Allenstein OctaPC(8-core) and Quadzilla(4-core) *OS Update

[guitardom]

Hi guitardom

at the moment i use BIOS Version 1009, could tht be problem, should i downgrade it to 1008?(theres also Version 1010 available...). I used the Driver from the CD since i read that there where problems with the Tyanboard and the drivers, didn't read that about the Asusboard...

on the net i found the following drivers:

ForceWare_8421_WHQL_Certified
nForce4_AMD_Edition_WHQL_Certified
K8NDL1008
are these the right ones? should i install XP new and format the HD new?

thanks for such qick help to all og you this forum is great!

sorry did not get back to you sooner, busy weekend!!

i honestly have not used 1009. when i built my system there was 1007, then when 1008 was released, it had MAJOR flaws worked out so i HAD to upgrade for ram and multiple cpu reasons. i have not touched it since. i would assume 1009 would be fine though. the tyan and asus though have been different beasts on the build side of things. me and shan and a couple others have spent a lot of time battling these out and get them rocking in there own unique way

the board and monitor drivers i have are named different. if these are from the nvidia site, i cannot say those are correct. the names i put in the first response are the EXACT names of the downloads. they could have been updated or could be the wrong ones, i am not sure.

if you get me your email address i will mail you the drivers. i would start here and leave the bios for the minute. what drivers for vid card and motherboard did you use at first??any??

lets get all the correct drivers and such, then we'll go through installing everything and wether to reformat and such.

[rockinrude]

great to hear from you!

i sent you an email to the adress in your profile.

right now i downgraded the bios to 1008.
But theres no noticeable improvement...


thanks and keep on quadding...

Ingwer

[meatmarketstudios]

Alex, do you know if the PC-e card is compatable from UAD with the Quad?

[AlexLakis]

Alex, do you know if the PC-e card is compatable from UAD with the Quad?

I'm not sure, I only had the PCI ones. I can't remember if anybody else has tried it all ready...Sorry!

However, I DO believe that somebody got the PCI cards to work thru a Magma Chassis...Could be wrong, tho, I'd have to look back thru the thread.

[markus44uk]

I've got one of the original Tyan Quadzilla's (Shane's build) with the ASUS EN6600/TD/256 video card. I've just bought a Dell 30" LCD monitor which uses DVI-D Dual Link cable. However the resolution on the Dell monitor is 2560 x 1600 and the Asus Video card is maxed out at 2048x1536.

Does anyone have any knowledge of whether we can use a higher resolution video card with the Quadzillas without compatibility issues? Anyone tried one that works yet?

The Quadzilla spec seems to have changed to the
Radeon X1900GT 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 VIVO HDCP Video Card

Will this work in the Shane Quad?

Thanks in advance

[Screenery]

Hey all,

I'm thinking about going Diginerd's route. I know a few people who have done it already...But I need to decide on a PSU that is really quiet (quiet enough for same-room recording), and works with the following:

(1) Tyan i5000xt s2696
(2) Intel Xeon X5355 2.66GHz with Verax 21 CPU coolers
(1) 150GB WD Raptor SATAII
(1) 160GB WD Caviar SATAII
(4) 500GB WD Caviar SATAII (RAID0)
(1) 250GB WD Caviar SATAII
(4) Kingston 667 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM
(1) LG Black DVD+RW GSA-H42N-BK - OEM
Seasonic S12-600watt EPS12/SSI PSU
(1) Nvidia Geforce 7900GT DVI PCI-express and Zalman VF900-CU
(1) 1 Lian-li v2000 plus2B w Noctua fans or Papst fans
(1) Areca ARC-1210
(1) eSATA 3-connector PCI card

Please advise if you have experience with some powerful, yet very quiet (hopefully inaudible by themselves) PSUs.


In addition, I have several more questions (I have been considering ADK and PC Audio Labs to build my computer, as I am really short on time over the next two months):

ADk also told me that PTLE cannot read RAIDs, which might be true, but for virtual instrument libraries and samplers, this is not an issue, and thus RAID would be better. I was a bit scared off by this comment...PC Audio Labs said when I called them (second) that samples on a RAID could be accessed through most samplers in PTLE, though PT can't directly access a RAID itself. Who is right?

ADK said that Xeons are only worth it if i have huge amounts of I/O (not just track playback/summing within a program) simultaneously, and that getting the Xeons over the Core 2 Duo Quad QX6700 won't help anything. Is this true? PCAL said that it ADK was incorrect in this matter, but did not specify exactly what the Xeons would do improve upon, and I forgot to ask.

ADK also said that the 500GB Seagate drives perform much better relative to the 750GB drives when they are filled up. But is it worth it to have 4 500GB drives instead of 3 750GB ones, especially with the noise drives cause, and the fact that most cases don't fit a total of 7 hard drives, which would be the total if my RAID consisted of 4 drives?

Also, PCAL recommends IDE drives because they said that SATA drives take longer at boot to be recognized at startup. Is this true???? I thought SATA was leaps and bounds ahead of IDE, so this sounds strange...


Questions remaining:
1) Are there others recommended and faster than the Raptor? Hopefully relatively quiet? I've also read that Raptors are really loud. Too loud for same-room recording? Is it worth the noise for the extra speed? Ten (the user here on Gearslutz) uses a 15k Maxtor SAS drive...15K???!? Does noise level significantly increase for drives like that?

2) Does Pro Tools LE have the capability to use all of the eight CPUs for RTAS and other plugs? I know Nuendo 4 will, but I've assume Reaper will be pretty sweet by the end of the year, and it already does have the capability, so I'm not worried.

3) What are the quietest PSUs that can support the above hardware? Is 500W enough to support my configuration? I assume not, but if so, this looks good:
Antec Phantom 500 ATX12V 500W Power Supply 100Vac
or a Seasonic S12-600watt EPS12/SSI PSU?

4) For anyone who has bought from pcaudiolabs.com or ADK, are their computers silent enough for same-room recording in a 20x25 room?

Thanks,
Mitch

[auxsend1]

I can help you out with some of your questions:

1. The 500 vs. 750 Seagates....
read this article (this page, plus the next few)
hard drive performance on THG

2. SATA drives...
Any modern motherboard will have no trouble at all recognizing SATA drives. There is no reason to buy new drives that are IDE. Especially considering all the motherboards these days come with tons of SATA connectors and 1 or (at most) 2 PATA connectors.

3. For power supplies, I'd check out the Seasonic S12 Energy Plus SS-650HT ATX12V / EPS12V 650W
S12 650
That one should have enough juice, but better double check your numbers before stuffing your computer full of that many drives.

Check out
quiet PSUs on Silent PC Review
for more info on quiet power supplies.

[Allen Hallada]

From the Dave C Test list

1st Dual Clovertown (8 Core PC) reults

PT rig: pt mp 7.3.1cs1 ProFire LightBridge
OS: Windows XP ProSP2 Stock (no tweaks or mods, not even prefer background services)
CPU: 2 x Intel Clovertown 2.4GHz CPUs with 1066FSB.
LAPTOP: no
MOBO: Tyan Thunder 2696 (Intel Chipset)
FRONT SIDE BUS: 1066 MHz
HYPERTHREADING: nope, but 4 Coree per chip for 8 way goodness
MEMORY: 2GB PC5300 FB-DIMM
DRIVES: 200GB ATA/133 7200RPM 16MB Chache, I didn't even break out the SATAs yet...
GRAPHICS CARD: Gigabyte Silent ATI Based X1650
Firewire I/F: Tyan Onboard (Texas Instruments)
Davec II: Test14 32+128 Completed running at just 62% CPU whilst recording
DaveC II: Test15 (Diginerd Test 1) 48+128 (Music Production toolkit) Completed, peaking at 68%

DVerb Torture Test: 400 DVerbs (40 Stereo Tracks, all 5 slots full with dual Mono Dverbs), recorded 1 minute, CPU around 88%

Now that, ladies and Gentlemen is a monster...

I couldn't be happier right now.

Way to go on the first OctaPC DigiNerd. Will be interesting to see if the ram really is the bottle neck here. What is the total price of this system if one was to put it together today?

Congrats!

Allen

[Jon E.]

Hey all, just checking in. I finished the hardware build but ran into a problem when I loaded the Tyan drivers. Seems that the on board audio, Ethernet and one other (I can remember now) drivers won't install. I've tried using both 6.70_nforce4_pro_english_whql.exe and the newer 6.86_nforce_win2kxp_international_whql.exe to no avail. I'm beginning to think the 4 pin 12V power PW3 connector on the mother board that's marked as optional in the manual is actually necessary for the onboard hardware? Appreciate it if anyone has any insight! Also, if anyone is interested, my final build config went as follows:

(1) Thermaltake Tsunami VA3000BWA Black Aluminum ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail
Model #: VA3000BWA
Item #: N82E16811133132

(1) TYAN S2927A2NRF Dual Socket 1207 NVIDIA nForce Professional 3600 ATX Server Motherboard - Retail
Model #: S2927A2NRF
Item #: N82E16813151058

(1) Koutech IO-FPM220 3.5" Floppy Drive* & Multi Card Reader Front Panel - Retail
Model #: IO-FPM220
Item #: N82E16813998514

(1) OCZ GameXStream OCZ600GXSSLI ATX12V 600W Power Supply - Retail
Model #: OCZ600GXSSLI
Item #: N82E16817341001

(2) AMD Opteron 2214(WOF) Santa Rosa 2.2GHz Socket F Dual Core Processor Model OSA2214CQWOF - Retail
Model #: OSA2214CQWOF
Item #: N82E16819105023

(4) Kingston 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) ECC Registered Server Memory Model KVR667D2D8P5/1G - Retail
Model #: KVR667D2D8P5/1G
Item #: N82E16820134331

(1) Western Digital Caviar RE WD1600YS 160GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
Model #: WD1600YS
Item #: N82E16822136062

(2) Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD2500KS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
Model #: WD2500KS
Item #: N82E16822144701

(1) LITE-ON 20X DVD±R DVD Burner with 12X DVD-RAM Write Black IDE Model LH-20A1P-185 - OEM
Model #: LH-20A1P-185 OEM
Item #: N82E16827106049

(1) LITE-ON 52X CD Burner Black ATAPI/E-IDE Model LH-52R1P-187 - Retail
Model #: LH-52R1P-187
Item #: N82E16827106061

(2) ZALMAN CNPS9500 LED 92mm 2 Ball Cooling Fan with Heatsink - Retail
Model #: CNPS 9500 LED
Item #: N82E16835118223

(1) BFG Tech BFGR76256GTOCE GeForce 7600GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail
Model #: BFGR76256GTOCE
Item #: N82E16814143049

Other than making room for the Zalmans (and this driver problem...) it's gone without a hitch. When I'm finished I'll run a d-verb test, report the specs, and will provide more installation details if anyone is interested. Thanks!

Jon E.

[auxsend1]

Jon E.:

The problem is that the drivers on nVIDIA's site are not up to date. They only support 2000 series nForce Professional boards. I emailed them back and forth a few times over this. Since the 3600 chipset that the S2927 board uses is based on the nForce 500 series, this is actually the correct driver on their site:
nForce 500 series
Hopefully their page will be updated soon. Amazingly, they directed me to Asus' web site, who has up to date drivers for a 3600 board of their own. It was from this info, and comparing to the Tyan CD that I was able to figure it out.

You can get the onboard audio driver straight from Realtek here: Realtek
Get the last one in the Windows section.

Also, the extra PWR connector at the bottom really is optional. I believe it is there if you have cards that need a lot of juice. But high-powered video cards would use their own 6-pin PCI-e PWR, so I don't really know when you would use it. If you had 2 HD cards in there it would probably be a good idea.

Hope this helps. Looking forward to the results.