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  #1  
Old 06-18-2008, 09:59 AM
sinkrock sinkrock is offline
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Default Magma Chassis Decisions

I'm in the process of upgrading my rig and need some advice!

I'm going from a Dual 2Ghz G5 to a Mac Pro 8 core.

1. Will I see a huge increase in performance between machines? I obviously expect to see a marked difference - are many Mac Pro users using less TDM plugins and a lot more RTAS plugins in sessions?

2. I'm looking into buying a Magma chassis for my cards (HD3 Accel). Is anyone running a stable system with a Mac Pro and a 4 slot PCI4DRQ (I know this is unsupported!)? Is the only option the 6 slot PE6R4 chassis?

3. Based on replies to point 1, I'm even considering selling an Accel card and going down to HD2 Accel. Has anyone gone down this route? My sessions usually run up to 64 tracks and I'm using some MCDSP, SoundToys, Sonnox and Digi plugins. I'd only really be looking at running UltraChannel, Revibe, Smack and Impact on the Accel cards.

Thanks for your help!
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  #2  
Old 06-18-2008, 10:26 AM
roberts roberts is offline
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Location: Toronto, Ont
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Default Re: Magma Chassis Decisions

My G5 packed it in a couple of months ago So I had to get an 8 core with a new Magma chassis.
I spent about $1000.00 upgrading some of my old Massive pack plug-ins, All my old Sony Plug-ins and my WUP.
In all I spent almost 6K on the upgrade, for the speed increase it was not worth it IMO. What I have gained in speed I have lost in stability. More crashes, Wacky Protools behavior with Elastic audio - Hindsight being 20/20 I should have just chanced buying an old G5 on eBay
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  #3  
Old 06-18-2008, 10:50 AM
sinkrock sinkrock is offline
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Default Re: Magma Chassis Decisions

A G5 isn't an option! I've got PCI-X cards and don't think that I can get a faster machine that will take PCIX.
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  #4  
Old 06-18-2008, 11:00 AM
Vaporhead Vaporhead is offline
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Default Re: Magma Chassis Decisions

All PPC Macs will take PCI-X cards. Your only restriction is PCIe Macs.
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  #5  
Old 06-18-2008, 05:15 PM
N.E.R.D N.E.R.D is offline
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Default Re: Magma Chassis Decisions

Quote:
I'm in the process of upgrading my rig and need some advice!

I'm going from a Dual 2Ghz G5 to a Mac Pro 8 core.

1. Will I see a huge increase in performance between machines? I obviously expect to see a marked difference - are many Mac Pro users using less TDM plugins and a lot more RTAS plugins in sessions?

2. I'm looking into buying a Magma chassis for my cards (HD3 Accel). Is anyone running a stable system with a Mac Pro and a 4 slot PCI4DRQ (I know this is unsupported!)? Is the only option the 6 slot PE6R4 chassis?

3. Based on replies to point 1, I'm even considering selling an Accel card and going down to HD2 Accel. Has anyone gone down this route? My sessions usually run up to 64 tracks and I'm using some MCDSP, SoundToys, Sonnox and Digi plugins. I'd only really be looking at running UltraChannel, Revibe, Smack and Impact on the Accel cards.

Thanks for your help!
I recently upgraded from a Dual 2.5 Ghz G5 to a new 8 Core 2.8ghz. As you mention in point 3 I also sold down from my HD3 to HD 2 and bought the Magma PE6R4.

I have found the RTAS power to be excellent, I'm running heaps of Eleven guitar amp sims, Altiverb and Soundtoys and I haven't even come close to choking the system. I can't say for sure how many times more powerful it is, but I literally haven't run out of power yet. On my Accel cards, I too pretty much run Revibe, Echo Farm, (Eleven while tracking), Impact. I think the system of converting what you can to RTAS works well. But I've found with HD2 you need to plan a bit more. Also I wouldn't be doing 96k with an HD2. I work almost always at 48khz. Overall, I would say that the system feels significantly more powerful when you switch your workflow to relying more on RTAS. I have no regrets whatsoever, BUT two IMPORTANT caveats...

1) I'm running protools 7.4 on TIGER 10.4.11. You're not even meant to be able to run it on the new Mac Pro but mine works well ie. no worse than the G5. It's a little bit of a pain to get Tiger installed on the Mac Pro but it works well.

2) The Magma also works well, but is as noisy as F##K. I replaced the power supply with a quiet ATX and the front fan to a noiseless one and now I can't even tell that it's on.

Hope that helps.
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  #6  
Old 06-18-2008, 09:08 PM
elicious elicious is offline
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Default Re: Magma Chassis Decisions

hey sinkrock, as i've mentioned here before (poorly), our 4 slot is bitchin'
and $1200 is a lot easier to swallow than $2700
you mentioned performance increases; we did a test using waves linear multiband compressor in rtas mode,
on our retiring g4 we managed 6 instances,
my buddy went the band aid approach and got the last g5 off ebay that could still use the pci cards and was able to fit 18.
new mac pro =66
the last poster noticed noise from his 7 slot; we wre pleasantly surprised at how quiet our 4 slot is,
although maybe that's one difference between the two, or maybe that's a difference in our noise floor tolerance.
either way, b.o.l.
e
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  #7  
Old 06-18-2008, 10:56 PM
doug_hti doug_hti is offline
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Default Re: Magma Chassis Decisions

For my personal rig, I was on G5 dual 1.8, 4g's of ram with hd4accel. I moved to a dual 2.66 with pe6r4 chassis (changed power supply and front fan)....and it's been great. At work I'm on a dual 2.66 hd2accel pcie...and it is fantastic as well. I work on Pro Tools a minimum of 50+ hours a week on 95% surround projects with lots of bussing, routing, and stems, reconsolidate feature length material, etc. For what I work on, the difference of how fast sessions load and how responsive the systems are, is night and day. Sure there a couple bugs here and there (with destructive punching), but I'm by far at my happiest... Another friend who runs a 4 room facility had to switch to 8 core and said it's been great and now that his mojo is back up....very happy. If your day is built on speed, opening and closing large sessions, and includes many offline processes and just doesn't rely on tdm plugins playing back, then you will feel the difference in a BIG way. While I still don't go crazy on RTAS, I can run a few of my key items without really thinking about it......and the whole 4 internal drive deal is a reason alone to switch....
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  #8  
Old 06-18-2008, 11:31 PM
raw raw is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2001
Location: Sydney
Posts: 90
Default Re: Magma Chassis Decisions

I am looking to upgrade from G5 HD 3 Accel PCIe to 8 core 3.2GHz Mac Pro. I want to mix the PCIe Accel cards with UAD-1e cards in an expansion chassis. I got the following info from Magma today - perhaps this might help you (or not):

"...The [Digidesign qualification] testing is going very well with the EB7 – taking a little bit more time than we hoped, but everything is going very well. We have many customers using this solution, as well as the newest released 4 Slot (EB4) with both ProTools and UAD cards without problems. Here are the part number and prices for your reference:

EB4 – 4 Slot PCI Express to PCI Express expansion system
EB7 – 7 Slot PCI Express to PCI Express expansion system..."

I am nervous about the lack of official Digi qualification, and also about UAD-1e latency in PT. I guess I will find out the hard way.

HTH.
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  #9  
Old 06-19-2008, 01:30 AM
scottgreiner scottgreiner is offline
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Posts: 885
Default Re: Magma Chassis Decisions

I retired my G4 dual 1GHz and got a Macbook Pro. Now my HD2 PCIx cards are sitting in a Magma 4slot (pericom chipset) chassis (noisy fan for the moment). I'm running PT 7.4cs4 with Leopard 10.5.1. All runs well after upgrading all my plugins

EXCEPT

I'm stuck at 48 voice 1DSP playback engine. Attempting to change to anything else results in immediate and various crashes (depending on what I try to change it to) ranging from DAE errors and PT quitting, to the grey curtain of death. All of which require a complete re-installation of Protools.

There is another thread somewhere about a "memory issue" with the DAE... something about a .kext issue... Some have gotten around the problem - I have not been so fortunate. So far with what I'm working on I haven't needed more than 48 voices, and the portability far outweighs this little issue.

Also, I bought my chassis used on ebay for $250. I sold off a few things (192...) and bought a few things, and after all the paid upgrades, WUP etc, it ended up costing me about a grand. I sure hope this memory problem gets fixed before I get caught with my 48voice pants down
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