Dual and Quad Core Processors

urobolus.com

urobolus.com

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So I'm thinking about upgrading my music comp again in a few months and got to looking at the new (newer) Intel CPU's that came out as supposedly they blow everything away.

So, I go over to www.pricewatch.com to see what I'm looking at (I'm looking at both the QX6700 quad and the X6800 dual MB combo's, their top two supposedly). I get to reading the specs on the MB that you can get with the QX6700 and it says 'CPU supported - dual core'???? Am I correct in assuming that to get the quad core now would be a waste of money as there are no motherboards that support all of its cores? I guess that would explain its lack luster benchmarks with the X6800.

Thanks.
 
There are motherboards that do support the quad core, and they are becoming more readily available as time goes on. As for the benchmarks, there are many reasons as to why it's not showing better benchmarks (which should only be used sparingly as actually using it would be better). One thing is the bottleneck of information in the bus from using 4 cores and not upping the FSB enough. Then you have to look at hard drives, which are the slowest to improve in technology (other than capacity). HD speed increases haven't been up to par with current technology, not letting you see the full potential of the cpu. There's not many programs that utilize 4 cores just yet, so your best bet is to get a motherboard that supports the quad core (gigabyte makes some great ones) and get a 6600 and wait for a while as the price decreases and performance increases.

BTW they are not full quad cores, it's dual dual-core processors on 1 die.
 
Most updated 975 or 965 boards *should* support the quads. The best performing of the bunch are the Intel and Asus 975 based boards. Sonar, Nuendo, Cubase, and Reaper will all take advantage of all 4 cores (in fact they take advantage of all 8 cores on a dual quad Xeon system). The performance advantage is pretty huge on every audio benchmark I have done or seen. If youre into lots of plugins and vsti's its great.
 
Last question I have on the topic...

Intel has these Dual-Cores that measure the FSB in MT/s so if something is 667 MT/s its 667,000,000 transfers a second- if I'm not mistaken. How does MT/s relate to MHz; is it significantly better? Also, for the system type of their processors they have abbreviations of DP and MP: anyone know what that means? They don't list a definition. :confused:

Thanks agian for the help.

I don't know if this will work, but I posted a link to the comparison of the processsors I was looking at.


http://indigo.intel.com/compare_cpu...887287,886985,883341&familyID=5&culture=en-US
 
Its not important. The old Xeons are useless for Pro Audio. You'd be better off with dual Opterons. The new xeon is totally different architecture. Frankly, unless you're live tracking with over 128 simultaneous tracks you shouldn't even be bothering yourself with Xeon information.
 
Thanks again for the help. Some of this is new territory for me, I didn't realize there were so many options out there. On one hand I could get something super nice, but super expensive and probably never utilize close to 40% of it, or every 12-months have to upgrade my system to keep up with the latest and greatest. Money really isn't an issue, but it is if i'm wasting it.

This is all theoretical, but what would you guys recommend if I need to track 26 tracks at once, no plug-ins? Or, have 40+ tracks, and lets say 3 VST plug-ins or soft synths (through in some pretty system hungry ones) on each channel, and needing to track one channel in addition? This is just a worst case scenario, not a working one, but just thought I'd see what you'd recommend.

Thanks again!
 
Reaper actually handles 8 core better than anything else on the market when you're using XP. When you're using Vista, the game changes and Sonars optimizations actually start to take effect and it handles them well too. While Cubase and Nuendo do support 4-8 cores, theres a bug they've recognized that loads them wrong. They said they won't fix it in the current version, though, and you'll have to pay when they upgrade for it to be (possibly) fixed.

All I have stated here is through actual testing on multiple systems, not word of mouth or anything I read on the internet.
 
How do things run on XP x64?

Edit:

Also what is your opinon on paging file usage? A lot of computer techs will say you should get rid of it if you have a lot of memory so that the system doesn't use the hardrive as RAM and slow it down.

However, some recording websites say you should enable it, but keep it at 1.5x-2x what your physical RAM is. It seems to me it'd make more sense to turn it off to force the system to use RAM that it isn't utilizing with PF enabled. I heard Vista has correct this problem; will it make for a better DAW OS?
 
Hard2Hear said:
Reaper actually handles 8 core better than anything else on the market when you're using XP. When you're using Vista, the game changes and Sonars optimizations actually start to take effect and it handles them well too. While Cubase and Nuendo do support 4-8 cores, theres a bug they've recognized that loads them wrong. They said they won't fix it in the current version, though, and you'll have to pay when they upgrade for it to be (possibly) fixed.

All I have stated here is through actual testing on multiple systems, not word of mouth or anything I read on the internet.
Click to expand...

Hate revive this old thread, but it'll be a while before I can test multiple multi-cores... which DAW performs best on a 64-bit, preferably XP x64? Thanks for the help.
 
Sonar has the most xp64 optimizations. I never recommend xp64 to anyone. Very few third party plugins are compatable and few sample libraries. Anything with a dongle has issues. Also, there is still a limited number of audio interfaces that work correctly in 64. Most developers are too busy trying to catch up to Vista to worry about xp64 compatability.

Bottom line is use what works and let other people be the guinea pigs. Pro studios who make money from their DAW use whats proven and tested and won't fail during a session, not what the flavor of the day happens to be.
 
Hard2Hear said:
Sonar has the most xp64 optimizations. I never recommend xp64 to anyone. Very few third party plugins are compatable and few sample libraries. Anything with a dongle has issues. Also, there is still a limited number of audio interfaces that work correctly in 64. Most developers are too busy trying to catch up to Vista to worry about xp64 compatability.

Bottom line is use what works and let other people be the guinea pigs. Pro studios who make money from their DAW use whats proven and tested and won't fail during a session, not what the flavor of the day happens to be.
Click to expand...

I guess I'll probably stick with XP for now. It will probably be a while until I can get dual-quads or dual-duals and by that time I'm sure Vista x64 will be running better and have more support. Guess I'll switch then. THanks for the help!
 
Hard2Hear said:
Most updated 975 or 965 boards *should* support the quads. The best performing of the bunch are the Intel and Asus 975 based boards. Sonar, Nuendo, Cubase, and Reaper will all take advantage of all 4 cores (in fact they take advantage of all 8 cores on a dual quad Xeon system). The performance advantage is pretty huge on every audio benchmark I have done or seen. If youre into lots of plugins and vsti's its great.
Click to expand...

What about protools LE? I'm buying a quad core next week unless something doesn't run smooth with pt
 
urobolus.com said:
Also what is your opinon on paging file usage? A lot of computer techs will say you should get rid of it if you have a lot of memory so that the system doesn't use the hardrive as RAM and slow it down.

However, some recording websites say you should enable it, but keep it at 1.5x-2x what your physical RAM is. It seems to me it'd make more sense to turn it off to force the system to use RAM that it isn't utilizing with PF enabled. I heard Vista has correct this problem; will it make for a better DAW OS?
Click to expand...

It is actually near impossible to eliminate OS paging in Windows. Windows, from NT forward, was built from the ground up to use disk swap space. Just setting the pagefile to a low value doesn't work very well, in my experience.

You can minimize OS disk usage, but your performance will depend on a lot of different factors. One method is to use a RAMdisk program, which effectively sets aside a large block of RAM to use as a disk, and then you can direct your page file to it. I have tried it with a 2GB RAMdisk, but eventually went back to a normal HDD pagefile. 0+1 RAID is another alternative, if you have the money.

With a quality hard drive on a SATA or other dedicated bus, page file lag is pretty much a non-issue anyway, I've found.
 
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