Thoughts on Xeons for DAW?

T

timthetortoise

MADE OF SANDALWOOD
I'm already thinking about a new system. This time I'm thinking of going all out and building an 8 core system. So, I'm looking for thoughts on Xeon performance in terms of DAW apps (mostly Cubase, Reaper, and Reason) and if there's any huge difference between server- and non-server-class CPUs in this application.

Setup I'm considering:
Two of these badboys
In one of these
With a couple of these

Thoughts/suggestions?
 
Xeons are going to give you alot of rendering power but generally at the cost of low latency performance. A Xeon build is not for the lighthearted either. Be prepared for some extensive testing on the system before you ever record audio on it. And its going to be loud and hot, so get a big case and lots of fans. Oh, and that looks like the old 5000 Xeon chipset, which never tested very good for Pro Audio. The 5400 has done much much better in our testing. Though we do offer Xeon systems, most people are much better suited to a single quad. The exceptions are those who need the available memory on a 64 bit system, and people doing nle video.
 
THAT'S NOT WHAT I WANTED TO HEAR!
But basically what I expected. I haven't worked with any Xeon systems since around 2003, so I figured they would have improved a bit in terms of cooling/power needs by now. Oh well, guess I'll start working on a different build. Thanks for the info!
 
lol, I actually get quite a few calls by people who see the Xeon systems and think they want to harness all that power. But most of them end up with Core2Quads and are really happy with the decision. If you really want to push the envelope, try out a DDR3 X38 board (Intels X38 is very good) using DDR1600 memory and a Q9450 or higher processor. I guarantee you get that up and running and you'll have no performance complaints.
 
What were the CPU's in the Dual Quad system Justin got? It was an almost out of the box dell precision, when the first dual quads came out
 
Hard2Hear said:
lol, I actually get quite a few calls by people who see the Xeon systems and think they want to harness all that power. But most of them end up with Core2Quads and are really happy with the decision. If you really want to push the envelope, try out a DDR3 X38 board (Intels X38 is very good) using DDR1600 memory and a Q9450 or higher processor. I guarantee you get that up and running and you'll have no performance complaints.
Click to expand...

Will be checking that out. Thanks for the heads up.
 
If you are talking about the mac eight core xeon machines, yeah they work great. But instead of paying for that you can probably get the same performance with a quad core for way less.
 
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