![]() |
KnowBrainer Speech Recognition | ![]() |
Topic Title: So what specs actually do speed up Dragon Topic Summary: Created On: 06/20/2021 06:28 AM Status: Post and Reply |
|
![]() |
![]() |
- kevindiltinero | - 06/20/2021 06:28 AM |
![]() |
![]() |
- dilligence | - 06/20/2021 09:24 AM |
![]() |
![]() |
- Lunis Orcutt | - 06/20/2021 01:47 PM |
![]() |
![]() |
- kkkwj | - 06/20/2021 05:22 PM |
![]() |
![]() |
- Lunis Orcutt | - 06/20/2021 06:45 PM |
![]() |
![]() |
- kkkwj | - 06/20/2021 07:37 PM |
![]() |
![]() |
- mtechlaptops | - 06/21/2021 02:46 PM |
![]() |
![]() |
- kkkwj | - 06/22/2021 12:24 AM |
![]() |
![]() |
- mtechlaptops | - 06/22/2021 08:29 PM |
![]() |
![]() |
- kevindiltinero | - 06/22/2021 06:11 AM |
![]() |
![]() |
- mtechlaptops | - 06/22/2021 08:38 PM |
![]() |
![]() |
- BillMiller823 | - 07/08/2021 01:34 AM |
![]() |
![]() |
- Lunis Orcutt | - 07/08/2021 12:07 PM |
![]() |
![]() |
- Lunis Orcutt | - 06/22/2021 01:35 PM |
![]() |
![]() |
- kkkwj | - 06/22/2021 02:04 PM |
![]() |
|
Hi all, |
|
|
|
![]() |
|
Apart from the minimum amount of 16 GB RAM (and preferably more) you need to look into the single core performance of a processor. Dragon is mostly a single core application. Therefore in some cases it may be more interesting to purchase a cheaper i5 (with higher single core performance) then a much more expensive i7/i9 with much more cores, but slower single core performance.
Just a thought. ------------------------- Turbocharge your Dragon® productivity with 40 Power Addons |
|
|
|
![]() |
|
1. Yes
------------------------- Change "No" to "Know" w/KnowBrainer 2020 |
|
|
|
![]() |
|
I haven't been using Dragon quite as long as Lunis and Rob and Lindsay, but I have certainly been through enough hardware, memory, disk, cpu, and motherboard changes to be knowledgeable about their effects. I have these things to say: 1) Get some kind of a decent, reliable rig. My 6 year old ? Lenovo laptop runs Dragon just fine with 8GB and a "slow" single core CPU. It certainly runs faster than I can speak. Any modern desktop rig is overkill from that point of view. 2) The biggest memory hog on my 64GB machine is my browser with 40 tabs left open. I should close them more often, but hate the hassle of finding the pages/docs/articles again. ------------------------- Win10/11/x64, AMD Ryzen 7 3700X/3950X, 64/128GB RAM, Dragon 15.3, SP 7 Standard, SpeechStart, Office 365, KB 2017, Dragon Capture, Samson Meteor USB Desk Mic, Amazon YUWAKAYI headset, Klim and JUKSTG earbuds with microphones, 3 BenQ 2560x1440 monitors, Microsoft Sculpt Keyboard and fat mouse |
|
|
|
![]() |
|
We would like to point out one small detail: We agree that DVC commands deploy significantly faster in Dragon releases through Ver. 15.3 but not Ver. 15.61. Nuance finally changed out the miserable circa 2006 SAX Basic scripting engine to WinWrap Basic, which we use in KnowBrainer 2017 (w/2020 AI Commands). If Kevin is using Ver. 15.61, he might be better off learning a little Visual Basic because it is used in so many other places and requires 50% fewer characters. You can also copy most KnowBrainer commands into Dragon but as far as legacy DVC scripting is concerned, it is unique to Dragon. However, that's not to say that DVC commands don't occasionally come in handy. There are times when a DVC multi-threaded script is the best choice and for this reason, a few KnowBrainer commands are DVC. KnowBrainer supports DVC, VB and .NET
------------------------- Change "No" to "Know" w/KnowBrainer 2020 |
|
|
|
![]() |
|
I have no arguments at all with Lunis' comment. Just to be clear, right now I have exactly 1 DVC command to shell execute out of Dragon entirely. All the rest of them are in Visual Basic.
------------------------- Win10/11/x64, AMD Ryzen 7 3700X/3950X, 64/128GB RAM, Dragon 15.3, SP 7 Standard, SpeechStart, Office 365, KB 2017, Dragon Capture, Samson Meteor USB Desk Mic, Amazon YUWAKAYI headset, Klim and JUKSTG earbuds with microphones, 3 BenQ 2560x1440 monitors, Microsoft Sculpt Keyboard and fat mouse |
|
|
|
![]() |
|
SSDs are not just preferred, they are essential. While it's true they have superficial benefits, their required because next to the RAM, they play the most important part for speed.
Let's try to play out this scenario in a way that makes it clear.
First, we have not had to worry about what CPU for several i7 generations. As long as it is a 45-watt i7 or now even an i5, you should have sufficient speed and cache. If you try a low voltage i7, you could run into issues. It really depends on your needs.
Which segues into what is enough? Enough RAM enough drive. Enough is no way to reply to someone's needs. Think of this as if you're buying a car. You go to the car dealer of choice and say, "what is enough car for me". If he just sells you a well-regarded brand of car, you may have the wrong vehicle even though it could be the best of its kind. What are you using it for? Driving to work or on a cross country trip? Will it be hauling anything? There answer to what is enough of anything isn't answered properly until we know what your needs are.
Are you simply trying to replace keyboarding on a computer because you cannot type or don't not want to type? This Dragon use is drastically different then that of a Legal transcriber who will be Echo dictating at 200 words a minute for very long periods of time. Or will you be doing court reporting where for untold time periods you have to capture and transfer multiple speakers at once?
A legal transcriber or court reporter would think 32GB is a minimum working RAM, nearly every court reporter with a newer M-Tech uses 64GB and if the computer can hold more, they would make full use of that maximum amount of RAM.
So, never assume someone else's "enough" is appropriate for you.
I will say that there is no such thing as "too much Ram" RAM is like goods look and money, enough is never as good as more.
In the case of RAM, more RAM allows for more sustained peak performance and prolonged stability. ALWAYS buy as much RAM as your budget allows for. I would rather see you use a i5 and 64GB of RAM then an i7 and less Ram. Ideally you want both, but never spend more for a CPU if your current CPU is sufficient. It won't bring anything to the table because it is the RAM that unleashes the CPUs speed. Think of it like your brain. If I gave you Einstein's brain but didn't give you anything for memory, you would be hamstrung in your efforts to do anything. Just like our brains, computers rely on past calculations to to do future calculations. If I ask you what is 10 X 10, you don't count your fingers ten time to get the answer. You know it from memory. So if I ask you what is 10 X 10 X 10. You know simply to take 100 and times it by 10. If your personal memory is good enough you do not even do that math, you just remember it is 1000. A lot of future computations are made faster by our ability to remember past answers. Computers do the same thing. They buffer information you haver already done and use that for future calculations. Where is this information stored? If you had all the RAM in the world, that is where it would be stored. But since we have got just "enough" RAM it will be stored on a pagefile on a drive.
So more RAM would give you more speed because no drive is as fast as RAM. Which also points to why the drive is vital. The drive acts as the buffer for anything the CPU deems worth saving for future use. If you have one drive and that drive is slow, then your retrieval of the pagefile will be slow and so your computer will be hung up waiting for the file to be accessed and retrieved. This is why we always tell people get two drives. Your CPU can do multiple calculations at once, but your drive is only able to do one file at a time. Which file will it be? If you have two drives, you can push the system background resources like pagefiing to that second drive and now your able to free up used RAM while your OS or program is managing it's needs on the C drive.
Now, for those that think 16GB sounds like "enough", keep in mind any current i7 can do 42GB of information in a second. So if you only have 16GB it is used up in a fraction of a second and needs to be cleaned up. Really you will never use 16GB of RAM or if you only have 8GB of RAM you will never use all of that. The OS will only use a small portion and then immediately use the drive for the balance. Once it uses the drive, that is the speed of your computer. The CPU cant run without memory and so it waits for the drive to save and retrieve any store information. So the more RAM you have the more time the CPU runs at full speed and the faster your second drive is, the faster the computer runs when it is forced to use the pagefile drive.
Ideally you want as much RAM as you can so the system always has a free amount of RAM to work from while it pagefiles the used amount. If you only have 16GB, you never give it enough RAM. Let's say your computer only uses 50% of the physical RAM. You only have 16GB so in realty it may use 8GB then starts to work clearing that up by usage of the pagefile. It dares not to use the other 8 because that is only about 1/5th of a second worth of work. There is no way that is enough RAM to last it long enough for a SSD to manage the pagefile. But if you have 64GB of RAM, then even at half the system still has 32GB of RAM to work from when it has used up the other 32GB. Keep in mind, we are still not getting 3/4 of a second worth of work from that half of memory.
So the question is, how sustained is your personal peak usage. If you are just replacing your keyboard with Dragon as a way to avoid entering text into your banks web site or to order from Amazon, then YES 16GB is enough because our doing virtually nothing. But if you are trying to break into the transcribing world, then you do not have enough to consider that computer a tool of the trade.
Would you think a mechanic could get by professionally with a tool set that was enough for a home mechanic? Do you think a butter knife is a sufficient tool for a carpenter that needs to turn in screws? You can call a butter knife "enough" if you are suddenly faced with a loose screw in the kitchen. But it isn't the right tool if you're doing more than one screw.
So address your needs from a usage standpoint.
In no world do we feel that one drive is sufficient for dragon if your needs are for anything that approaches regular and sustained usage You need that second SSD and that SSD should be the fastest your computer will manage. A Gen 3 X4 NVMe will manage four time the date bandwidth of a regular SATA SSD. Since this drive is your backup RAM, the faster this drive is the faster your computer is. Your C drive doesn't have to be a peak performer. The C drive doesn't do any heavy lifting. Think of having 10 pounds of lead. The needs to move those 10 pounds can be very different. If you have 10 pounds of leads shot, then a heavy bandwidth SSD is not needed since your only picking up small items and moving them But your pagefile is likely to be moving large blocks of DATA that is far better suited to a NVMe drive.
So here in a nutshell is the specification we like for anything approaching professional Dragon usage.
An i7 or i5 that has more than 6MB of L3 cache. This will include most CPUs out there today that are not ULV CPUs.
No less than 32GB of RAM, most court reporters and transcribers max out their system capabilities. In a laptop, this likely means 64GB
Two SSDs. any system with two SSDs is better than a system with one but getting a normal SSD 500GB or more for the C drive and a NVMe for your D drive gives you the option of tweaking Windows to run faster and with more stability.
Get whatever OS you feel you like. For most people that can be just Windows Home version. If your on a corporate Domain network, then spend the extra $30 and go with Pro. Most go with Pro just because it's only $30 more and it make them feel all warm and fuzzy.
So,
I7
32GB or more RAM
C drive SATA SSD
D Drive NVMe but most certainly any SSD of any style is better than nothing.
Windows Home
Then you can now tweak your system to use these extra specifications.
At M-Tech, we happily do this for free or if you like to get under the hood, we can provide the instruction for you to do it yourself.
If we, do it it takes 20 minutes or more to log in remotely. It could take you longer.
To sum up.
Enough for you may not be enough for the next person. But spending money on RAM is a good investment in speed but no so much on a CPU. Two SSDs will give you the ability to unleash whatever CPU you have. Good luck and stay safe.
------------------------- Jerry Michrina - Technical Adviser M-Tech Laptops, Inc. 1-231-547-5562 Ext. 11
|
|
|
|
![]() |
|
Wow, I think that's the longest post that I've ever seen! I liked the parts where you compared the data rates with the RAM size and showed that the whole RAM gets emptied out in a second. Could you please comment on why my physical memory is only ever half used in the Task Manager (regardless of RAM size)? I think the OS must restrict it somehow. But I don't know what it does with the other half.
------------------------- Win10/11/x64, AMD Ryzen 7 3700X/3950X, 64/128GB RAM, Dragon 15.3, SP 7 Standard, SpeechStart, Office 365, KB 2017, Dragon Capture, Samson Meteor USB Desk Mic, Amazon YUWAKAYI headset, Klim and JUKSTG earbuds with microphones, 3 BenQ 2560x1440 monitors, Microsoft Sculpt Keyboard and fat mouse |
|
|
|
![]() |
|
Windows can never afford to use all your RAM.ling before it gets close it starts to make a pagefile and write it to your drive. So if you have 8 or 64, you will always see some RAM unused. The more RAM you have the less the pagefile gets used but it always gets used. So more RAM gives you longer staying power fkr peak speed and increases the stability of your system between reboots. So if you gave 64 your laptop can run at a peak speed four to five times longer before it cleans up the RAM by pushing and paging. Does this help? Please feel free to call and ask for me if you felt I missed the mark. My mind works in a way that doesn't make for simplified text responses. ------------------------- Jerry Michrina - Technical Adviser M-Tech Laptops, Inc. 1-231-547-5562 Ext. 11
|
|
|
|
![]() |
|
Thanks Jerry for your response, |
|
|
|
![]() |
|
We need to separate a software that runs within the RAM and the data in needs and creates that far exceeds the RAM. Also, keep in mind so many more resources are used than just the kne program. So more RAM and support to keep this RAM active is needed. The SSD does just that. Add up your OS, the many programs and the data created and accessed by the programs and you quickly run out of RAM. Otherwise increasing a CPUs speed would be of little value if the actual memory requirements never exceeded the relatively small amounts of RAM we throw at it. WINDOWS is designed to run from drives and use only what is needed at the moment since the assumption has always been their will never be enough RAM. So fir this reason we cannot give it too much RAM becuase windows can at its peak do 42GB a second. If we only need 8 for any extended period of computing then that 42 would be superfluous. I am trying to recall all you asked but when in the posting window I cannot see your hood questions. So if you wish, always feel free to call M-Tech so I can deal with them one at a time. But how ask well thought out questions. ------------------------- Jerry Michrina - Technical Adviser M-Tech Laptops, Inc. 1-231-547-5562 Ext. 11
|
|
|
|
![]() |
|
I was a bit overwhelmed by trying to read Jerry's response, so I copied it and turned it into easier-to-read paragraphs. Here is Jerry's info from above: SSDs are not just preferred, they are essential. While it's true they have superficial benefits, their required because next to the RAM, they play the most important part for speed. Let's try to play out this scenario in a way that makes it clear. First, we have not had to worry about what CPU for several i7 generations. As long as it is a 45-watt i7 or now even an i5, you should have sufficient speed and cache. If you try a low voltage i7, you could run into issues. It really depends on your needs. Which segues into what is enough? Enough RAM enough drive. Enough is no way to reply to someone's needs. Think of this as if you're buying a car. You go to the car dealer of choice and say, "what is enough car for me". If he just sells you a well-regarded brand of car, you may have the wrong vehicle even though it could be the best of its kind. What are you using it for? Driving to work or on a cross country trip? Will it be hauling anything? There answer to what is enough of anything isn't answered properly until we know what your needs are. Are you simply trying to replace keyboarding on a computer because you cannot type or don't not want to type? This Dragon use is drastically different then that of a Legal transcriber who will be Echo dictating at 200 words a minute for very long periods of time. Or will you be doing court reporting where for untold time periods you have to capture and transfer multiple speakers at once? A legal transcriber or court reporter would think 32GB is a minimum working RAM, nearly every court reporter with a newer M-Tech uses 64GB and if the computer can hold more, they would make full use of that maximum amount of RAM. So, never assume someone else's "enough" is appropriate for you. I will say that there is no such thing as "too much Ram" RAM is like goods look and money, enough is never as good as more. In the case of RAM, more RAM allows for more sustained peak performance and prolonged stability. ALWAYS buy as much RAM as your budget allows for. I would rather see you use a i5 and 64GB of RAM then an i7 and less Ram. Ideally you want both, but never spend more for a CPU if your current CPU is sufficient. It won't bring anything to the table because it is the RAM that unleashes the CPUs speed. Think of it like your brain. If I gave you Einstein's brain but didn't give you anything for memory, you would be hamstrung in your efforts to do anything. Just like our brains, computers rely on past calculations to to do future calculations. If I ask you what is 10 X 10, you don't count your fingers ten time to get the answer. You know it from memory. So if I ask you what is 10 X 10 X 10. You know simply to take 100 and times it by 10. If your personal memory is good enough you do not even do that math, you just remember it is 1000. A lot of future computations are made faster by our ability to remember past answers. Computers do the same thing. They buffer information you haver already done and use that for future calculations. Where is this information stored? If you had all the RAM in the world, that is where it would be stored. But since we have got just "enough" RAM it will be stored on a pagefile on a drive. So more RAM would give you more speed because no drive is as fast as RAM. Which also points to why the drive is vital. The drive acts as the buffer for anything the CPU deems worth saving for future use. If you have one drive and that drive is slow, then your retrieval of the pagefile will be slow and so your computer will be hung up waiting for the file to be accessed and retrieved. This is why we always tell people get two drives. Your CPU can do multiple calculations at once, but your drive is only able to do one file at a time. Which file will it be? If you have two drives, you can push the system background resources like pagefiing to that second drive and now your able to free up used RAM while your OS or program is managing it's needs on the C drive. Now, for those that think 16GB sounds like "enough", keep in mind any current i7 can do 42GB of information in a second. So if you only have 16GB it is used up in a fraction of a second and needs to be cleaned up. Really you will never use 16GB of RAM or if you only have 8GB of RAM you will never use all of that. The OS will only use a small portion and then immediately use the drive for the balance. Once it uses the drive, that is the speed of your computer. The CPU cant run without memory and so it waits for the drive to save and retrieve any store information. So the more RAM you have the more time the CPU runs at full speed and the faster your second drive is, the faster the computer runs when it is forced to use the pagefile drive. Ideally you want as much RAM as you can so the system always has a free amount of RAM to work from while it pagefiles the used amount. If you only have 16GB, you never give it enough RAM. Let's say your computer only uses 50% of the physical RAM. You only have 16GB so in realty it may use 8GB then starts to work clearing that up by usage of the pagefile. It dares not to use the other 8 because that is only about 1/5th of a second worth of work. There is no way that is enough RAM to last it long enough for a SSD to manage the pagefile. But if you have 64GB of RAM, then even at half the system still has 32GB of RAM to work from when it has used up the other 32GB. Keep in mind, we are still not getting 3/4 of a second worth of work from that half of memory. So the question is, how sustained is your personal peak usage. If you are just replacing your keyboard with Dragon as a way to avoid entering text into your banks web site or to order from Amazon, then YES 16GB is enough because our doing virtually nothing. But if you are trying to break into the transcribing world, then you do not have enough to consider that computer a tool of the trade. Would you think a mechanic could get by professionally with a tool set that was enough for a home mechanic? Do you think a butter knife is a sufficient tool for a carpenter that needs to turn in screws? You can call a butter knife "enough" if you are suddenly faced with a loose screw in the kitchen. But it isn't the right tool if you're doing more than one screw. So address your needs from a usage standpoint. In no world do we feel that one drive is sufficient for dragon if your needs are for anything that approaches regular and sustained usage You need that second SSD and that SSD should be the fastest your computer will manage. A Gen 3 X4 NVMe will manage four time the date bandwidth of a regular SATA SSD. Since this drive is your backup RAM, the faster this drive is the faster your computer is. Your C drive doesn't have to be a peak performer. The C drive doesn't do any heavy lifting. Think of having 10 pounds of lead. The needs to move those 10 pounds can be very different. If you have 10 pounds of leads shot, then a heavy bandwidth SSD is not needed since your only picking up small items and moving them But your pagefile is likely to be moving large blocks of DATA that is far better suited to a NVMe drive. So here in a nutshell is the specification we like for anything approaching professional Dragon usage. An i7 or i5 that has more than 6MB of L3 cache. This will include most CPUs out there today that are not ULV CPUs. No less than 32GB of RAM, most court reporters and transcribers max out their system capabilities. In a laptop, this likely means 64GB Two SSDs. any system with two SSDs is better than a system with one but getting a normal SSD 500GB or more for the C drive and a NVMe for your D drive gives you the option of tweaking Windows to run faster and with more stability. Get whatever OS you feel you like. For most people that can be just Windows Home version. If your on a corporate Domain network, then spend the extra $30 and go with Pro. Most go with Pro just because it's only $30 more and it make them feel all warm and fuzzy. So, I7 32GB or more RAM C drive SATA SSD D Drive NVMe but most certainly any SSD of any style is better than nothing. Windows Home Then you can now tweak your system to use these extra specifications. At M-Tech, we happily do this for free or if you like to get under the hood, we can provide the instruction for you to do it yourself. If we, do it it takes 20 minutes or more to log in remotely. It could take you longer. To sum up. Enough for you may not be enough for the next person. But spending money on RAM is a good investment in speed but no so much on a CPU. Two SSDs will give you the ability to unleash whatever CPU you have. Good luck and stay safe. ------------------------- Jerry Michrina - Technical Adviser
-------------------------
|
|
|
|
![]() |
|
When it comes to making Dragon faster or more to the point, prevent it from slowing down, we recommend adding a checkmark to Conserve disk space required by user profile which you will find under the DragonBar Options/Data tab. You won't be able to run Accuracy Tuning but it may be worth the sacrifice. We've had good luck with this setting for the past 3 weeks but your mileage may vary. We found this to be more useful to Dragon end-users experiencing a noticeable slow down after a few hours of use ------------------------- Change "No" to "Know" w/KnowBrainer 2020 |
|
|
|
![]() |
|
M-Tech makes desktop computers on request. They built our new i9-10980XE 3 GHz 18 core 64 GB of RAM with dual SSDs
------------------------- Change "No" to "Know" w/KnowBrainer 2020 |
|
|
|
![]() |
|
If my two bits will help any, all processors are hamstrung by RAM, and all RAM is hamstrung by disks. As a general (almost unbreakable) rule, there is never enough RAM for the OS - that's why the OS has a page file on disk. Yes, SSD disks are "essential" in that they are far, far faster than SATA disks. You can easily feel the performance difference moving from SATA disks to SSD disks. The MTech guy was talking about a big SATA C drive and a faster second SSD drive, but SSD drives have been routinely used for C drives for a few years at least.
This whole topic is probably taking more air time than it is worth. Get a modern processor. Get SSD drives. Get 32GB of RAM. Don't sweat the details about the last few percentage points in processor, RAM, or SSD disk speeds; you'll never notice any of it in real life. Spend the extra money on voice software. Concentrate on your productivity, not on the last iota hardware performance. My two bits. ------------------------- Win10/11/x64, AMD Ryzen 7 3700X/3950X, 64/128GB RAM, Dragon 15.3, SP 7 Standard, SpeechStart, Office 365, KB 2017, Dragon Capture, Samson Meteor USB Desk Mic, Amazon YUWAKAYI headset, Klim and JUKSTG earbuds with microphones, 3 BenQ 2560x1440 monitors, Microsoft Sculpt Keyboard and fat mouse |
|
|
FuseTalk Standard Edition v4.0 - © 1999-2022 FuseTalk™ Inc. All rights reserved.