Best Desktops for Pro Tools LE

[krofa]

Finally!!!

I am now really through with my AMD days. I used to use an XP3200+ with an Asus A7V600-X mobo... What a mess that was! Can't uprgrade to more than 1GB of RAM. Countinuous issues with my Raptor SATA drives. One day, about 5 months ago, I had it. I hated the fact that you can't really go above 1GB of RAM because of CPU addressing issues (due to the architecture of the AMD XP platform) and with their 64 bit platform, they supposedly fixed the RAM issues only with the Winchester core... The SATA issues were an ugly bonus. So I went ahead and bought the simplest of Asus P4 boards: P4P800-VM. All-in-one i865G board. This board had one bonus: You could use it with the Pentium-M if you also bought the Asus CT-479 P-M adapter. Put those together plus one P-M 725 (B-Stepping older Dothan with default speed 100*16=1600), set the jumpers on the CT-479 to 133 (133*16=2133) and WHAM!

32+28 with no efforts, no RAM limitations and a very quiet computer with a mobile CPU that can only be cooled with the one small fan on the CT-479!!! But that was not enough for me.

All the talk here against the P4 platform was misleading in and forgetful about one issue: Digi had not yet implemented multi-processing for PT. Looking at SiSoft Sandra ratings of a P4 CPU with HT on and off (the FPU performence almost doubles with HT on) suggested that a P4, with HT on, would rock PT, if multiprocessing was properly implemented. And so, trusting my intuition, I took the risk and sought a rare P4 3.4 with the Northwood core from e-bay which is considered to be the best single-core P4 CPU ever produced. It runs much cooler than the Prescott core P4 and is ahead of it at the same clock rate. About 3 months ago I got myself one of those. Mind you I am still on my simple P4P800-VM mobo. Of course tested with PT 6.4 and with HT disabled that CPU only produced 32+5. No worries. Put it aside and wait for PT7 while happily using the Pentium-M. And then came the 6th of November. Install PT7, put that P4 Northwood 3.4 back in and turn HT on. Yet another WHAM!

32+50 @ 1024 Samples and 90% CPU usage. Tenfold the performance of the same CPU with PT 6.4 and HT disabled.

Intel CPU's are never going to lag that much behind the AMD's anymore. And for the record; do wait impatiently for the release of the dual-core Pentium M: Yonah. Pentium-M is already an incredibly efficient design. With good cooling and the proper hardware (P4C800-E Deluxe and the CT-479 adapter) I've seen it beat the hell out of an FX-57 CPU overclocked to the same clock speed of 2600 MHz. (Watch-out; for this kind of performance you have to go for the P-M 7x0 series which is the C-Stepping newer Dothan which allows for FSB speeds of 200 MHz and more...)

I am sure that we'll be hearing similar results for the Dual-CPU G5 users. This is great news for people in the market for DAW computers. No longer are we limited to AMD choices if we want high performance for our money without sacrificing compatibility and expandibility in all realms.

This also shows how much difference proper programming can make! Remember: tenfold performance increase with the exact same CPU and harware. Though much more than a bit late, congratulations Digi. At least, once they have come out with the multi-processor implementation, it seems they did it absolutely right...

Cheers all...

Oh and all you Intel users;

1. Buy your PT7 upgrade from the DigiStore and install it right now;
2. Proudly go to your system BIOS and enable Hyperthreading:
3. ENJOY...

Last but not least, excuse me for posting this both to the main index and the "Best Desktops for PTLE" thread

[Allen Hallada]

krofa,
Thanks for doing the testing on that P4 and P-M. Looks great. I agree with you that it will be interesting to see how the dual G5s come out here.

Allen

[Shan]

krofa,
....it will be interesting to see how the dual G5s come out here.

Allen

Dual G5 2.5Ghz - 32+88. I guess that's ok.

Dual Xeon 3.06Ghz(the older cpu's) - 32+122 Not bad. I still need more power though.

The problem now is that we only have 128 aux tracks in PT LE. So after we fill up the aux tracks we'll have to start using the new Instrument tracks. But the problem with that is there are only 32 of them.

What are the quads gonna give us?

Will this be the end of Davec as we know it?

Shane

[bb_aus]

Will this be the end of Davec as we know it?

EQIII and DynamicsIII were designed to eat up more processing just so we could still do the test, they will have new delays soon aswell

[Shan]

EQIII and DynamicsIII were designed to eat up more processing just so we could still do the test, they will have new delays soon aswell

The problem with that is they cant be used in the 001 with 5.X software. It has to be compatible across the boards in order to be a standard benchmark stress test.

The Dverb test that was popular for about a month way way back may work but I suspect that it is optimized for PT LE 7. So that wouldnt be a fair test for older systems.

Shane

[bb_aus]

shane you dont have to take it so serious
but they can be used on a 001 with PT 6.x

[Shan]

True.

[krofa]

Dual G5 2.5Ghz - 32+88. I guess that's ok.

Dual Xeon 3.06Ghz(the older cpu's) - 32+122 Not bad. I still need more power though.

The problem now is that we only have 128 aux tracks in PT LE. So after we fill up the aux tracks we'll have to start using the new Instrument tracks. But the problem with that is there are only 32 of them.

What are the quads gonna give us?

Will this be the end of Davec as we know it?

Shane

Shane,

I had just not skimmed through the results here. Amazing results. Of course with the new dual-core CPUs and/or dual-cpu machines on the market the scene will look quite ugly with the DaveC test...

The tests I ran showed me that Intel indeed was visionary with the implementation of the Hyperthreading technology even though the programming market was slow to adapt to their new paradigm. It seems like all the hype about AMD beating P4 in games is also related to this issue since gaming performance is also directly related to FPU performance.

Now for us PT users, at least we can be totally free to choose. And those of us with single-core P4 HT CPU's, will at least be able to make much more of their investments before they move on. Sure the P4 3.4 Northwood was an expensive choice back then but it seems that it had enough juice for its cost and was ready to beat top AMD contenders of its time. Still beats the top single-core AMDs and single-CPU G5's for sure and I would guess it would compete with the 2.0 GHz dual-cpu G5. Justice can be slows sometimes ha...

Coming to the new P-M platform, the Yonah, I heard that Intel is so really trusting the P-M design that they may base a new generation of XEONs on it. Looking at what the old generation P-Ms and XEONs can do, I can't begin to imagine the performance of a dual-cpu dual-core yonah based XEON or a new dual-cpu P4 based XEON system with HT turned on which can be considered quad right there.

I can't say one thing enough many times though; enjoy single-core hyperthreading P4 users.

You are now free!

And we all are free to choose between all the platforms without any sacrifices . Although I myself have turned the AMD page for now becuase of my ugly struggles with the AMD XP platform, I'm sure that the AMD64 X2 cpus are doing well also...

Cheers...

[Rober50]

I'm not very technical on this stuff. I do know that my antiquated P3 system was responsible for my performance problems. Now I'm looking at a barebones system to move my hardrives into, which consists of the following: Athlon64 2800+ Processor, 1 GB Ram, and Two 80 GB Hardrives. Do I need a scsi drive, and if so, has anyone had any experience with the Cheetah 10K.6 36? I'm on a pretty tight budget so the Digi scsi is out of my reach right now until I get the floor in the master bath completed. Is there anything else I need to process 8 to 12 channels with up to 4 plug-ins each? I'm in a three piece, so that will be about the top end of channel usage. Do I need a SCSI or Firewire, or will the additional hardrive do?

[rpowell]

Time for a best system update?

RP