i7 Builds - Specs and Results

[guitardom]

Originally Posted by Vinseph

Seems to be a big sale on older i7-920 and the newer i7-930 in case anyone's interested or on the cusp of building a new system like myself.

http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthr...2&referrerid=0

i love that site, i have gotten lots of things from there

[The_Jester]

SD has saved me a lot of money but also end up buying stuff I don't need.

[Vinseph]

Originally Posted by guitardom

i love that site, i have gotten lots of things from there

me, too. i think it's great.
unfortunately the i7-930 was an in store pick up item only and i am sans car right. i bought it anyway: where there's a will, there's a way.

they also only gave me two days to pick it up. i thought i'd at least get a week.

[bluebearddub]

guys, im thinking of switching to a new pc, its an alienware by dell, heres the spec, what do you chaps think? im not into building my own etc. so it will be store bought, i plan to migrate from mpowered to le 8 using an 11 rack as my interface in my home studio.

OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English edit
CHASSIS COLOR Cosmic Black, Alienware Aurora Chassis edit
PROCESSOR Intel® Core™ i7 920 2.66GHz (8MB Cache) Quad Core Processor edit
WARRANTY AND SERVICE 1 Year Basic Service Plan edit
Dell Recommends
Keep your investment protected for as long as you'll own it with a 3 year Basic Service Plan
Upgrade to 3 Year Basic Service Plan [Add $249.00]


In-Home Service after Remote Diagnosis: *Remote Diagnosis is determination by online/phone technician of cause of issue; may involve customer access to inside of system and multiple or extended sessions. If issue is covered by Limited Hardware Warranty and not resolved remotely, technician and/or part will be dispatched, usually in 1 or 2 business days following completion of Remote Diagnosis. Dell sells In-Home Service provided by the following: Dell In-Home Service provided by Dell Marketing L.P.; BancTec In-Home Service provided by BancTec Third Party Maintenance, Inc.; and QualxServ In-Home Service provided by QualxServ LLC. Third parties may be used to deliver the in-home service. Availability varies. Other conditions apply. For complete details about In-Home Service, visit www.dell.com/servicecontracts
VIDEO CARD Single 1GB NVIDIA® GeForce® GTS 240 edit
MEMORY 3GB Triple Channel 1067Mhz DDR3 edit
MONITOR No Monitor edit
HARD DRIVE 500GB - SATA-II, 3Gb/s, 7,200RPM, 16MB Cache HDD edit
OPTICAL DRIVE Single Drive: 24X CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) w/double layer write capability edit
MOUSE No Mouse edit
KEYBOARD No Keyboard edit

[mano111]

VIDEO CARD Single 1GB NVIDIA® GeForce® GTS 240 edit
MEMORY 3GB Triple Channel 1067Mhz DDR3 edit
MONITOR No Monitor edit
HARD DRIVE 500GB - SATA-II, 3Gb/s, 7,200RPM, 16MB Cache HDD edit

Its a gamer's machine by definition:
Display card is overkill for PT
Memmory is low speed and only 3GB, I'd go for six
You will need an additional HD for recording Audio
There is no mention of a firewire adapter
Last but not least, motherboard in dell machines is up in the air ... only guarantee you can get is from someone that tried the exact same model with PT.

im not into building my own etc. so it will be store bought

I would look for an audio oriented system from a known dealer. I'm sure some guys here who use them can recommend

[bluebearddub]

my only other option is a macbook pro maybe?

[Jeff_C]

I think what Mano meant was to look at PCs built specifically for DAW/audio production use. Sweetwater makes their "Creation Station" line of PCs designed for use with ProTools. Musicians Friend and others sell them as well.

For the record, I always build my own, I haven't used the machines mentioned above, and I don't have any affiliation with those folks. However, I have a feeling that Sweetwater would give better support after the sale on the machine and on ProTools, too. Why don't you start there?

[bluebearddub]

im not in the usa :), digi dont say tehy do or dont support any dell i7 based machines, the macbook option is on hold as they are planning to release a new model early summer with the i5 adn i7 chips,

[mano111]

Where are you from?
Hope you don't mind me asking...

Most countries have similar services offered on some level - it could be a music store, or a company that builds custom computers. You can use some of the specs found on the first page of this thread for comparing.

I build systems for others on a local level, and I know others in my area that do. I think with a little research you might find options better than just buying a Dell - or any major computer brand name (including Apple, though a Macbook is a good laptop choice IMO)

[Greg M]

I need some advice in dealing with Buffer Errors 9124 and 9129 which seem to be somewhat tied to DPC spikes.

I built the i7 920 listed below in my Sandra report. Originally, I installed Win 7 x64 and putzed around with it waiting for a supported PTLE 8.0.3/8.0.4x but was afraid to actually put it into service because of the potential for noise blasts. So, I got another hard drive (WD black, 32 MB cache, 500 Gb) and installed WinXP sp3 and PTLE 8.0.1cs1 and only plug-ins that currently run on my Tyan Quadzilla with 8.0.1cs1. When I formated this new system drive, I formatted it with 8 KB cluster size. Could this be the issue?

I am getting HW buffer errors!!! And.. I'm not sure what to do about it. I am also getting an occasional DPC Latency spike that his 3000 usec while 99% of the time its less than 10 usec.

Since this is basically a build that a lot of others have done, I wouldn't think there would be any driver issues (but who knows?). I have tried both the latest video driver and an older one for the ASUS EAH4350 card. Doesn't seem to make much difference.

The Sandra report shows a RAID driver, but I didn't load any RAID drivers and can't find a RAID driver in Device Manager.

Anyway, please take a look at my Sandra report and see if anything strikes you as needing to be changed.

Thanks,
Greg

SiSoftware Sandra

Computer
Model : Gigabyte X58A-UD3R
Workgroup : WORKGROUP
Host Name : i7audio
User : Greg M

Processor
Model : Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz
Speed : 2.83GHz
Cores per Processor : 4 Unit(s)
Threads per Core : 2 Unit(s)
Type : Quad-Core
Integrated Data Cache : 4x 32kB, Synchronous, Write-Thru, 8-way, 64 byte line size, 2 threads sharing
L2 On-board Cache : 4x 256kB, ECC, Synchronous, ATC, 8-way, 64 byte line size, 2 threads sharing
L3 On-board Cache : 8MB, ECC, Synchronous, ATC, 16-way, Exclusive, 64 byte line size, 8 threads sharing

Computer
Mainboard : Gigabyte X58A-UD3R
BIOS : Award (Phoenix) F5 03/11/2010
Bus(es) : X-Bus PCI PCIe IMB USB FireWire/1394 i2c/SMBus
Multi-Processor (MP) Support : No
Multi-Processor Advanced PIC (APIC) : Yes
Total Memory : 3.5GB DIMM DDR3 (Actually 6 GB installed)

Chipset
Model : Giga-Byte X58 I/O Hub
Front Side Bus Speed : 2x 2.43GHz (4.86GHz)

Chipset
Model : Giga-Byte Core Desktop (Bloomfield) UnCore
Front Side Bus Speed : 2x 2.43GHz (4.86GHz)
Total Memory : 6GB DIMM DDR3
Memory Bus Speed : 2x 800MHz (1.6GHz)
Memory Module(s)
Memory Module : OCZ OCZ3G1600LV2G 2GB DIMM DDR3 PC3-8500U DDR3-1066 (7-7-7-16 4-26-8-4)
Memory Module : OCZ OCZ3G1600LV2G 2GB DIMM DDR3 PC3-8500U DDR3-1066 (7-7-7-16 4-26-8-4)
Memory Module : OCZ OCZ3G1600LV2G 2GB DIMM DDR3 PC3-8500U DDR3-1066 (7-7-7-16 4-26-8-4)
(Actual timings are 8-8-8-24 at 1600 MHz per the Mfg web site.)

Video System
Video Adapter : ASUS EAH4350 series (PS3.0, VS3.0 600MHz, 512MB DDR3 2x400MHz, PCIe 2.00 x16)

Storage Devices
WDC WD5001AALS-00L3B2 (500.1GB, SATA300, 3.5", 7200rpm, NCQ, 32MB Cache) : 466GB (C:) (D:)
WDC WD5001AALS-00L3B2 (500.1GB, SATA300, 3.5", 7200rpm, NCQ, 32MB Cache) : 466GB (E:)
ATAPI iHAS424 Y (SATA150, DVD+-RW, CD-RW, 2MB Cache) : N/A (F:)

Logical Storage Devices
XPi7Sys (C:) : 98GB (NTFS) @ WDC WD5001AALS-00L3B2 (500.1GB, SATA300, 3.5", 7200rpm, NCQ, 32MB Cache)
XPi7Data1 (D:) : 368GB (NTFS) @ WDC WD5001AALS-00L3B2 (500.1GB, SATA300, 3.5", 7200rpm, NCQ, 32MB Cache)
Session1 (E:) : 466GB (NTFS) @ WDC WD5001AALS-00L3B2 (500.1GB, SATA300, 3.5", 7200rpm, NCQ, 32MB Cache)
Optical Drive (F:) : N/A @ ATAPI iHAS424 Y (SATA150, DVD+-RW, CD-RW, 2MB Cache)

Peripherals
LPC Hub Controller 1 : Giga-Byte LPC Interface Controller
LPC Legacy Controller 1 : ITE IT8720F
Audio Device : ASUS RV730XT Audio device [Radeon HD 4670]
Audio Codec : ATI (AMD) AA01h
Disk Controller : Giga-Byte 4 port SATA IDE Controller
Disk Controller : Giga-Byte 2 port SATA IDE Controller
Disk Controller : Giga-Byte JMB36X PCIE-to-SATAII/IDE RAID Controller (???)
USB Controller 1 : Giga-Byte USB UHCI Controller #4
USB Controller 2 : Giga-Byte USB UHCI Controller #5
USB Controller 3 : Giga-Byte USB UHCI Controller #6
USB Controller 4 : Giga-Byte USB EHCI Controller #2
USB Controller 5 : Giga-Byte USB UHCI Controller #1
USB Controller 6 : Giga-Byte USB UHCI Controller #2
USB Controller 7 : Giga-Byte USB UHCI Controller #3
USB Controller 8 : Giga-Byte USB EHCI Controller #1
FireWire/1394 Controller 1 : Giga-Byte TSB43AB23 1394a-2000 OHCI PHY/link-layer Controller
SMBus/i2c Controller 1 : Intel 801xx/63xx SMBus

Printers and Faxes
Printer : Microsoft XPS Document Writer (600x600, Colour)

Network Services
Network Adapter : Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller #2 - Packet Scheduler Miniport (Ethernet, 100Mbps)

Power Management
Mains (AC) Line Status : On-Line

Operating System
Windows System : Microsoft Windows XP Professional 5.01.2600 (Service Pack 3)
Platform Compliance : x86