HP XW8400
 

Hi all

I am about to jump ship from Mac to PC . I have been a PT mac user for years, but feel that pc's have now "come of age " for PT

Given that I have the old PCI HD3 cards , and "upgrading" to PCIE seems stupid to me , plus the cost of a new mac.
I do NOT want to build my own Pc , but want the fastest/futureproofed as much as poss off the shelf protools approved model.
I am looking at the HP XW8400 , and would be grateful for any help here.


1) Does anyone USE this machine with Pt... how is it?

2) Plse confirm it will take HD3 (old pci) I notice that two of the pci-x slots are full length 100mhz, and 1 full length 133mhz?..how does that work with the three HD cards?

3) Is it worth it to get a SECOND zeon processor..what exactly will that give me for the extra money.does PT use the second processor ,if so , how?

4) Does anyone have a dealer suggestion in the UK who can beat www.it247.com

5) What video card do I get that will be PT approved AND have dual outputs?

herse the spec and price Im currently looking at

HP Workstation xw8400
MT
1 x Dual-Core Xeon 5160 / 3 GHz
RAM 2 GB
HD 1 x 250 GB
DVD±RW (+R double layer)
Gigabit Ethernet
Win XP Pro
Monitor : none
£2103.03 (Inc vat)



Thats it for now , all help appreciated

Bill P

London

Re: HP XW8400
 

If you *did* upgrade to a Mac Pro, I think the way to go would be to get a PCI-X expansion chassis with a PCIe host card. I saw a Magma for around $2500 (don't remember where). Depending on the number of HD cards it may be cheaper than the exchange program, and you'd get some extra slots too.

Sorry I can't help with the HP, I have a home built PC.

Re: HP XW8400
 

Mdog

yea I thought about the chassis route as well.. but I think weighing all the costs and hassle up , im going Pc route (I already have four of em :-)
The only curious thing is xp's inability to adress over 4 gigs of ram..very annoying for Protools users.We can only hope that Protools will support 64bit os soon !- though Im not holding my breath :-)

cheers anyway

Bill P

Re: HP XW8400
 

Mdog

yea I thought about the chassis route as well.. but I think weighing all the costs and hassle up , im going Pc route (I already have four of em :-)
The only curious thing is xp's inability to adress over 4 gigs of ram..very annoying for Protools users.We can only hope that Protools will support 64bit os soon !- though Im not holding my breath :-)

cheers anyway

Bill P

Re: HP XW8400
 

I am running an HP XW8200. But I use an expansion chassis with it. The reason is the order of the slots. They only have 2 full PCI slots next to each other. I do not know about the 8400. I am running 3 gigs of ram and it works well. With 4 accel cards I find I do not need much in the way of CPU for plug ins etc...

We switched from MAC also. PT runs virtually the same on both. Good luck.

Mike

Re: HP XW8400
 

Hi here is my setup

HP XW8400-bios 2.38-windows 7 64bits-sas & sata drive-8GB of ram
Pro Tools HD 8.1.1
1 core card pci-x
2 accel pci-x

I get this DAE error -1115 was encountered message as soon as I put
core in pci slot 5 133mhz
accel in pci slot 6 100mhz
accel in pci slot 7 100mhz

it's all good just the one core and accel
if i skip slot 5, then i get the error

my question does anyone got PT HD3 running on the xw8400, of course without expansion chassis

anyone please!

Re: HP XW8400
 

resolved my problem this morning, removing everything and starting from scratch, then I found out that the problem was simply a driver conflicting, was the midi interface motu driver, removed it and BANG! all good, YES I'm now HD3 on a old and great PC, all that for real cheap, love used stuff and it's much better for the environment and my mind :-)