Desktop specifications Titan Suite 12.x or higher

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htevents
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Desktop specifications Titan Suite 12.x or higher

Postby htevents » 31 Jul 2021, 10:42

Hello all,

For a small touring show, we are building a Titan Two PC based desk. Consisting a PC, touchscreen and some midi controllers.
The show has 8 moving lights, 12 static RGB fixtures, some dimmers and 8 25 pixel RGB matrix panels with simple pixel mapping. Total channels used will be close to a 1000 because of the high amount of channels on the RGB matrix panels.

We have a separate programming PC with plenty of power wich runs Titan and Capture, so the PC to build/buy is just for playback/busking only.

The minimum system requirements for the PC Suite are an 2GHz i5 processor and 4GB RAM. I know that the're risks of less performance when using a PC with less specifications then recommended, but I would like to know what the different parts of the PC do.
For instance, an i3 processor can also run 2GHz easily like AMD processors can do too. What part of Titan is using the capicity of the processor and what part of Titan is using RAM?

Why are the system requirements based on Intel i5 and i7 processors and not AMD?

As in my case, will a machine with an (older generation) i3 processor that runs at least on 2GHz with 8 or even 16GB RAM do the trick, without the risk of unworkable latency or failures?
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htevents
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Re: Desktop specifications Titan Suite 12.x or higher

Postby htevents » 03 Aug 2021, 09:28

Well, i found something with what seems to match the recommended specs, but it is an older machine. Do I run into trouble or will this run just fine even when expanding the show/new updates of Titan?

The machine:
HP Elitedesk Pro G2 Mini
Intel i7 2.8GHz 6700 6th generation
8 or 16 GB RAM
250GB SSD
Windows 10

Any thoughts?
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Gregory
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Re: Desktop specifications Titan Suite 12.x or higher

Postby Gregory » 06 Aug 2021, 17:29

Generally speaking the recommended specifications are there as a guide and a lot of it will depend on how many fixtures and how much programming is in your show. This combined with how much you are attempting to run at the same time (i.e. lots of playbacks at once) and how snappy you want the user interface to be. The majority of users should find that the recommended specifications gives them a good experience while using the software, some users, if they have a particularly large show, might benefit from more memory and a faster processor but conversely some may find they can do with much less.

The original specifications were roughly based on the specifications of the consoles when they were written as this is what the majority of testing happens on. These were inflated slightly, e.g. 2GB RAM became 4GB, as it was expected that on a standard Windows installation there was more likely to be background applications and services which could use system resources; although since then consoles have been fitted with more RAM. Those numbers would be based on the idea of a console or Titan Mobile running 16 universes (with TNPs to do additional lines) and not the one or two lines from the T1 and T2. That said with new functions in the software I would expect more RAM etc. might be required than in the past.

I don't believe that it should make a big difference between an i3 and i5 processor, I suspect that there is probably more difference between a 1st generation i5 and an 11th generation one then there would be between an i3 and i5 of the same generation. There shouldn't be a problem using AMD processors, particularly more recent Ryzen processors, again this is just because the consoles have used Intel processors and up until recently AMD haven't really had mainstream processors to the same level (something which may have reversed at this point).

A few points I would consider: Since version 10 it is pretty much a requirement that the system/boot drive is an SSD as Titan caches a decent amount of data to disk and quick access times ensure that the interface remains fluid. Windows 10 is now required, although it might be possible to install on older operating systems, all the testing will be on Windows 10 so that is the safest option. Although it no longer appears on the specifications on the website a screen size greater than 1280 x 800 is sensible to ensure that all of the user interface is displayed and accessible however on high-DPI displays (e.g. 4k) you can end up with a similar issue when display scaling is enabled.
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htevents
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Re: Desktop specifications Titan Suite 12.x or higher

Postby htevents » 07 Aug 2021, 09:31

Thank you for your reply.

So I guess the machine I mentioned in my second post will do the trick just fine for at least the show I am planning for and I guess it can take a lot more, even though it is a sixth generation Intel i7. Running just two universes, having not that advanced pixel mapping and not that much fixtures. If we want to run a much bigger show, we rent or buy a (second hand) TT2 and maybe a TNP.

BTW, will just a TNP unlock at least those 16 universes in Titan Go or do we need aditional hardware to unlock more universes than the two of the T2?

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