Considering switching from HD3 PCIe to HD Native

[jacko]

Originally Posted by meech

Hey Drumster, what converters are you using with your HD Native card? I've been talking on the phone with Avid about these 9092-4 errors during tracking, and I've been able to eliminate every possible problem except for one. I've done all the basic trashing of prefs and repairing permissions, disabling spolight/time machine, switching to a new user, etc, and I still get the error.

The one thing is that I have an Apogee Symphony I/O, so of course Avid says that could be causing the problem, so if I could get my hands on an HD Omni or something (not so easy to do) than I could check that off the list of potential problems. The HD Omni of course is $3500 or so, so rather than buying one to test with and then returning it, I'm leaning very much towards just buying the six core Westmere, as everything seems to be pointing towards a PCI bandwidth issue between the Harpertown and the HD Native card. So I just curious to know what interface you were using with your system. Thank so much for all the information you've been posting, it's really been helpful

How many processors do you use in Pro Tools playback engine?

[meech]

Usually 7 out of 8 at 99% cpu limit but I've also tested 6 and 5 processors. I guess I should probably check going lower. With spotlight and time machine disabled and no other apps running, you'd think the OS wouldn't need that many processors. This has also all been with 10.7.2.

[jacko]

Originally Posted by meech

Usually 7 out of 8 at 99% cpu limit but I've also tested 6 and 5 processors. I guess I should probably check going lower. With spotlight and time machine disabled and no other apps running, you'd think the OS wouldn't need that many processors. This has also all been with 10.7.2.

In my case on Nehalem 2.66 it works best if I set it to 4 or even 2 processors. Above that sometimes i get errors when I use UAD plugins.

[meech]

That's interesting. I haven't had a problem with UAD plugins once, with both the Harpertown and my previous ppc G5 ... Avid had me test the system with the UAD Quad card removed from the mac, and that didn't make a difference with the 909x errors. I'll definitely have to test all of the processor options, including going all the way down to one core.

[Ginger]

So is the consensus that the 3.33 Ghz 6 core westmere is better than the 2.4 Ghz 8 core for HDN? For an editing system, is there really that big a performance/stability difference? No real mixing or recording will be done on this system.


TIA for any feedback.

[joeldadrummer]

Originally Posted by meech

Hey Drumster, with the Native card the the Harpertown, were you getting 9092 or 9093 errors? I'm getting them a lot while tracking and it's completely ruining my takes. If you were, are you still getting them with the six core? I also always work at 96k which apparently makes the errors more frequent. I can barely track for two minutes without it stopping right in the middle of a take!

FWIW - I'm also having this problem at 88k & 96k, and I also use the Apogee Symphony.

Were you having this problem in PT9HD also?

[Drew Mazurek]

Originally Posted by Ginger

So is the consensus that the 3.33 Ghz 6 core westmere is better than the 2.4 Ghz 8 core for HDN? For an editing system, is there really that big a performance/stability difference? No real mixing or recording will be done on this system.


TIA for any feedback.

No real mixing or recording? Use regular PT and a laptop. Why spring for Native?? Doesn't make sense.

The 6-core seems to be best at low buffer (32,64) recording/mixing and makes Native feel most like a TDM system.

[Ginger]

Originally Posted by dmazurek

No real mixing or recording? Use regular PT and a laptop. Why spring for Native?? Doesn't make sense.

The 6-core seems to be best at low buffer (32,64) recording/mixing and makes Native feel most like a TDM system.

I'm not a newbie. This is for high-end post. We need real sync thus the HDN is a deal relative to tdm/hdx. It's really annoying when people read into ones questions.

I was asking for experiences with 6 core versus 8 core not a judgment on what system I should be using.

[Drew Mazurek]

Originally Posted by Ginger

I'm not a newbie. This is for high-end post. We need real sync thus the HDN is a deal relative to tdm/hdx. It's really annoying when people read into ones questions.

I was asking for experiences with 6 core versus 8 core not a judgment on what system I should be using.

no one said you were.

You have to admit, without your added info, worrying about the difference between an 8 core and 6 core seems trivial. And very may well be even with it.

[Ginger]

Originally Posted by dmazurek

no one said you were.

You have to admit, without your added info, worrying about the difference between an 8 core and 6 core seems trivial. And very may well be even with it.

Suggesting I should use a lesser system seems to imply that I don't know what my own needs are, i.e. newbie.

No one needed my added info to comment on experiences between 6 core & 8 core. There are too many attempts at one-upping around here instead of just answering the damn question.

Stability is what I care about and why I was asking about 6 core vs. 8 based on this & other threads. I'd still like some feedback about that. It matters as this is for a client and they actually might care about the $$ difference since the 6 core is not a stock config, i.e. no discounts.