I think that the Fritz's question could be very useful.

When I bought my first PC I followed the vendor advises and it was a nite-mare. Then  I spended a lot of time through FORUMs and my second one was very good (4 years of heavy working without a single problem). There are many good example all around about PCs working set-ups but very few news about Workstations and Servers. As they cost a lot of money more specific examples of working set-ups should be appreciate.

I PERFECTLY KNOW that 2 computers made of the same pieces could give very different behaviours and so nobody would be guilty for suggesting!!

For example, I don't understand why 2 core CPUs and 4 core CPUs with similar speed differ so little in price (maybe because they differ so little in performance, but if it is so, why they made them,? Just to text them on our shoulders??)

Another idea, would it be a good idea to buy the same processor and everything you can find in a MAC Pro and instead to build a Xeon W XP64  PC saving a lot, (some 1000 euros) for buyng more Vienna Intruments?

Sergino

fritz, it looks like many of the pyramid machines _are_ supermicro (what else), you will find supermicro systems in many OEM products ...

i personally don't use dell because they don't provide sufficient information about the used motherboards and i don't like surprises too much.

regarding 2) i mentioned 4-core CPUs (along with intel 5000 chipsets) don't add the awaited performance increase compared with 2-core CPUs, but clearly a 4-core system (2 proc x 2 cores) is more performant than a 2-core system (1 proc x 2 cores)

for sampling only 2 x 2,66 GHz XEON should be already sufficient, even with 16 or more GB RAM - how much the harddisks will turn up as bottleneck with 40 or more instances has still to be found out (chipset, drivers, configuration, harddisk model, raid modus adds to the overall performance).

SAS and SCSI (up to 15.000 rpm) is really expensive, flash not yet available with the needed capacity, so sATA II looks like the preferred choice, again raptors are more expensive than 7.200 rpm drives but add significant performance (eg. average seektime is 4,5 ms whereas normally it is about 8.5)

christian

For what it's worth, I cannot play Chrstian Kardeis' Special Edition demo on my G5 Dual 2.7 (8GB ram) without overloading the processors at the piece's most heavily orchestrated points.  Frustrating.

I am about to build a multi-cpu system to hopefully run a nice big template with lots of flexibility, but I have my doubts, as I never seem to get the jump in performance that I expect when upgrading.   Maybe the jump to MacPros with Penryn processors (or comparable PCs) will be different.  Well see what happens this month

aplanchard, this really should be irritating - the demo runs definately on much less powerful computers without problems (AFAIR actually on a 1,8 GHz iMac), i'd recommend to check your machine and/or setup ...

christian

this sounds like we have more than a bit of fun ;-) ...

SCSI host adapter in a breakout box - i wouldn't do that, because those breakout boxes have limited throughput (usually 1 PCIe 1x spreads to 5 PCI slots), i'd rather consider to use a *real* PCIe or PCI-X SCSI host adapter to stick it directly in the macPro. i have also seen a IOI adapter with SCSI + FW800 on a single expansion card.

additionally: any new penryn motherboard should be able to access SAS disks (which is the TLA for Serial Attached SCSI) which would be the more modern and performant (and internal) solution to hold sample data (and finally less expensive than a SCSI host adapter + SCSI disks + enclosures + a lot of cables)

christian

Hi aplanchard,

Yes, I also had to freeze some percussion tracks while creating this piece. I did this on my G5 Dual 2,5 (6 GB Ram) and without the frozen tracks also my machine cannot playback this piece.

The irritating thing is that an Intel iMac or an Intel macmini with 2 GB Ram plays back the demo without all the hiccups and overload messages known from the G5 :-(

best

christian 

Hi Christian, 

 Thanks for the info.  Perhaps it is not unreasonable to expect a big performance boost when I upgrade my setup.  Fingers crossed.

The reason for the SCSI is that I already own them. All my VSL samples are on a RAID with 300GB 10K SCSI drives with my current G5 setup.  Putting the SCSI adapter card in one of the PCI slots of the Mac Pro (and not the expansion chassis) is a good idea. It will be dependent upon how happy the RME MADI interfaces for Mac Pro1 are in an expansion chassis. I should look into the possibility of repurposing these drives using SAS. Perhaps you might know this.

did you mean repurpose the SCSI disks using SAS? not possible ... SCSI = 68pin parallel, SAS is the same (serial) connector as sATA, so you had to keep them in an external enclosure connected to a host adapter.

christian

Yes, having never seen a SAS card before, I now realize that that wouldn't work.

The new Mac Pro came out today & does have SAS - but at a pretty hefty Apple-type price. I might put SAS on one machine and leave the SCSI on another just because of cost.

The other issue is that I'm waiting for the PCIe expansion chassis to become a viable product. However I could just start with the single Mac Pro for the time being.

CM, do you see any VSL issue with how I'm vizualizing the loopedback playback on the Mac Pros?

yes, SAS disks are in a similar price range than formerly SCSI - they are typically used in high performance servers.

btw: the RME MADI is also available as PCI express ... and maybe you should ask someone who tried this setup, but possibly the internal routing (VE out - MADI - logic in) can be actually done in the internal RME mixer, so leaving the 64 channels (external in) free for routing audio from macPro-2 to macPro-1

look at the specs ... Three open full-length PCI Express expansion slots One PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot Two PCI Express x4 slots

looks like you could even insert 1 SCSI hostadapter + 2 x PCIe MADI (in case the brackets/wordclock modules allow)

christian

 Well, if this turns out to be the "who-builds-the-most-expensive-system" thread ... I enjoy[H]

Since I look into building a server now, I stumbled over this:

 http://www.da-x.de/PC-Audiosysteme/8-Kern-Systeme:::844_949.html

Anybody bought one of those and wants to say something about them?

One question I asked (I know - I asked to many) is still not answered for me:

I really would like to go for an apogee sympony! But right now all I need is the Analog I/Os of Rosetta - wich leaves me with only one ADAT I/O. Is there any way to add more digital I/Os to a symphony card? If not - would it be practical to add a RME card to the G5 (in additon to symphony)?

Or would you rather go for a RME madi system then? How is latency and sound with the ADI converters compared to apogee symphony? 

CM,

My understanding from the US RME rep is that it is necessary to use the hardware i/o for the loopbacks. In other words, you can not use 64 channels for software loopback and 64 channels for audio i/o simultaneously. Each software loopback track eats up a hardware track.

Also, I haven't yet been able to find via Google any 15K 300GB SAS drives on the web. Although Apple is already offering them at $800 each. Apple's SAS RAID card is $800 also and is required if you are using the SAS drives. So that would be $3200 for a 900GB RAID. A little steep I think - especially considering the cost of the Mac Pro, monitors, 16-32GB of RAM, etc. Using an UltraSCSI, three 10K drives and an enclosure would be about half that price.

For my setup, I'll need more than the two PCIe 1.0 and one remaining PCIe 2.0 slot. So an expansion chassis is unavoidable. Unless I stick with only one Mac Pro. Then I would have only one MADI card, one SCSI card and an extra FW card for the audio interface to the G5 reverb machine.

 A Seagate ST3300655SS CHEETAH 15k 300GB SAS drive is available from Penguin Express for $477.50. See:

http://www.penguinsexpress.com/product.asp?pf_id=ST3300655SS&gkw=ST3300655SS&gad=CMmggM8DEggtbKcHVS-B1xiX_r3-AyCt79BM

A similar drive (Seagate ST3300555SS) is available at DiscountTech for $395.00. See:

http://discountechnology.com/Products/SAS-Serial-Attached-SCSI 

I've never dealt with Penguin Express or DiscountTech, so I can't vouch for either company's reliability, but their prices are the lowest I've seen so far for this drive.  

IMHO, forget the G5, not nearly enough processing power (I have a dual 2.5GHz G5 that I plan to replace with one of the new 8 processor machines - -  when 3rd party RAM becomes available at a reasonable price - - precisely because my G5 lacks sufficient processing power to use the 7GB of RAM it has.) Will make a good slave machine, no doubt.....

I will try a much less expensive SATA RAID 0 array - - with journaling turned off - - before springing for SAS (2 X 500GB SATA = $260 - $300 depending on the drives).  Also, according to Apple', the SAS option precludes using Windows on the machine. You can get 8 port cards for external SAS from ATTO. One card (for $395) is limited to RAID 0, the other (for $1095) allows many varieties of RAID (e.g. 0.1.5. etc.) An external configuration for samples would appear to allow you to use Windows on the machine as well as OSX.

See:

http://www.attotech.com/sashostadaptertechnology.html 

stevesong,

Thanks for the links. I'll check them out.

Hmm, checked out those drives in that Discount Tech link. Interesting stuff... The drive for $395/ea., the Seagate ST3300555SS is 15K but the fine print sez 'limited to to 10K performance'. The Seagate ST3300655SS is called a 15K.5 drive and its fine print doesn't indicated any 10K-type performance issue. It's $505/ea.

So it's about $100 more per drive but sounds like a safer bet if I'm paying all this money for the best performance.

Wish I knew more about these things before I spring for some.

Edit:

Here's more... The Penguin drive is the 15K.5 - for $477.55

 Jack:

You might want to wait a little before springing for an SAS system. Remember that a two drive 1 Terabyte SATA RAID 0 that will cost you $250-300 is about twice as fast as a single drive, a three drive RAID 0, 3 times as fast, etc. RAID 0 seems ok for sample streaming since you don't need to worry about data loss - - if a drive fails the data on the whole RAID 0 array is lost, but since this data is on the DVDs you simply reinstall it. Even better if, as I did, you made disk images of the DVDs on a hard drive and installed them from there. Once you've done this, installation or reinstallation is much faster than from the DVDs.  

 Good news on the RAM front. Other World Computing is offering 800MHz ECC RAM for the new machines at prices only slightly higher than charged for the 667MHz RAM used by the previous generation of machines.

Prive Comparison:

16 GB (8 X 2GB):

Apple: $3500    Other World Computing $699 

16 GB (4 X 4 GB):

Apple: $4300    Other World Computing $1399

32 GB  (8 X 4 GB):

Apple: $9100    Other World Computing: $2750

the link for Other World Computing is:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/Mac-Pro-Memory

Other reputable 3rd party suppliers are likely to offer competitive pricing. (I checked TransIntl but the pricing listen on the site appears incorrect at the moment since everything from 4GB to 32 GB is shown as having the same price - - check later in the day.) The link for TransIntl is

http://www.transintl.com/store/category.cfm?Category=2725&RequestTimeOut=500

I hope this is useful. 

Hi Stevesong,

Thanks for the links and the reminder about the RAM speed. Good stuff.

The main goal is rotational speed in order to access all those samples. HIgher throughput is good but secondary. I am quite happy with the new speed standards on buss, RAM and PCI cards. Each of those things should help incrementally to allow all of us to use more computer resources for sample playback.

In my particular case, If I want to access the 64 channel internal loopback within Mac Pro1 and 64 channels external replay from Mac Pro2 I will want all the resources I can muster to let Mac Pro1 (the host for Logic) go as far as it can before it begins to choke.

Looking forward to more good links from you. Thanks a ton.