Xeon Stress Tests

[cand]

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[Rich Pell]

Hi Cand. thanks for the tests..curious about some more details spec on your Xeon system (mobo,HD`s, ram etc.) Thinking of building one of these or a Dual core soon.. :) Rich

[Scott Cairns]

Rich, you know the specs. ;) Cands computer is a mirror image of mine except for the sound card and video card. :)

[Rich Pell]

Rich, you know the specs. ;) Cands computer is a mirror image of mine except for the sound card and video card. :)
Ohh. O.K. I didnt know that !! :) Scott. Your setup is killer, no wonder cand is getting great perf. I`m still torn between getting your setup and waiting for Dual core? ;) Your not getting the same "Kompakt version" problems cand is are you? Best, Rich

[Marcussen]

Any news on how dual core would compare to the above setup in both price and performance?

Like Rich i'm also on the verge of getting a new com. Ive even considered G5...

[fizbin]

I think dual core will be the way to go once AMD gets in the game and the pricing becomes competetive in the race for the fastest performance test results. The trick will be, of course, to not buy the latest and greatest at $750 a pop, but to get the second or third fastest for substantially less. I think dual core at 3.0 will be about the same as 2 Xeons at 3.0. I'm not basing that on fact necessarily, but that's still what I think, based mostly on my computing experience, what I've read, etc. Some perf tests of the current Intel dual cores -

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2388
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2389
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2394
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050405/index.html

I'm betting on AMD to come out ahead in the price/performance ratio eventually and am willing to wait about a year to see all this come to fruition and mature as well as have all the accompanying technology (motherboards, RAM, etc) become more affordable.

fizbin

[peter269]

Rich, you know the specs. ;) Cands computer is a mirror image of mine except for the sound card and video card. :)

Could you refresh for the rest of us?

[Scott Cairns]

Could you refresh for the rest of us?

Hi Peter, here's a cut and paste from a previous reply;

Asus NCCH-DL motherboard - it only has two or 3 pci slots from memory but if you're dedicating it to being solely a music machine, it should be fine.

Ram - 2 x 1gb sticks of Corsair DDR400 XMS 3200 (matched pair.) - The really cool thing about the NCCH-DL mobo is that its one of the only server class boards that DONT require ECC or registered ram. So you can save money there. If you do decide to pop in more ram, this is a dual channel board, in other words, you cant pop a stick of 1gb in andthen a stick of 512. You need to match it, foe example; 2a 1gb sticks then 2 x 512 sticks will give you 3gb. You cant go fro 2.5gb. Make sure the ram is identical, same EEPROM. (should tell you on the sticks.)

Power Supply - Antec True Power 550w EPS - make sure its the one for Xeons, I think there are two 550w supplies. EPS denotes Xeon I think. This ps is super quiet and supplies more than enough juice for multiple hard drives, cpus etc.

Case - Antec AMG1000 - this case comes specifically without a powersupply so you wont be buying one twice.

Hard drives - this is kind of interesting, according to a lot of benchmarks and chatting to some DAW makers, you wont need RAID. RAID really comes into its own when you are streaming heaps of audio tracks, like 3 minutes wavs or something. Because of the VSTs and buffers etc, RAID doesnt do much at all. Another interesting thing, some ATA drives are still outperforming SATA. I bought a SEAGATE 3200822A 200G 8M/7200
(200gb)

Look at these benchmarks: (a higher number is better)
sisoft marks of 49-50 (for the above hard drive)
74G Raptor 52-53
standard wd Sata 35-39

Its not far behind a Raptor and way ahead of SATA.

For the system drive you can go SATA if you want, it really only gets accessed once to load apps into ram.

CPUs - I went for 2 x Xeon 3.0ghz/800mhz fsb. Must be active cooling. (passive is for rackmounts. If you do want rackmount, you'll need the NCH-DR board.) Provided you get the 800mhz chips (dont get the 533 Prescotts) you have the Nocona core and EMT64 (chips ready for 64bit apps.

Cooling - The case itself comes with 2 x 80mm case fans.

I put one at the front of the case, down the bottom to suck air in. This case has a washable filter at the front too which is a really nice touch. 2nd fan goes up the back just under the power supply to suck hot air out. Its also a good ideato pop a 3rd 80mm fan thats mounts on the side door of the case and blows air straight down onto the Xeons.

The fans I recommend are Vantec Stealth Fans, they are 80% quieter than normal fans and have a lifetime warranty. They still only cost about $8 (u.s.)!!


----
For my music apps, Ive installed vts that load into ram (like Atmosphere, Trilogy) onto the C: drive. Streaming apps like EWQLSO, Kontakt, etc are on the 200gb drive. Oh, for XP to recognise a drive 200gb or larger, you'll need to install Service pack 1. Also, (you guys probably know this already) you need XP Pro for dual chips.

[josejherring]

Wow dual core is literally two chips stacked together. :eek:

Hey it's pretty interesting this idea that clockspeeds can't get any faster due to exessive heat and that hyperthreading dual processors will only effect certain apps and processes. Do you think we've seen the end of the computer race? It's kind of scarey to think so. These machines can barely handle what we've got right now.

Jose

[Marcussen]

Wow dual core is literally two chips stacked together. :eek:

Hey it's pretty interesting this idea that clockspeeds can't get any faster due to exessive heat and that hyperthreading dual processors will only effect certain apps and processes. Do you think we've seen the end of the computer race? It's kind of scarey to think so. These machines can barely handle what we've got right now.

Jose

No - its in no way the end of the computer race. A minor hiccup at most :)

[Scott Cairns]

I was reading an article on Quantum computers. IBM have already made a few prototypes and they are expected to make it to the consumer market within ten years.


This article stated that when the home user gets their first quantum computer, that not only will it will be more powerful than every computer model ever built before, it will be more powerful than every previous computer combined. :eek:

[meroveus]

Since I've been running dual cpu machines for years, dualcore is fairly hohum.
I'll wait until quadcore comes out before getting excited. :)

[Marcussen]

It gets me everytime how computers cant cope with simple present day sampling technology... games, movies, 3d yes.. samples.. no

Bitch being a composer then :D

[Rich Pell]

Since I've been running dual cpu machines for years, dualcore is fairly hohum.
I'll wait until quadcore comes out before getting excited. :)
Scott was mentioning that he thought his Mobo with the Nacona chip would support Dualcore as well..in a sense isnt that Quad core? And how can we find out for sure if the Asus NCCH-DL supports Dual core? I dont wanna buy a board that i can`t upgrade (at least up the speed by 1/3) again.. been down that road. Rich

[josejherring]

I was reading an article on Quantum computers. IBM have already made a few prototypes and they are expected to make it to the consumer market within ten years.


This article stated that when the home user gets their first quantum computer, that not only will it will be more powerful than every computer model ever built before, it will be more powerful than every previous computer combined. :eek:

I remember when I was in highschool and I took a tour of the IBM facility in my home town Tucson, Az. just before IBM fired everybody. At the time they were working on a chip that used cultured cells. A bio-chip so to speak. It didn't pan out and I've been waiting for 20 years now.

They made the same claim as this quantum chip.

I guess if they ever do figure out quantum physics that this chip would be possible. But I hope it doesn't go the same route as the bio-chip.

For them to make a claim about that chip I know there's a few scientific discoviers that need to be made before a chip that uses quantum technology can be used.

Well anyway it's interesting. It would mean faster than the speed of light computing. :eek: I wonder where I could find the information?

Jose

Jose

[Haydn]

Cand,

The pops and clicks in the Kompakt player are probably caused by it not being compatible with dual or hyper-threaded processors. Which sequencer are you using. In Sonar I have to disable the multi processor option, then the pops and clicks disappear.

Hopefully Kontakt 2 will allow you to load them in and use the dual processors.

[Scott Cairns]

Haydn, Cand is running the same system as me, Komptakt inside SX 2 on a dual Xeon.

I get the odd rendering glitch, but if I increase my soundcard buffers Im fine.

Im not sure that Komptakt would be affected as it runs inside Cubase.exe

[Scott Cairns]

Scott was mentioning that he thought his Mobo with the Nacona chip would support Dualcore as well..in a sense isnt that Quad core? And how can we find out for sure if the Asus NCCH-DL supports Dual core? I dont wanna buy a board that i can`t upgrade (at least up the speed by 1/3) again.. been down that road. Rich

Hey Rich, my chips are definetly Nocona (dual) core. I have hyper-threading turned off though and Im not sure that any software is taking advantage of the EMT64 on the chip yet anyway. I dont know for sure though, I was kind of nuder the impression that the chips I have hold some technology that might become useful in the next few months.

[fizbin]

I've been running Kontakt 1.5 and Cubase SX 3 with hyper-threading and no problems for quite some time now. Anytime I get clicks it is because the latency is too low or I'm killing the CPU with plug-ins (very rare) or the M-Audio ASIO driver gets changed to the generic ASIO driver.

Do you get clicks when you play back large audio-track-based projects or are you sure this is only a problem attributable to Kompakt?

fizbin

[Rich Pell]

Hey Rich, my chips are definetly Nocona (dual) core. I have hyper-threading turned off though and Im not sure that any software is taking advantage of the EMT64 on the chip yet anyway. I dont know for sure though, I was kind of nuder the impression that the chips I have hold some technology that might become useful in the next few months.
Hey scott. pardon my possible ingorance . So then, im under the impression that your should be able to eventually stick another chip on top of your current nacona chips making it true dual core (or double dual core in your case with your Xeon board). Or is the nacona just 64-bit compatible? Dual core is just the ablility to stack 2 CPU`s in one slot right (1 fan etc..)? ;) Rich

[Scott Cairns]

Hey Rich, I had to go and check myself. My apologies, the Nocona core is what gives the chip the ability to run 32bit and 64bit applications. Its not dual-core at all.


My bad. :)

[Rich Pell]

Hey Rich, I had to go and check myself. My apologies, the Nocona core is what gives the chip the ability to run 32bit and 64bit applications. Its not dual-core at all.


My bad. :)
Thanks Scott, thats want i thought, but since your dual Xeon is like dual core essentially, yur laughin` :D Rich

[Bruce A. Richardson]

For what it is worth, I was asking Ron Kuper, the CTO at Cakewalk, about advice on hardware purchases in the upcoming months. His take was that it was worthwhile to wait for the Dual Core processors to come onto the scene if it was possible to hold off. If not, he suggested keeping economy in mind for today's purchases, so that it would be feasible to upgrade in a reasonable time frame.

That sounded like fair advice...although I have to say this mega-machine talk has me all itchy.

[Marcussen]

What is the timeframe for Dual?

[fizbin]

What is the timeframe for Dual?

They're coming out now, but wait for AMD and Intel to compete a little, for those CPUs to be upgraded to next generation ones, making the older ones more affordable, and for the motherboard manufacturers to mature in this new area. Basically, you'll want to see some reviews of the new hardware with both motherboard and CPU (AMD/Intel) options and hear back from other DAW users who are brave enough to try this stuff out in its infancy (I'm not and I would recommend everyone else to be cautious).

In 3-4 months (maybe sooner!) we will know a lot and have a much better idea where this is heading and what its advantages and drawbacks are. Here are some performance comparisons between the early Intel and AMD dual cores that will be available very soon if not already. The non-server type benchmarks that would be relevant to DAW usage are later in the article.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2397&p=1

I'm predicting a best time-to-buy for dual core will be in about 8 months or so, maybe right after Christmas/New Years.

fizbin

[Marcussen]

Cant wait that long I think... 4 months maybe :) Damn I'll have to wait

[fizbin]

So to update so maybe others can benefit too, my problem was cpu meter in cubase going nuts (jumping, sticking and in the red), project playback would crack, pop, jump, and completely stop. A white noise plus electrical type sounds (sounded like speakers would blow up), buzzing and chirping, would all make the simplest piece unplayable.

Hadyn mentioned disabling the muliprocessor function in the sequencer (cubase SX2), which was the turning point. Once this was off, I was only left with the hissing, and white noise stuff, which I was pretty sure was a DFD problem. I played around with the buffer settings in each kompakt player, and voila - working system.

I'm assuming I'm still working on both processors, as the sytem is just so fast and cpu is just over 1/3 of the P4's settings, on my test project. If I remember, cubase says something about distributing the load evenly, with MP enabled. Is it possible multiprocessing is in fact working fine, but the distribution is uneven, hence one processor takes precedence?

A reasonably updated version of SX 2 should be fine with multi-processing. It's some of the plugins that have the problems. If you disable Multi-processing support in Cubase it is NOT still working on both processors. It will use exclusively one processor only. The other processor is free to run system tasks and other processing (which should be cut to a bare, bare minimum on a DAW anyway), but you will not get the benefit of the extra processor with Cubase or the plug-ins which all run inside the Cubase process.

Is there some plug-in present in all your problem projects?
Have you set processor scheduling to "background services"? (if not, you need to)
What version of SX 2 are you running?
I've heard that running hyper-threading and more than one proc is a bad idea. Could this be your problem? (it sounds like you have 2 P4's)

In this case you would want to disable hyper-threading in the BIOS, but enable multi-processor support in Cubase.

fizbin