Configuring Core i7 Machine

[vibrato]

I have just got my new Core i7 2.93 Ghz machine with 12 GB Kingston RAM and ASUS P6T Deluxe

First - its hotter than Core 2 Quad and so is the motherboard. But I am guessing thats fine. CPU runs at 42 degrees idle and jumps to 65 degrees at 60% in Cubase 5 with around 44 Instances of RoomWorks with a 4 second reverb.

Motherboard is at 42-45 degrees idle. It seems fine but its definitely hotter than Core 2 Quad and P35 chipset.

Were any of you guys using any special Cooling fans etc? I am using the Cosmos 1000 chasis - supposed to be good enough..!

Also - Is Hyper Threading supposed to be switched off for better performance?

Thanks.

Best,

Tanuj.

[civilization 3]

the steinberg knowledge base, as of, what, March, tells to turn off hyperthreading, which is hard to do here on OSX.

They go so far as to say MacPro is a bad idea basically, for Cubase. But, I've seen my activity monitor which shows the load fairly evenly distributed among 12 and more cores, and GOOD performance overall. Go figure.

[DG]

@civilization 3 said:

the steinberg knowledge base, as of, what, March, tells to turn off hyperthreading, which is hard to do here on OSX.

They go so far as to say MacPro is a bad idea basically, for Cubase. But, I've seen my activity monitor which shows the load fairly evenly distributed among 12 and more cores, and GOOD performance overall. Go figure.

 

Steinberg has probably had a few machines where Hyperthreading didn't work well. However, for the rest of the world it works very well. Leave it on, unless you get problems.

Regarding SB and Mac, I think that it has finally been realised that one of the main problems with performance is that it is very difficult to turn off Speedstep, and this is causing spiking at low latencies. With the laptops it is (apparently) possible to do, and this improves performance greatly.

DG

[cm]

i didn't read that knowledgebase article, but an important difference should be mentioned:

- for XEON 3000, 5000 - 5400, core2duo, core2quad and older processors you _should_ disable hyperthreading

- for i7 or XEON 5500 processors you can safely enable it (resp. leave it enabled)

the design of processors and method how hyperthreading is implemented has changed with the nehalem processors.

christian

[DG]

For the truth according to Steinberg, you should read [URL=http://knowledgebase.steinberg.net/71_1.html]this.[/URL]

For the truth according to the rest of the world, you should read [URL=http://forum.dawbench.com/showthread.php?t=1104&page=10]this.[/URL]

[cm]

 thanks for posting the links ... hmmm the steinberg article covers a wide range, from plugins capable of running on a maximum of 2 processors to massive paralell computing ...

unfortunately our i7 systems are *out of office* currently, but testing C4/5 + MIR on a single machine is on our agenda (MIR needs to have HT enabled on i7 computers for best performance)

DAWbench denies access ... so i'll patiently wait until my account gets activated.

christian

[cm]

does it create folders like /AFH4ZNB/ and autorun.inf files? then it might be a TR/Crypt.FKM.Gen or similar ...

attention: this one would spreads also across drives, USB sticks and network shares, some of them infect mp3 and wav files (add themselves to the file)

disable autorun for your system, remove all shares (better the network cable) and scan your system with eg. avira personal (free)

good luck, christian