give you an idea of what the spec is like in that machine, I was looking at the CPU list the other day when looking for a new laptop for my wife and the above laptop has a P8600 processor which clocks in at 1495 using the Passmark scores which is equivalent to a high end i3 or a mid range i5.

A high end i5 or i7 wouldn't hurt though

Julian

I'm not sure if this does apply but I believe (and unfortunately have no evidence) with things like DJing and basic tasks a higher clock speed helps more than additional cores.

I upgraded from a HP Elitebook with one of the high end Core Duo's to an i7 and felt the Core Duo was better for DJing. I'm not very knowledgable on graphics cards but I thought that the majority of the video side of things was dealt with by the graphics card therefore having a half decent CPU and a great graphics card would be the best option? I'm honestly not even sure if you need additional RAM to handle graphics related processes surely a Graphics card with a big memory would be better?

And as mentioned check passmark CPU benchmarks.

The lowest scoring i3 is - 1204
The highest scoring i3 is - 4325

The lowest scoring i5 is - 1139
The highest scoring i5 is - 7141

The lowest scoring i7 is - 1577
The highest scoring i7 is - 12967

As you can see some i3's are better than i7's!

It should be noted that the test undergone to receive these scores push the processors to their maximum, they do not reflect how well they operate with basic tasks. DJing IMO is not a demanding task for today's computers.

[DazzyD]

This will all depend on what you intend ti use VDJ for ?

Music - Video - Karaoke etc

A quick stab in the dark but perhaps the OP wants to use VDJ for video-DJing?

im buying a new laptop what is the main part of the spec that virtual dj relys on most for it to run smoothly for video dj'ing

thanks

chris

This will all depend on what you intend ti use VDJ for ?

Music - Video - Karaoke etc

Minimum really would be 8GB RAM - Dual / Quad Core processor - ideally an intel core i5 / i7 and a dedicated graphics card min 1GB
Also run a 64bit Operating System, this will give you scope to upgrade your RAM if needed.

Then there is the optimisation of your laptop for digital DJing

I run with a lot less than that and that is also not what it says on the VDJ website. (See above)

8Gb minimum? Where did you get that figure from? VDJ quite happily runs on my 3Gb machine. I would suggest that dedicated graphics memory would be more beneficial than boosting up shared RAM which is also performing all the other calculations that the laptop is processing.

As Daz says, I run VDJ on a budget machine and it uses ATI Intergrated Graphics which isn't the most powerful of graphics chip but it runs VDJ smoothly and with no problems :

SiSoftware Sandra

Video Adapter
Display : \\.\DISPLAY1
VGA Compatible : No
Official Device Name : AMD M880G with ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250
Hardware ID : PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_9712&SUBSYS_1604103C&REV_00
OEM Device Name : ATI (AMD) M880G [Mobility Radeon HD 4200]
Device Name : HP M880G [Mobility Radeon HD 4200]

Chipset
Model : RV610M
Type : Mobile, Integrated
Speed : 500MHz
Shader Speed : 500MHz
Peak Processing Performance (PPP) : 40GFLOPS
Adjusted Peak Performance (APP) : 36WG
Unified Shaders : 40 Unit(s)
Raster Operation Units (ROP) : 4 Unit(s)
Texture Mapping Units (TMU) : 4 Unit(s)
Maximum Pixel Fillrate : 2GPix/s
Maximum Texture Fillrate : 2GTex/s
Maximum Power : 14.00W

Logical/Chipset Memory Banks
Total Memory : 256MB
Memory Bus Speed : 2x 533MHz (1GHz)
Maximum Memory Speed : 2x 800MHz (1.6GHz)
Channels : 1
Width : 32-bit
Maximum Memory Bus Bandwidth : 4.16GB/s

As you can see, the graphics only has 256MB of dedicated memory but it runs VDJ fine. My point is that, all fine and well if you can afford the highest spec machines, and don't mind paying the high price, but this isn't the be all and end all. VDJ has a minimum set of requirements and will perform perfectly well on a machine with these specs.

[DJ Jules]

A quick stab in the dark but perhaps the OP wants to use VDJ for video-DJing?

Yeah, but there's playing video's and then there's "proper" Video DJ'ing. Playting a video from start to finish at it's native resolution and the recorded frame rate doesn't take a massive amount of processing power (which is what I suspect a lot of beginners and other people who consider themselves Video DJ's will do. Scaling a video, applying effects in real time, scratching and time stretching video's puts a LOT more load on the computer.

I would suggest that dedicated graphics memory would be more beneficial than boosting up shared RAM which is also performing all the other calculations that the laptop is processing.

Spot on - from experience if you're going for heavy Video DJ'ing, a laptop that has a dedicated graphics chipset and dedicated graphics memory (not the integrated Intel chipsets) will free up the main CPU and the main memory and will also allow Virtual DJ to use hardware acceleration more which will improve the end result. Unfortunately there aren't many laptops in the budget-mid range which have dedicated graphics chipsets.

As Daz says, I run VDJ on a budget machine and it uses ATI Intergrated Graphics which isn't the most powerful of graphics chip but it runs VDJ smoothly and with no problems :

I'm using one of the integrated Intel graphic controllers as well and I also haven't had any problems. I do know from experience of trying to run games on the same laptop (not my DJ one obviously) that the machine is not a graphics power house - but it still does the job absolutely fine.

The argument about cores is also valid. Multi-core processors rely on the software being written well to take full advantage of the multiple cores. Virtual DJ isn't too bad at doing this though and uses both cores effectively in my Dual Core HP P8600.

As you can see, the graphics only has 256MB of dedicated memory but it runs VDJ fine. My point is that, all fine and well if you can afford the highest spec machines, and don't mind paying the high price, but this isn't the be all and end all.

Very good point The general rule of thumb when buying a PC or laptop is that you should spend as much as you are comfortable spending and you should leave the purchase as long as you possibly can because no matter what you do buy, it'll be out of date within 12 months and the machines out next year will outperform the one you've bought by a factor of 2 anyway

Having said that I'm sceptical about all of the CPU benchmark scores - I know an i7 with a Passmark score of 12,000 doesn't run 10 times as fast as my machine with a score of 1,200 for the kind of tasks that I want to perform

Julian