intel i7 980x

[amarshism]

Also learning a whole bunch in anticipation of my new build. So why is it frowned upon to have have two processors? I was considering running two of those xeon server chips based off of the nephalem architecture that's meant to be the basis of the i7?

Amidoinitwrng?

 

[John_C]

as can be seen here, dual processors give you advantages when you give them time, but in the audio work we can't afford to do that. £1000 worth of xeons only JUST manage to beat a £200 quad at 32 samples and that doesn't take into account the extra cost of the motherboard etc...

also: http://www.dawbench.com/dawbenchdsp-i7part1.htm

 

[amarshism]

Won't that ultimately only affect tracking. Couldnt the extra power come in handy during mixdown when buffer is running at higher samples?

 

[kev]

Joey, I see you posted a multi level cell flash drive there. The lifespan should be fine until you upgrade again, but do bear in mind that these ones kick the bucket after about 4 years. It sounds ike you've done your research though, so I wont go on too much.

 

[TheWinterSnow]

Won't that ultimately only affect tracking. Couldnt the extra power come in handy during mixdown when buffer is running at higher samples?

yes it only comes to tracking/monitoring. When it comes to mixing, there is no need to use higher buffer rates. As soon as I am done recording I jack my buffer to 2048 samples just to be sure everything runs smooth, depending on your drivers, is a 5 second thing to do and does not require a DAW reboot. If you have delay compensation its pointless to stress your rig by mixing at the lowest samples possible.

 

[amarshism]

It would be interesting to see if the dual xeon eclipses the i7, and by how much, when your buffers sitting at 2048.

 

[Ermz]

yes it only comes to tracking/monitoring. When it comes to mixing, there is no need to use higher buffer rates. As soon as I am done recording I jack my buffer to 2048 samples just to be sure everything runs smooth, depending on your drivers, is a 5 second thing to do and does not require a DAW reboot. If you have delay compensation its pointless to stress your rig by mixing at the lowest samples possible.

Riding automation on the fly is more responsive at lower buffer sizes. At least in Cubase.

 

[TheWinterSnow]

Riding automation on the fly is more responsive at lower buffer sizes. At least in Cubase.

And that is what delay compensation is for, a huge reason I love Sonar. I hear Pro Tools has it but its not the greatest, but I wouldn't know since I haven't used Pro Tools that much, just enough to know I am not a huge fan.

 

[John_C]

Riding automation on the fly is more responsive at lower buffer sizes. At least in Cubase.

I can't see it being any different in any other DAW..........Not that i ever do any automation on the fly really.

 

[John_C]

And that is what delay compensation is for, a huge reason I love Sonar. I hear Pro Tools has it but its not the greatest, but I wouldn't know since I haven't used Pro Tools that much, just enough to know I am not a huge fan.

delay compensation is present in most DAWs and doesn't help responsiveness.

 

[foiled]

Hi, lurked here a while but thought I would correct something as this is kind of my area of expertise! That graph shows the old Xeons which is why the new i7 chip beats it, the new Xeons (which are really just 2x i7s with another QPI enabled so they can talk) easily beat the i920 the 980X puts up a good fight but the new 6 core xeons are the fastest at all latencies.

Your right with your way of thinking if we were talking about the 5400 series but the 5500 and 5600 can talk to each directly (QPI) so can scale at low latency still (if you check the new SoundonSound graph you'll see a Xeon 5500 almost doubling the performance of the i920 system!)

 

[John_C]

Hi, lurked here a while but thought I would correct something as this is kind of my area of expertise! That graph shows the old Xeons which is why the new i7 chip beats it, the new Xeons (which are really just 2x i7s with another QPI enabled so they can talk) easily beat the i920 the 980X puts up a good fight but the new 6 core xeons are the fastest at all latencies.

Your right with your way of thinking if we were talking about the 5400 series but the 5500 and 5600 can talk to each directly (QPI) so can scale at low latency still (if you check the new SoundonSound graph you'll see a Xeon 5500 almost doubling the performance of the i920 system!)

Good to know. I'm not a subscriber so i couldn't see the new graph, hence my conclusions from the old one.

 

[joeymusicguy]

Hi, lurked here a while but thought I would correct something as this is kind of my area of expertise! That graph shows the old Xeons which is why the new i7 chip beats it, the new Xeons (which are really just 2x i7s with another QPI enabled so they can talk) easily beat the i920 the 980X puts up a good fight but the new 6 core xeons are the fastest at all latencies.

Your right with your way of thinking if we were talking about the 5400 series but the 5500 and 5600 can talk to each directly (QPI) so can scale at low latency still (if you check the new SoundonSound graph you'll see a Xeon 5500 almost doubling the performance of the i920 system!)

It's also important to note that the first few levels of dual xeons on current generation of Mac pro don't scale properly at low block sizes. There's a graph somewhere I don't have it right now but, basically a native daw on a Mac pro on snow leopard even with 2 5350's will perform horrible compared to a first gen quad core intel CPU at 64 block size. Some tests show it couldnt even play back 8 tracks of audio with a few plugins running.

 

[joeymusicguy]

Joey, I see you posted a multi level cell flash drive there. The lifespan should be fine until you upgrade again, but do bear in mind that these ones kick the bucket after about 4 years. It sounds ike you've done your research though, so I wont go on too much.

Do you have any other suggestions?

This was recommended by anandtech for dream machine os drive.
Meaning a write once and forget about it.

The drive and windows7 both support trim

 

[Melodeath]

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.

Where are you getting these prices, man?
I'd totally upgrade my broken PC right now (even though I just bought a Macbook Pro) if I could find those parts for those prices

 

[joeymusicguy]

Where are you getting these prices, man?
I'd totally upgrade my broken PC right now (even though I just bought a Macbook Pro) if I could find those parts for those prices

Newegg.com

 

[Melodeath]

Newegg.com

That's exactly where I'm looking

 

[joeymusicguy]

Hi, lurked here a while but thought I would correct something as this is kind of my area of expertise! That graph shows the old Xeons which is why the new i7 chip beats it, the new Xeons (which are really just 2x i7s with another QPI enabled so they can talk) easily beat the i920 the 980X puts up a good fight but the new 6 core xeons are the fastest at all latencies.

Your right with your way of thinking if we were talking about the 5400 series but the 5500 and 5600 can talk to each directly (QPI) so can scale at low latency still (if you check the new SoundonSound graph you'll see a Xeon 5500 almost doubling the performance of the i920 system!)

I'm a little bummed that I can't find a benchmark graph with the i7 980x on the test results

I also can't decide if a dual xeon 5600 is the better way to go. It's hard for me to trust it considering my Mac is a dual 5350 xeon but the tests show that Mac highly suffers in the low latency work load.

It's also confusing that the piper end xeons aren't being branded with the i7 title

 

[JeffTD]

the tests show that Mac highly suffers in the low latency work load.

Just did a quick search of the dawbench forums - couldn't find any tests or graphs. Really curious to read on this though, link by any chance?

 

[joeymusicguy]

Just did a quick search of the dawbench forums - couldn't find any tests or graphs. Really curious to read on this though, link by any chance?

Go to the forums and read the stickies

The guy posted results in in other forums.

Remember this only applies to native daws, not pt

Edit: nvm found it, go to next page to see results