Graphics card makes any difference? (nerd heritage)

Hello, it's Devon the Noobie again
I am in the market for a laptop. I am sick of djing to look cool. It's time to embrace my nerd heritage (or something).
Do graphics cards make any difference with Traktor? I am interested in running traktor and Arkoas vj or some sort of VJing program at the same time. What kind of system specs do I need for this? How about running Ableton and traktor? Or running all three? Do I need an external mixer to mix ableton tracks with traktor mixes live? In short, what's the coolest most flexible insane creative setup I can do for under a $1,000?

 

Under a $1000 ?? Good luck! You will be hard pressed to find a RELIABLE machine to do everything you want without spending the cash.

Hobbes

 

To get want you done as laid out above, expect to approximately double that $1,000 figure. For a PC, look at a Mobile Pentium 4 (centrino chipset) 1.6 or 1.7 GHz 768MB or MORE memory 40GB 7200 RPM hard disk USB 2.0 Firewire 15" screen that can do 1280X1024 at 32MB RAM.

For a Mac solution, Dr Brooks or GMint are emminently qualified to speak to the requirements / recommendations.

Phil

 

I will repeat my refrain as the "guy who preaches the desktop machine.

I have a metal server case mounted inside a 6U music case.

The following cost breakdown is as follows
outer case - $70
metal server case - $100 (from pricewatch.com)
actual computer parts
AMD mo board $100
AMD processor $100
HD $160

Flexible roll up key board, $30
Trackball $40

The most expensive part is the Monitor, $300, but you can haul a cheap 15inch CRT if you can't afford the flat panel.

You can use the built in video on the board, but you might want to get a second video card for the VJ stuff.

You can also use the on board sound card if you get a 5.1 sound on board, although I just played out with my M-audiofile on friday and it was amazing. That would be another $300, but well worth it.

 

Arkaos and Traktor... I've got four words:

NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN

Sorry to dissapoint, but I just ran a video screen job with the exact same combination this weekend and here was my hardware setup: 1 PowerBook G4 1GHz/720 RAM/80Gig HD (ArKaos), 1 iBook G4 800 MHz/640 RAM/80 Gig HD. The point is, Traktor is very resource intensive and ArKaos is even more resource intensive (mostly because it doesn't really offload much to the graphics subsystem-a topic for another forum entirely) but the bottom line is it just ain't going to happen with today's hardware.

Also, I just wondered, how on earth are you planning on controlling that with one person? We run 1 person for VJing and 1 for DJing and it's still a pretty big task if you want to do it right...

 

Yeah I agree, on a couple of the bigger nights here that I don't get to play, I work on the VJ lighting end of things and fully agree there ain't a snowball's chance in hell you would be able to accomplish all this with one person and do it right.

Arkaos on a desktop P4 2.8 GHz driving 4 video streams into 1 outpur stream we typically get CPU loads around 65-75%. I have also found that you do NOT want to run other CPU intensive apps with it coz you will cause system hangs and crashes.

Phil

 

In theory you could put a Dual processor board in the machine and then put the VJ stuff on a pre loaded / pre planned set and put it on sound activate and just go for it.

It might not be as cool as a person running the VJ alone, but if would be some graphics and video.

I could see why you would want to do this.

A duel processor Moboard would be hot for a trackor/VJ rigg.

You could put 3 graphics cards/ two 15inch flat LCDs/ and on output to the projector.

It would be a bitching machine, but it would not be less than a grand.

 

@phpsocialclub

I hate to disagree with you, but I think you might be giving some bad advice here. Have you ever worked with ArKaos on anything more than a "tinkering" level? If you have, I'm sure you know that ArKaos is nowhere near as stable as Traktor. Processor load aside, stability issues alone would be enough to keep me from having ArKaos anywhere near Traktor when I'm DJing live. I mean, ArKaos is great for WHAT it does, but not for HOW it does it. I swear, if you think Traktor has bugs, use ArKaos for 5 minutes and you will probably have a new viewpoint.

As an alternative though, I might recommend using iTunes visuals for the projection. Certainly alot less processor intensive and IMHO, MUCH cooler than anything ArKaos could do on autopilot.