intel i7 980x

[kev]

@kev: i totally agree with you. Intel makes basically the same chip, they test them and locate their highest stable clock and charge more for the faster ship (they also turn off parts of the cache to compensate as well). They do the same thing with multicores, the chores that fail inspection are turned of hence having the same platform chip, one being a dual core, tri core and quad core. You can unlock those cores but they may or not be stable and may or may not work correctly.

As for the clock frequency it comes down to this, with a 980x, you know that it will run stable all the time at 3.3GHz, however, you cannot guarantee that the 930x (the same internally) will be stable at that same speed, so yes you could overclock and get the same performance for much cheaper, but it will always be less stable at that speed. When you are hitting your processor hard onwards to maximum load even stable stock frequencies can become unstable, which means an overclocked CPU will give out much sooner. In joey's case if he is pushing a sextuple core to maximum load an overclocked 930x will become unstable much sooner. And beside that a stock frequency CPU will have a longer lifespan than an overclocked CPU.

its like vacuum tubes, they test them, seeing if they pass basic quality, the cheap ones are thrown into a batch of unlabled tubes sold for cheaper, high gain or balanced tubes (where the current is higher and where the current is equal on both triodes (matched pair for Pentodes) respectively) we pay a premium price for since there are fewer of them.

The cheap man's solution is to overclock a cheaper CPU which i do not object I used to do that until I got my hands on the fastest dual core that AMD makes so I do not need to compensate unless I want to start competing with the quad cores in bandwidth. On the other hand if you do not care about money to some degree and want the fastest most stable setup, you pay the premium to get it, and I don't think Joey cares about the price difference.

Yep defo dude, it looks like its going down for the best of the best to be run stock. I might be inclined to agree anyway, given what a pro tools rig costs lmao. The only thing I would say about the point you raised on stability is that I reckon chips have come on a long way in recent years with that. In real life terms, I would be quite surprised if an i7 930 overclocked at 3.33ghz would give up the ghost before i7 980x at 3.33ghz stock.

 

[TheWinterSnow]

Yeah but the bump from 64 to 128 is still in a performance level arena, with double the performance increase. Keyboard players are a lot cooler with lag than guitar players are, understandably so

I found out with keyboards, you can have a 20ms with no problem and up to 50ms before it becomes a problem even when you are playing extremely fast, with gutiars a delay any higher than 10ms begins to become unacceptable at 20 I find myself playing sloppy and getting off time.

Man now if I could just figure out all the other components in an hour and overnight this shit haha

well look for an ASUS x58 board with triple channel memory, find well triple channel memory that is 1600Mhz (non overclocked). Corsair makes an i7 designed triple channel called XMS3 ([ame]http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-HX3X12G1600C9-PC3-12800-1600Mhz-240-pin/dp/B001VNLDN8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1273340139&sr=1-1[/ame]).

Get as many WD HDD that you want for space and SSD if you want, recomendations go out to WD Caviar black (http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?item=n82e16822136284) and WD SSC (http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?Item=N82E16820250001).

Find yourself a 1000watt PSU. Corsair again carries a 1000w supply that is certified for the i7 ([ame]http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-CMPSU-1000HX-1000-Watt-Professional-compatible/dp/B00154QAXQ/ref=pd_cp_e_2[/ame])

graphics card can be a tiny thing if your not playing games (which you aren't), you just need to see the screen. depending on how many monitors you are using, their size and their connectivity. Tell me do your monitor(s) use VGA, DVI or both? I am suspecting that you have a DVI monitor which means you should simply find the cheapest card that has two DVI ports on it if you are dual monitoring, if you have just one monitor, the cheapest with one DVI port will do. will determine how expensive you need to go. Personally you should stick with XFX because their cards have a double lifetime warranty which includes cooling modifications.

The CD drive, case, and case fans just come down to preference and how much you want to spend.

 

[kev]

How much do you have to consider joey?

Take a look at Gigabytes EX58-UD5A Mainboard with on board TI firewire ($200), 6GB of corsair DDR3 ram ($120), i7 980x ($800) or i7 930 ($200), a seasonic 700x PSU ($140 - this is truely silent unlike all the rest of the bullshit out there), 128GB OCZ MLC SSD for the operating system ($200- the more of these the merrier), 2 x 1TB Samsung spinpoints in RAID config for storage ($50 each), GFX e.g. ATI 5850 (3 monitor outputs) ($250), 2TB western digital USB 3.0 backup drive ($200).
Nice ventilated but soundproofed case e.g. fractal design r2 or better ($100). Plane ticket for me to come over and sort all the shite out ($300). Add $50 thermalright cooler if you want to get the most out of your chip by OCing.

Thats about $2000 for the i7 980x setup with solid state drive, get it all configured right and you'll probably have the fastest desktop in the world.

Edit: Looks like thewintersnow is on the case too.

 

[joeymusicguy]

I found out with keyboards, you can have a 20ms with no problem and up to 50ms before it becomes a problem even when you are playing extremely fast, with gutiars a delay any higher than 10ms begins to become unacceptable at 20 I find myself playing sloppy and getting off time.



well look for an ASUS x58 board with triple channel memory, find well triple channel memory that is 1600Mhz (non overclocked). Corsair makes an i7 designed triple channel called XMS3 (http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-HX3X1...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1273340139&sr=1-1).

Get as many WD HDD that you want for space and SSD if you want, recomendations go out to WD Caviar black (http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?item=n82e16822136284) and WD SSC (http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?Item=N82E16820250001).

Find yourself a 1000watt PSU. Corsair again carries a 1000w supply that is certified for the i7 (http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-CMPSU...sional-compatible/dp/B00154QAXQ/ref=pd_cp_e_2)

graphics card can be a tiny thing if your not playing games (which you aren't), you just need to see the screen. depending on how many monitors you are using, their size and their connectivity. Tell me do your monitor(s) use VGA, DVI or both? I am suspecting that you have a DVI monitor which means you should simply find the cheapest card that has two DVI ports on it if you are dual monitoring, if you have just one monitor, the cheapest with one DVI port will do. will determine how expensive you need to go. Personally you should stick with XFX because their cards have a double lifetime warranty which includes cooling modifications.

The CD drive, case, and case fans just come down to preference and how much you want to spend.

As least amount of fans as possible. My old windows machine is as loud as my mix at times even with silent mods. Also no fan on the gpu ( I'll take a big ass heat sink any day ). I use dual dvi for video.

Thanks formthe links thus far!

 

[joeymusicguy]

How much do you have to consider joey?

Take a look at Gigabytes EX58-UD5A Mainboard with on board TI firewire ($200), 6GB of corsair DDR3 ram ($120), i7 980x ($800) or i7 930 ($200), a seasonic 700x PSU ($140 - this is truely silent unlike all the rest of the bullshit out there), 128GB OCZ MLC SSD for the operating system ($200- the more of these the merrier), 2 x 1TB Samsung spinpoints in RAID config for storage ($50 each), GFX e.g. ATI 5850 (3 monitor outputs) ($250), 2TB western digital USB 3.0 backup drive ($200).
Nice ventilated but soundproofed case e.g. fractal design r2 or better ($100). Plane ticket for me to come over and sort all the shite out ($300). Add $50 thermalright cooler if you want to get the most out of your chip by OCing.

Thats about $2000 for the i7 980x setup with solid state drives.

Edit: Looks like thewintersnow is on the case too.

I have about 3 grand to spend.

 

[John_C]

just wanted to chuck in a few words to say that you can't run 2 i7s on one board. The connection that the Xeons use for connecting to each other was replaced with an extra memory channel on the i7s

 

[TheWinterSnow]

I've been meaning to do so but the stock idle temperatures of my rig are absolutely insane. 55 degrees idling in windows. I have no idea what's wrong with the rig but to start with I'll need to re-mount another heat sink and make sure it's all done properly this time. The entire rig seems to run a bit hotter than it should. Do you think windows could be underclocking my CPU to stop it frying? What are those mobo extensions that should be disabled to disallow the OS to mess with CPU clocks?

Sounds like a CPU cooler with little to no thermal grease or the grease has gotten old and isn't working anymore. Definitely clean off and remount the sink.

Yep defo dude, it looks like its going down for the best of the best to be run stock. I might be inclined to agree anyway, given what a pro tools rig costs lmao. The only thing I would say about the point you raised on stability is that I reckon chips have come on a long way in recent years with that. In real life terms, I would be quite surprised if an i7 930 overclocked at 3.33ghz would give up the ghost before i7 980x at 3.33ghz stock.

The processing part of a CPU is nothing more than a series of flip flop circuits, which are just two transistors in analog, 4 in a digital gate. Not even considering the manufacturing process of the the dies themselves the every transistor even if they were made identical will not operate as equally to the other, in terms of conduction, dissipation, rise/fall times etc. In the sense of clock speed the error comes from propagation delay (a delay from the output of the circuit of the circuit) as it takes some time fore the transistor to respond, if the core clock is faster than the propagation delay, the circuit turns into a sine wave oscillator (and essentially a fail in the form of program crash but mostly, total machine shutdown). The differences in transistors even with todays technology is still so off that in op amp's differential amplifier (what a CPU basically is) there are two terminals to calibrate the bias of the transistors so that they conduct the same. So even today the process isn't anywhere near perfect and therefore two CPU's can still be extremely off especially when you consider that the i7 contains 740 billion transistors in it, even a fractional difference of each transistor can add up real quick and the CPU is only as good as the worst transistor.

 

[kev]

yep- thats a great point above from skesis. IIRC the xeon 5600 is the to dog comparitive to the 980.

wintersnow - i'll pm you when mine pops its clogs

 

[TheWinterSnow]

As least amount of fans as possible. My old windows machine is as loud as my mix at times even with silent mods. Also no fan on the gpu ( I'll take a big ass heat sink any day ). I use dual dvi for video.

Thanks formthe links thus far!

you should think about liquid cooling then, as much of a pain in the ass as maintenance is.

so dual DVI, the cheapest of the XFX cards is this http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5078951&CatId=3669. It has a tiny fan but as small as those are, they are near silent, as they don't do much for cooling.

 

[kev]

*Joey currently filling shopping basket @ newegg*

If you get a thermalright venomous x, you will be able to run entirely fanless without the temperatures causing any problems- always the option to strap on a silent fan or two. A high end power supply from seasonic/corsair will give you next to no noise as their fans switch off now when < 22% power is being used and they slowly ramp up. Any graphics card with dual dvi out which has passive cooling should cost bugger all.

With the above, your keyboard will create far more DB's of noise.

btw wintersnow, thought this might interest you- I was having a brief surf on 980 OC's thus far... 5ghz is pretty juicy on air, but with that voltage i think it will be doomed for 24/7 use

 

[TheWinterSnow]

*Joey currently filling shopping basket @ newegg*

If you get a thermalright venomous x, you will be able to run entirely fanless without the temperatures causing any problems- always the option to strap on a silent fan or two. A high end power supply from seasonic/corsair will give you next to no noise as their fans switch off now when < 22% power is being used. Any graphics card with dual dvi out which has passive cooling.

With the above, your keyboard will create far more DB's of noise.

from experience and knowledge the corsair PSU's have the highest efficiency and best regulated voltage and current. The only thing I have to object to earlier was that you recommended a 700w supply, even a 120w AMD quad core will shut down a cheap 600w PSU, so I would imagine that a 700w for a 980x or even a 930x is at least taxing the hell out of the supply.

regarding case fans, I have two Antecs that push out some massive air, put out about 80 CFM (enough for my system to keep my CPU idling at room temperature (25-27C) and my stock CPU cooler is louder, and actually, even at my feet, my whole computer is quieter than the sound of my keyboard when I type.

@Kev: What it sick about that 980 OC is that the bus speed (clock) hasn't even been touched, just the multiplier. But the voltage

 

[kev]

Surprisngly, new systems really dont draw much power actually even overclocked- A worry i've already been through this year. We all know the deal with cheap branded power supplies and their max output vs true output ofc, so one of those would never make its way into a build of mine. i learnt the hard way 10 years ago

This is with an intel ssd & a nvidia gfx card.

 

[TheWinterSnow]

Surprisngly, new systems really dont draw much power actually even overclocked- A worry i've already been through this year. We all know the deal with cheap branded power supplies and their max output vs true output ofc, so one of those would never make its way into a build of mine. i learnt the hard way 10 years ago

yea I learned the hard way last Christmas when I built another computer, we had an AMD Phenom II 950BE that was shutting down a 600W supply, took a corsair 700w supply to make things happy.

So it was a new system until the release of the AMD sextuple cores it was AMD's fastest. I did find out that CPU when booting the machine can pull twice their rated power, so a 140W CPU can pull 280W on startup, with bigger CPU's you really have to watch the efficiency of your PSU.

 

[kev]

@Kev: What it sick about that 980 OC is that the bus speed (clock) hasn't even been touched, just the multiplier. But the voltage

Ah, the 980 runs at 25 x stock mate and they have cranked the bus there from 133 (stock) up to 200

yea I learned the hard way last Christmas when I built another computer, we had an AMD Phenom II 950BE that was shutting down a 600W supply, took a corsair 700w supply to make things happy.

So it was a new system until the release of the AMD sextuple cores it was AMD's fastest. I did find out that CPU when booting the machine can pull twice their rated power, so a 140W CPU can pull 280W on startup, with bigger CPU's you really have to watch the efficiency of your PSU.

Yep, its happend to us all I almost set my room on fire all those years ago by accidentally flicking a supplys voltage selector on the back...

 

[TheWinterSnow]

Ah, the 980 runs at 25 x stock mate and they have cranked the bus there from 133 (stock) up to 200

hmm, I am used to AMD buss being at 200, they run their multipliers lower.

 

[John_C]

As an aside: Don't have cpu-Z running when you're doing audio work, its can cause dropouts. I remember freaking out for ages messing with clock speeds and voltages to squeeze out lower latency, only to find that it was cpu-Z itself that was causing the problem!

 

[IzovAge]

Joey, seriously consider giving Scott a call at ADK Pro Audio. I'm quite certain if you tell him what your looking for he can give you at least some great advice. With that budget you may find he can build it for you as well. Great guy and great service.

 

[joeymusicguy]

Joey, seriously consider giving Scott a call at ADK Pro Audio. I'm quite certain if you tell him what your looking for he can give you at least some great advice. With that budget you may find he can build it for you as well. Great guy and great service.

How do find Scott adk

 

[IzovAge]

http://adkproaudio.com/

I think that should work.

 

[JeffTD]

Fucking hell, this thread is making me feel seriously depressed about my Q6600 machine. Should've figured - built it back in Nov '08 and it wasn't 'cutting' edge back then, either!