Help with upgrading my mac

[Radd]

I just got EZ drummer and even by itself it's a little to much of a cpu hog for my system. When used with EWQLSO, DP freezes and the message box comes up saying that audio has overloaded or something like that. Also the cpu moniter in DP is in the red.

Is this in fact a cpu issue or could it be ram?

I'm on a Dual 1 ghz with 1.5 gb of ram which is maxed. G4 quicksilver.

If it is the cpu, could I easily replace it myself and how much bigger of an upgrade do you think I would need?

If it is the ram, then is there such thing as external ram that I could upgrade with?

Please help...

Edit-My buffer size in DP is maxed also.

 

[James Murphy]

you should be able to have up to 4GB of Ram in that box.... i have 2GB from my old G4 that i could sell ya cheap.

4GB Ram would def give you a boost.

 

[greyskull]

think you can only get a max of 1.5 gig in a g4 quicksilver. you can put 4 gig in a mirror door g4 though could be wrong though james! so correct me if im wrong!!

you can buy processer upgrades though... i was looking into it, i got a g4 quicksilver too. but a single core 800.
i was looking into upgrading it, but theres a law of diminishing returns in that regard, coz the bus speed can only ever go so high, and the ram will always be 133 mhz.

nonetheless, you can still have a great audio machine for not much at all.
but then... i got a macbook.
holy shit are these things good.

 

[Radd]

you should be able to have up to 4GB of Ram in that box.... i have 2GB from my old G4 that i could sell ya cheap.

4GB Ram would def give you a boost.

I would definitely take you up on that James but there are only 3 ram slots in my machine which are already filled.

 

[flytrapx]

I would definitely take you up on that James but there are only 3 ram slots in my machine which are already filled.

Ram is critical for EZ Drummer because the samples are loaded into memory. So if putting more ram in the machine is not possible then what worked for me on my 1 Ghz G4 Powerbook was to write out the drum parts with only a simple guide track and then record them to disk so you can cut down on your overhead.

 

[Radd]

Ram is critical for EZ Drummer because the samples are loaded into memory. So if putting more ram in the machine is not possible then what worked for me on my 1 Ghz G4 Powerbook was to write out the drum parts with only a simple guide track and then record them to disk so you can cut down on your overhead.

I'm thinking that I could possibly get by with writing an entire drum track (although it may be frustrating) but definitely not playing it back.
Then maybe I could turn it into audio?

If you only wrote a guide track and burned to disc then how did you complete your drum track, or did you?