Question about PCIe expansion for PT9 HD

[innerbooty]

Hi guys,
Running a PT9 HD2 here, 1 Core and 1 Accel. Just got Altiverb and realized too late how much DSP it eats. But I love how it sounds so I was thinking about expanding my HD rig with 1 or 2 more Accel cards, something I'd been thinking about doing anyway. But I don't want to spend a ton of money, if possible. PCIe to PCIe expansion still seems really expensive. I've seen these units around, that I think are approved, and are not too outrageously expensive:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Netstor-NA21.../301638160537?

But they only have 3 slots, which means if I got 2 more Accel cards, I'd have to split up the Pro Tools cards, since I also have a UAD Octo card. So I guess it would be Core + Accel + PCIe expansion port card in the Mac. Then the 3 card expansion box would have 2 Accels and the UAD Octo. The question is - will this work? Or do all the Pro Tools cards have to sit together in sequence? I'm guessing they probably do, but just want to check.

Is there an affordable 4-slot expansion option? Then I could have all the 4 Pro Tools cards in the expansion box together, have the Octo in the Mac, and have one extra slot - maybe for another Octo at some point...?

How have other folks out there expanded their PT 9 / 10 rigs...?

Thanks!!! - Steve

[crizdee]

Originally Posted by innerbooty

Hi guys,
Running a PT9 HD2 here, 1 Core and 1 Accel. Just got Altiverb and realized too late how much DSP it eats. But I love how it sounds so I was thinking about expanding my HD rig with 1 or 2 more Accel cards, something I'd been thinking about doing anyway. But I don't want to spend a ton of money, if possible. PCIe to PCIe expansion still seems really expensive. I've seen these units around, that I think are approved, and are not too outrageously expensive:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Netstor-NA21.../301638160537?

But they only have 3 slots, which means if I got 2 more Accel cards, I'd have to split up the Pro Tools cards, since I also have a UAD Octo card. So I guess it would be Core + Accel + PCIe expansion port card in the Mac. Then the 3 card expansion box would have 2 Accels and the UAD Octo. The question is - will this work? Or do all the Pro Tools cards have to sit together in sequence? I'm guessing they probably do, but just want to check.

Is there an affordable 4-slot expansion option? Then I could have all the 4 Pro Tools cards in the expansion box together, have the Octo in the Mac, and have one extra slot - maybe for another Octo at some point...?

How have other folks out there expanded their PT 9 / 10 rigs...?

Thanks!!! - Steve

Hi,

Yeah all PT cards have to be together. so look for a decent chassis to take 4 or more cards.

Cant go wrong with a magma PE6R4 second hand wouldn't be too much probably now.


Chris

[antonis]

If you're using PCIe Accel cards then you need an EB7 expansion chassis.

Actually, looking for one myself here in the UK.

[innerbooty]

Yeah, I need PCIe. The EB7 looks right. But so freakin' expensive!! Spending $3K+ so I can get a couple more Accel cards running? Doesn't make any sense...

[fm_xtk]

Originally Posted by innerbooty

Yeah, I need PCIe. The EB7 looks right. But so freakin' expensive!! Spending $3K+ so I can get a couple more Accel cards running? Doesn't make any sense...

I would suggest running Altiverb natively. Since you are also using an Octo UAD card you will already have to compromise by putting native plug-ins on busses (presumably). Running Altiverb on TDM does not make sense as it eats chips even faster than TL Space - which is more economical but sill a headache on TDM.

For $3000 it might be cheaper building a Hackintosh - mine has 7 PCIe slots so you could run everything in one box with it.

[antonis]

Originally Posted by fm_xtk

For $3000 it might be cheaper building a Hackintosh - mine has 7 PCIe slots so you could run everything in one box with it.

EB7s can be seen in the UK going for about £500. But still another big chunk in the rack space. I'd be interested in the Hackintosh option. Could you share more details about what components you are using?

[fm_xtk]

Originally Posted by antonis

EB7s can be seen in the UK going for about £500. But still another big chunk in the rack space. I'd be interested in the Hackintosh option. Could you share more details about what components you are using?

You have to watch out though as a lot of people are offloading these without the PCIe host card (especially in the US) - which is very difficult to find and will set you back at least another £200 if you are lucky enough to find one.

My Hackintosh - see here.

[antonis]

Originally Posted by fm_xtk

My Hackintosh - see here.

Cool. Cheers for the info! I will be definitely follow your lead and built one as a pet project come January.

How do you rate the i7 in comparison to a Xeon?

Did you look for a 7 PCIe mobo for dual Xeons at the time?

[fm_xtk]

Originally Posted by antonis

Cool. Cheers for the info! I will be definitely follow your lead and built one as a pet project come January.

How do you rate the i7 in comparison to a Xeon?

Did you look for a 7 PCIe mobo for dual Xeons at the time?

I can only compare the i7 to the MP 2,1 Xeons and obviously the Hackintiosh eats that one for breakfast.

I did look into dual CPU for a very brief period but it seemed like next level to me. Even people who seriously know what they are doing do not recommend it.

However, the Mobo I chose allows both, i7, and Xeon CPUs. So in future if I wanted to I could put in a 12 Core Xeon E5-2697v2 (same as trash can Mac "Pro"). I'd have to change my RAM to EEC as well.

Because I try to rely on TDM as much as possible the Hackintosh offers more than enough performance. If I ever wanted to concentrate on more native based processing I would most certainly top up the performance with one (or several) UAD cards.

So no need for a Xeon in either scenario, especially with 7 slots available. I would have probably gone to HD Native in the meantime if I didn't need a huge number of I/O.

[innerbooty]

Originally Posted by fm_xtk

I would suggest running Altiverb natively. Since you are also using an Octo UAD card you will already have to compromise by putting native plug-ins on busses (presumably). Running Altiverb on TDM does not make sense as it eats chips even faster than TL Space - which is more economical but sill a headache on TDM.

For $3000 it might be cheaper building a Hackintosh - mine has 7 PCIe slots so you could run everything in one box with it.

Thanks, this is helpful. And interesting. I only just got Altiverb, and have so far only experimented with the TDM side. Except for some utility plugins, I've been mixing almost exclusively with RTAS, and almost exclusively UAD on the Octo card. I've been very impressed with how many UAD plugs I can run on that card. I have yet to really run out of DSP, even on a pretty big mix. So I was thinking I could use some of the TDM power I'm not using running Altiverb. But it's such a HOG! So, on your advice I tried running it RTAS now for the first time to check it out. And it seems to work great, and I can run a 5 second reverb without seeing a huge bump to DSP. And even the amount plugin delay is not as bad as my Slate plugs, or PSP, which I don't use for that reason.

So - why can I easily run an instance of Altiverb with a 5 second reverb on RTAS, but it takes FOUR Accel chips just to run one 4.3 second TDM instance??? Doesn't make any sense to me. One HD Accel card originally cost twice the price of a Mac Pro. Shouldn't it have way more processing power?

Having more Accel cards would still be good, if only so I can get higher voice counts to run more RTAS plugs. That's the limit I keep hitting. Not the CPU limit, not the Octo card DSP limit, it's the voice count RTAS limit. The Hackintosh is definitely an interesting idea. I'm not a super techy though. Thanks for the detailed link about your build. Super interesting. Wonder if I could pull it off...?

Anyway, having run my trust old MIX3 / G4-933 rig into the ground from 2002 to 2013 (!!), I only recently got into PT9 HD. So I'm planning to run that into the ground as well. Although I really wish I had more than 4,000 samples of ADC...