Re: The Razer Blade Stealth Ultrabook, a good choice for live performance?
I agree that the GPU costs a lot (and eats up batteries), and it may be worthwhile to skip it if you're going to be setting up the way a lot of people do live with pre-rendered clips, but for audio production as a whole, the GPU can help out. Some demanding stuff can run partially on Nvidia GPUs using CUDA to save CPU, kind of like using a DSP card (I believe AMD has an equivalent, but Nvidia's has been around longer and it's easy to get a dev kit for, so it has more applications developed for it). I know Acustica does that today, and I'd be surprised if more devs don't start leveraging it soon. Also, it can take some load off the CPU by handing graphics off to a separate chip, which keeps the CPU cooler. Most ultrabooks perform slower than expected because the CPU slows itself down to prevent overheating, so you want to minimize that in some way. Still, if you get what you're looking at, I don't think you'll be disappointed, just go in with the expectations that it may not be as fast as advertised unless you do something about cooling.
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