i7 Builds - Specs and Results

[DannyAnalogue]

Originally Posted by guitardom

in the oc'ing articles on the i7 i have read, 3.8 was as fast as they could get it and keep it stable, but the testing was done open air, not in a case because of the heat problems, and they recomended against 3.8 for the life of the processor. partly the reason i have now stuck at 3.6 and running great.

We're fortunate to not have any Sun in England, so the combination of South Coast breeze and the Triton 88 sees me topping out at 59c (with the proc at 3.8). I'm using an Antec 900 also, which has just about the best cooling I've found - the trade-off for this type of performance being; the case sounds like it's about split into a new galaxy. I'm sitting comfortably at 3.5 now and tbh, 3.0 would suffice for real-world applications.

it seems for the most part our performance issues are lying with digi, not the operating system for the most part. our processor and computer speeds is moving faster than anything else, so now it just seems pt may not be utilizing the sheer power of the new computers but getting big increases just by hangin on. when i first built the i7 i did TONS of tweaking and such and the performance increase was minimal. just to much overhead of power on these machines pt is not tapping into.

Agreed. I think we're all hoping that optimisations will come with time, and also be able to utilize the potential of the i7 - which is vast.

The things I did gain from the numerous tweaks was snappiness and boot time, but more importantly; stability over time. After the first build (and I've trashed the i7 about 8 times now), I was able to get good D-Verb results with very little need for the 'Digital Liposuction we've become accustomed to. The problem was in the real-time interrupt elements of the machine i.e. USB k/b, mouse, iLok. Incorrect placement in ports were responsible for me getting close to a 5 min recording, but glitches occurring before I could.

It proved to me that the headroom was definitely there, but something was amiss in the background.

nothing spectacular on win 7. it does have a larger footprint than xp, so is using more ram and a bit less performance than xp. so nothing amazing here, other than we will for most cases have to start moving to this route sometime. but overall xp is still performing better.

Interesting. What about the 64 bit side of things? I was reading something over on the Cakewalk Forum saying that Sonar's X64 version was actually showing a performance hit in both XP and Vista 64 bit? Crazy. Is there big difference in 32 and 64 bit Win 7's performance?


As a side-note, I recently discovered that a brand-new cooler or heat-sink that's been sitting in a warm warehouse benefits from being pre-cooled before installation. A colleague bought a Scythe, and his BIOS was reporting 58c whilst idling after the first installation?! It took 4 days of 'running in' before the idle temps dropped to 38c - and no BIOS updates were made in that time?! It kind of makes sense due to the conductive properties of a heat-sink. I remember a while back whilst servicing a P4, I physically washed the heat-sink to get rid of the thermal paste and, subsequently, dried it with the missus' hair-dryer - it was about 25 minutes before I could pick the thing up!!

[macr0w]

Originally Posted by guitardom

check the vid driver, have you done the 3gb switch?? found some probs last night with the vid card doing this, which caused some pt probs.

there are a lot of drives/partitions hooked up. which ones are you recording audio to?? which ones are os??

have you done stuff in the bios?? like setting your ram speed or anything like that.

sorry if you have answered these. i get confused sometimes when doing this as to whom i asked what

Ok, I'm checking on the driver right now.

I don't know what the "3gb switch" is.

I record to all the drives at one point or another except C which is the os drive. There are 4 externals that I use mainly for storage.

The bios is stock except for turning off the lan. I haven't messed with the memory at all.

[gvees]

Originally Posted by guitardom

nothing spectacular on win 7. it does have a larger footprint than xp, so is using more ram and a bit less performance than xp. so nothing amazing here, other than we will for most cases have to start moving to this route sometime. but overall xp is still performing better.

What I've noticed is that since I've installed Win 7 RC1, 32 bit, all my instability problems have dissapeared into thin air..! I've done a couple full days of recording and I had only one interrupt, which was at a point where PT was playing a fairly heavy session (+20 tracks, loaded with comps, reverbs, delays, virtual instruments), I was trying some guitar licks through Eleven and a friend of mine (who I was writing music with) was trying to find a cool synth sound in Xpand2 that would match the song.. All in all something I could never dream of doing all at the same time in XP Pro and with Win7 RC1 it quit on me after ten minutes of doing this while still running on a buffer of 64!!

I couldn't get a high Dverb count (+170) with a buffer below 512 with XP PRo, now with Win 7RC1 straight from the box, no tweaking done, a count of 250 at 64 buffer..
It does has a slightly larger footprint, in my case 250Mb, but that is also with all the fancy Aero things and dropshadows and all enabled.. I'm now running a session in PT and am able to switch (while it's playing) between programs (Firefox, Open Office and Pro Tools) through the fancy 3d view (windows key&tab)... How 'bout that?

[guitardom]

Originally Posted by gvees

What I've noticed is that since I've installed Win 7 RC1, 32 bit, all my instability problems have dissapeared into thin air..! I've done a couple full days of recording and I had only one interrupt, which was at a point where PT was playing a fairly heavy session (+20 tracks, loaded with comps, reverbs, delays, virtual instruments), I was trying some guitar licks through Eleven and a friend of mine (who I was writing music with) was trying to find a cool synth sound in Xpand2 that would match the song.. All in all something I could never dream of doing all at the same time in XP Pro and with Win7 RC1 it quit on me after ten minutes of doing this while still running on a buffer of 64!!

I couldn't get a high Dverb count (+170) with a buffer below 512 with XP PRo, now with Win 7RC1 straight from the box, no tweaking done, a count of 250 at 64 buffer..
It does has a slightly larger footprint, in my case 250Mb, but that is also with all the fancy Aero things and dropshadows and all enabled.. I'm now running a session in PT and am able to switch (while it's playing) between programs (Firefox, Open Office and Pro Tools) through the fancy 3d view (windows key&tab)... How 'bout that?

very interesting. all of the previous testing (before rc1) had the opposite effect. but i am still curious about all your xp problems though. really no reason for that. might have to try it sometime. just not enough hours in the day!!!!!!

[mano111]

Nice to see this thread is a stickie now. finally!

[Shan]

Finally, the sticky it deserves.

...and congrats to our newest sticky member mykhal c!

Shane

[Shan]

...mykhal c and guitardom are now wearing the new hats for this next gen build. Me, Allen, Nikki-k, MattP, Sunburst and a few others are going on vacation. We'll watch from the sidelines. We want to see an exact step by step hand holding "how to" with video and everything on how to build this new bad boy by the time we get back. Now get to work!

Shane

[guitardom]

Originally Posted by Shan

...mykhal c and guitardom are now wearing the new hats for this next gen build. Me, Allen, Nikki-k, MattP, Sunburst and a few others are going on vacation. We'll watch from the sidelines. We want to see an exact step by step hand holding "how to" with video and everything on how to build this new bad boy by the time we get back. Now get to work!

Shane

WOW!!!! dont forget all my work on the opteron!! i done my deed!!!

i wish, but i also am glad i am to busy and to many projects going to be behind answering questions and how to's. i actually think i have answered about every question i possibly can!! guess compiling something would be good. and mykhal.......he is just a nice guy and great support to have around for any problem!!

[guitardom]

this ROCKS being a sticky. i just scrolled through 2 pages of posts trying to find it pretty crazy it took this long!!! does this mean we will get some support for this machine??? like the process selection problem????

[sunburst79]

Congrats! MykhalC and guitardom.

I like Shane's idea, And my place is starting to look like technology museum.