Well, here I go: I just ordered a 2.66 Ghz Mac Pro with 8GB of RAM, Parallels, XP32, and 500GB WD SATA drive. I'll see what I can get out of it: Multiple Parallels virtual machines running Teleport? x64 running Teleport? Perhaps for those maxing out on instances, my pursuit of full memory usage seems silly.

The deciding factor for me was the cost of RAM: To take a 4-DIMM slot Windows system to 16GB requires 4x4GB DIMMS (!!). The Mac can do it with 8x2GB. Its something like HALF the cost, and I don't see the price of 4GB dimms falling anytime soon. So, to me, the Mac Pro may be the best PC I can get. At the very least, I can go to 16GB when Vista comes out...almost no PC box currently has that capacity.

DG: I saw you on the on the Teleport forum, with that guy claiming that XP FX Teleport running in x64 can get you access to all 8GB RAM? Then the thread died. You seem to know a few who have Teleport on x64 - what have you heard, in terms of memory access?

I hope I'm not trying something that's already been disproven in the past. I've read all over this forum and unfortunately, interesting threads tend to dissolve into PC vs Mac diatribes, and I can't figure out whether anyone actually answered the original question. So, here I go. If I succeed, perhaps I will have something useful to share with everyone here. And if you know I'm going down a dead end, please stop me!

Ding-dong, its UPS, with my copies of Appassionata and Bosendorfer! Wheee, I've got work to do.

Wish me luck.

Best regards,

Eric

@elksman said:

DG: I saw you on the on the Teleport forum, with that guy claiming that XP FX Teleport running in x64 can get you access to all 8GB RAM? Then the thread died. You seem to know a few who have Teleport on x64 - what have you heard, in terms of memory access?

Best regards,

Eric

I have no proof either way. However, the RAM for 8GB turned out to be so expensive that I am no longer going this route.

DG

@elksman said:

The deciding factor for me was the cost of RAM: To take a 4-DIMM slot Windows system to 16GB requires 4x4GB DIMMS (!!). The Mac can do it with 8x2GB. Its something like HALF the cost, and I don't see the price of 4GB dimms falling anytime soon. So, to me, the Mac Pro may be the best PC I can get. At the very least, I can go to 16GB when Vista comes out...almost no PC box currently has that capacity.

Wish me luck.

Best regards,

Eric

Careful. There is no reason to know that Vista 64bit will even work on a MacPro, unless you know someone who has tried it.

DG

Hey DG -

There is precedent for people running Vista on Mac Pro. How reliable it is is another question, but I suspect the wrinkles will get ironed out before it matters to me (I hope).

http://www.wintellect.com/cs/blogs/jrobbins/archive/2007/02/15/vista-x64-on-a-mac-pro-totally-awesome-dude.aspx

Another issue has reared its ugly head - the Mac BIOS might not let me put more the 2gb to work in Windows XP - I hope that's not the case.

As for the memory: My 8gb cost me $1,700. If I can use a big chunk of that, say 7gb total, I think I come out about even vs. having two XP machines.

Anyway, hopefully I'll learn something that might be useful to others.

Best regards,

Eric

@elksman said:

As for the memory: My 8gb cost me $1,700. If I can use a big chunk of that, say 7gb total, I think I come out about even vs. having two XP machines.

Anyway, hopefully I'll learn something that might be useful to others.

Best regards,

Eric

1700 $ [[:|]]

Actually, you can find standard 2Go DDRII dimms (not Fully Buffered) for about 200€, so it's 800€ for 8Gb

@elksman said:

As for the memory: My 8gb cost me $1,700. If I can use a big chunk of that, say 7gb total, I think I come out about even vs. having two XP machines.

Anyway, hopefully I'll learn something that might be useful to others.

Best regards,

Eric

1700 $ [[[:|]]]

Actually, you can find standard 2Go DDRII dimms (not Fully Buffered) for about 200€, so it's 800€ for 8Gb
For the machine that I was specing up I was quoted £1000 for 8GB RAM. Perhaps I should investigate why the RAM is so expensive. [[[:|]]]

DG

@elksman said:

Hey DG -

There is precedent for people running Vista on Mac Pro. How reliable it is is another question, but I suspect the wrinkles will get ironed out before it matters to me (I hope).

http://www.wintellect.com/cs/blogs/jrobbins/archive/2007/02/15/vista-x64-on-a-mac-pro-totally-awesome-dude.aspx


Best regards,

Eric

This is very interesting. I know that there are issues with Vista 64bit (not 32bit) with various 32bit applications and FXT certainly has some issues, as well as with XP64, so I look forward to you sharing the details. I guess that someone has to be the guinea pig, but I don't have time for it to be me at the moment. Thanks for all this.

DG

@DG said:

For the machine that I was specing up I was quoted £1000 for 8GB RAM. Perhaps I should investigate why the RAM is so expensive. [[:|]]

DG

A few months ago 2Gb sticks were very difficult to find and very costly. FB-Dimm was the best solution. Now the memory price is falling and 2gb sticks more common.

AFAIK the macPro needs not only fully buffered, but has also special cooling fins ... here in austria we currently come down to EUR 360.- per 2 GB stick. the 5000 chipset series generally needs FB and i'm a litle bit suspicious that unbuffered DIMMs are really stable with 8 GB
christian

Hey Folks -

I'm not that savvy with finding cheap memory - I tend to go straight to Crucial. At Crucial, unbuffered 2GB 240pin DDR2 at 533Mhz (PC2-4200) is about the price that Stephane quotes: USD $273/2GB (almost exactly €200). Memory markets are highly efficient... When you step up to 667 Mhz, the price goes to USD 321/2GB (€241). When you BUFFER it, it goes to USD 347/2GB (€261) and when you add those special heat fins? USD 382/2GB (€287). Times 4... I don't know how much you need that speed, buffering, and fins, but I just went with the reccomendation.

Wait a minute, the price for 8 GB has dropped USD $160 since I ordered yesterday! What did I say about efficient markets? Happily, (this one's for you DG) Crucial offers a 30-day one-time price adjustment option which they do not advertise, but which coincides with their return window. I have set an alarm in my calendar to check the price in 30 days!

I decided someone should be the guinea pig - I will post my results, but it may take a while. BTW, I see there is another XP simulator in beta called Fusion... I may try that too...

Best regards,

Eric

I got my RAM upgrade from crucial, they are very good. The memory arrived soon, they sent me a scanner (to double check exactly what memory i needed/wanted!). They did all the hard work so i didn't have too! [:D]
I bought 2 x 1GB sticks for my PC, it's old and wrinkled, But shoving the two sticks in it really gave it some welly. I'm going to wait a while til i upgrade to a newer computer maybe XP64 or Vista64, So thanks for this elksman!

Even with all these Crucial tips [:D] , it is still far too expensive compared with just getting a couple of cheap machines and hanging them on the end of my Network. [:(]

DG

I'd just like to say a few words to remember Western Digital Caviar 300GB SE16 S/N WCAPD1335519. It was a good disk drive, and served me well since I bought my first Vienna library last spring. Last night, it gave its life for this project. The small desk, in disarray, just didn't have enough space, and then, over the edge, with a bang, and the tick-tick-tick of broken platters, it transmitted its final byte. In a final act of generostiy, it gave its CoolGear SATA case to another WD drive, this one 500GB. How long does it take to re-extract this library?
[[;)]]

Hi Folks -

OK, we're not quite to the goal yet, but I've got some data:

The system: MacPro 3.0GHz 2xDual Xeon. 10GB Ram.

1) First, I loaded Fusion, which is a beta release of a virtual machine simulation platform for Mac. Commercial release this summer. Supports 64-bit OS's, like XP x64. X64 loaded easily, without a hitch, as did Syncrosoft, Teleport, and VI.

2) Downloaded a trial version of XP x64 from Microsoft (fully functional, they give you an ISO and a 120 day activation key).

Results:

1) You can create 2 virtual machines, each with its own separate 4.5GB, AND ITS OWN VIENNA KEY (you can't even share them on virtual machines,
it seems). Each machine has its own bridged IP on the gigabit LAN.

VI Standalone loads and reports 4,096 MB free

2) I loaded FX-Teleport slaves on each virtual machine. It works!

The master (in Forte, on my main DAW) recognizes the virtual slaves as independent machines, each with its own IP.

VI plug-ins load in Teleport and report 4,096 MB free.

Unfortunately, this setup is EATING processing power for LUNCH. Probabably because those processors are

* Running Mac OSX
* Running TWO virtual XP x64 machines (OS's)

before you even get to VI.

So, I thought, well the ideal thing would be if you could create 1 virtual machine with say, 9 GB and access it all in Teleport. (If this worked, then I could just go with a real XP x64 boot on the Mac.)

Someone previously posted on the FX-Teleport forum saying that Teleport had some quirk where in XP x64, each plug-in opened in its own s32-bit pace and reported 4GB free.

So, I created a virtual machine with 7 GB to see if I could break the 32-bit barrier.

When you start out, with multiple instances of VI, they report 4,096 GB. And as I loaded a 600MB preset on one, the other continued to report 4,096MB free! Wait, then again, the instance into which the 600 MB was loaded ALSO reported 4,096. Probably VI has trouble counting its memory...

Bottom line: The Server application that ties the instances together maxes out at 3.9GB. I had 6 instances all stable, together holding 3.92GB of VI samples. Some dropout issues, but I did not tweak latency. Interestingly the 2.57 GB that VI instances now reported free was very close to the OS's report of 2.63 GB. Maybe they report 4,096 until the memory avail drops below?

On trying to load the next 550 MB Preset, the VI first just balked and stopped after 22 MB.

When I ran it again, it tried, and hung the system while trickling up to 4019 MB into the 'Server' application.

So: I had hoped that perhaps, you could take advantage of some loophole miracle and get at as much memory as a 64 bit system could serve up. If this were the case, I was going to load a pure XP x64 partition on the Mac Pro and use as much RAM as my heart desired. But alas, this is not to be. Or is it?

However, I have not given up:

Christian: If I could just get two separate installations of VI running on the 64-bit XP system, each of which pointed to its own server application, I could probably get 8GB or so loaded.

Similarly, if this strategy worked ad infinitum, then the Dell PowerEdge server, which holds 64 GB of RAM, and up to 4 dual-core Xeons, could probably load the whole library in a single convenient (if expensive) rack module.

What do you all think?

Best regards,

Eric

very interesting finding, eric, and thanks for posting ....
what about this:
- run windows 2003 R2 x64 server natively
- run virtual server 2005 R2 ( free download )
- run several instances of XP x64 within virtual server

if the XEONs in the macPro are already supporting intel's virtualization technology this should reduce CPU load significantly ....
christian

Thanks Christian -

Interesting - I'll look into that. Perhaps I'm headed in the Server direction after all? I worry that they'll be loud! Dell PowerEdge with 2 QUAD Xeon's? $2,623. I have 14 days to return my Mac Pro. But here's my question: Is 64-bit VI close enough that I'm wasting my time with this? Of course, when 64 bit comes, it will just work better, but I'm curious...

I'll post any further results!

Best regards,

Eric

all i can reply is that it has always been VSL's policy not to announce something which is not already on it's final path to release ...

btw: the dell looks good - to bad i didn't find any info about the chipset (but i'd assume its some intel 5000 because one can choose between PCIe and PCI-X) ... though PowerEdge™ PE2950 SATA 2 x core 2 quad 2,66 8 x 2 GB 667MHz onboard Raid backplane 6 x SAS für 3,5" no harddisks no OS ... EUR 10.600 .... pfffff ... i could get 10 shuttle XPC core 2 duo 1,87 2 GB for that ...

Dear Christian -

Virtual Server does not support 64-bit guests, unfortunately...

Q. Does Virtual Server 2005 support 64-bit processors?

A. Virtual Server 2005 R2 runs on both 32-bit and 64-bit (x64) host operating systems. It supports both AMD64 and Intel IA-32e/EM64T (x64) processors. Note that Virtual Server 2005 R2 does not support Itanium (IA-64) processors. Earlier versions of Virtual Server run on x64-based hardware provided it is running a 32-bit version of a supported host operating system.

Note that Virtual Server 2005 R2 requires that guest operating systems be 32-bit.

Not sure what to try next. more later...

Regards,

Eric

what a weird idea! really. why didnt you did that on the real pc side? you dont need that special memory fully buffered memory is very cheap now. you get 2gb stickt for about 200€ you can easily find boards with 8 slots. besides this you could have more luck with intenl the vanderpool virtualization. but to be onest this does not sound like much luck either. why dont you just try to opene regular 32 bit aplication under 64 bit xp like forte, v-stack, kore and what ever. forte is laa aware and its possible to load in about 3,7gb. in v-stack and kore you could load up another 3,8gb then there are a couple other you could try. or you simply write a bat and load up 100 instances of the vsl-vi`s [:)]

i am at the same problem right now, but i definatly would not buy a mac to do pc stuff (actually i am writng this on a macbook under xp, but that another story)

hmmm, that's weired ... here it says something different:

@Another User said:

Supported Operating Systems: Windows Server 2003 R2 Datacenter Edition (32-Bit x86); Windows Server 2003 R2 Datacenter x64 Edition; Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition (32-Bit x86); Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise x64 Edition; Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard Edition (32-bit x86); Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard x64 Edition ; Windows Small Business Server 2003 ; Windows XP Service Pack 2

Supported Host Operating Systems: Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition, Enterprise Edition, or Datacenter Edition or later; Windows Server 2003 Standard x64 Edition, Enterprise x64 Edition, Datacenter x64 Edition or later versions; Windows Small Business Server 2003 Standard Edition or Premium Edition; Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 or later (for non-production use only).

if i find some time and a machine i will have to get my hands on it practically.
christian