Harpertown

[xbuzzlightyearz]

Recently made the move from a Woodcrest 2x 2.66GHZ machine (ran flawlessly) to an "8" core Harpertown Mac pro.

I had been nervous about making the move after reading all the horror stories but decided to give it a go.

I Installed the native card, pulled up decent sized session, and immediately the computer began go act up. The CPU meter was flying around and constantly getting 9092 errors. I wasn't too surprised given everything i read on the forums.

I decided to call Avid and see if they had cooked up any solution. They insisted that I move the native card to the 4th PCIe slot, I tried it and I immediately began to see an improvement. I was able to Record 16 tracks simultaneously while playing back another 16 with 5 plugins on every track. Giving me 160 plugins recording for 7+ minutes at a 32 playback buffer.

I haven't pushed it harder yet but it was a completely different experience than how Pro tools acted with the card in Slot 2 and 3.

Don't know if others have tried this but it solved my problems, hopefully it solves someone else's issues.

[mixwell]

That's good news! Avid should really jump on getting this info into their literature so people know to watch out on this machine. As of now, the HD Native users guide recommends slot 2 inside the Mac Pro (universally) so it might be good to update the printed spec for customers using these machines with HD Native Pcie cards.

[drumster]

Originally Posted by mixwell

That's good news! Avid should really jump on getting this info into their literature so people know to watch out on this machine. As of now, the HD Native users guide recommends slot 2 inside the Mac Pro (universally) so it might be good to update the printed spec for customers using these machines with HD Native Pcie cards.

Good to see you posting on here Roc! Your posts regarding the HD Native system over on Gearslutz are always very informative.

[drumster]

Originally Posted by xbuzzlightyearz

Recently made the move from a Woodcrest 2x 2.66GHZ machine (ran flawlessly) to an "8" core Harpertown Mac pro.

I had been nervous about making the move after reading all the horror stories but decided to give it a go.

I Installed the native card, pulled up decent sized session, and immediately the computer began go act up. The CPU meter was flying around and constantly getting 9092 errors. I wasn't too surprised given everything i read on the forums.

I decided to call Avid and see if they had cooked up any solution. They insisted that I move the native card to the 4th PCIe slot, I tried it and I immediately began to see an improvement. I was able to Record 16 tracks simultaneously while playing back another 16 with 5 plugins on every track. Giving me 160 plugins recording for 7+ minutes at a 32 playback buffer.

I haven't pushed it harder yet but it was a completely different experience than how Pro tools acted with the card in Slot 2 and 3.

Don't know if others have tried this but it solved my problems, hopefully it solves someone else's issues.

This is a good suggestion, and one that others should try. In my case, changing the PCIe installation slot did not make a difference.

[SaschaP]

I'm on an 8*2.8 Harpertown and I moved my HD Native card from slot 2 to slot 4 and have noticed a more stable system since.

I also cut my number of processors in the playback engine to 4, down from 7.

I think that when Pro Tools doesn't need to bounce it's processing between the 2 cores it runs MUCH more stable. 1 core for PT, and 1 core for the OS. You'd be surprised at how little of a hit your total processing power takes.

I think this speaks to the fact that PT was never really coded properly for multi-core machines.

[glennaudio]

Originally Posted by SaschaP

I'm on an 8*2.8 Harpertown and I moved my HD Native card from slot 2 to slot 4 and have noticed a more stable system since.

I also cut my number of processors in the playback engine to 4, down from 7.

I think that when Pro Tools doesn't need to bounce it's processing between the 2 cores it runs MUCH more stable. 1 core for PT, and 1 core for the OS. You'd be surprised at how little of a hit your total processing power takes.

I think this speaks to the fact that PT was never really coded properly for multi-core machines.

I totally agree with this. Pro Tools definitely runs more stable using 1 CPU. Hopefully Pro Tools 11 can use all the cores in a machine more efficiently as I sprung for the 12-core.