Just wondering how compatible a dual Intel XEON workstation would be with
audio apps like Cubase.

Also, I believe you can run a dual XEON with hyperthreading.. meaning the OS
'sees' 4 CPUs!
Anyone know how compatible this would be to our own niche applications??
Typically these boxes are used for servers.

cheers!

zoop

Just found this.. looks promising for Audio apps:
http://www.tomshardware.com/motherbo...-13.html#audio



"Zooper" wrote in message
...
Just wondering how compatible a dual Intel XEON workstation would be with
audio apps like Cubase.

Also, I believe you can run a dual XEON with hyperthreading.. meaning the
OS
'sees' 4 CPUs!
Anyone know how compatible this would be to our own niche applications??
Typically these boxes are used for servers.

cheers!

zoop

You can trust Tom's Hardware. They go through some pretty extensive
testing.

In case you didn't know, AMD has a "Producer's Group" that exclusively uses
dual AMD 64 Opterons and seem to be liking them, but then we don't know
whether these guys actually bought the units or had them supplied by AMD.
I'm running one of my machines with an Athlon 64 and it's doing a good job.
My other system is an XP 1600+ and for audio it does everything I've ever
asked of it.

Somewhere inbetween lies the truth about how any of these would work for
you.

--


Roger W. Norman
SirMusic Studio

"Zooper" wrote in message
...

Just found this.. looks promising for Audio apps:

http://www.tomshardware.com/motherbo...-13.html#audio



"Zooper" wrote in message
...
Just wondering how compatible a dual Intel XEON workstation would be
with
audio apps like Cubase.

Also, I believe you can run a dual XEON with hyperthreading.. meaning
the
OS
'sees' 4 CPUs!
Anyone know how compatible this would be to our own niche applications??
Typically these boxes are used for servers.

cheers!

zoop

"Zooper" wrote in message
...
Just wondering how compatible a dual Intel XEON workstation would be with
audio apps like Cubase.

Also, I believe you can run a dual XEON with hyperthreading.. meaning the
OS
'sees' 4 CPUs!
Anyone know how compatible this would be to our own niche applications??
Typically these boxes are used for servers.

cheers!

zoop


Offhand, I don't know of any windows based apps that are multi-proc capable.
Anyway, it'd be overkill.

jb

If you have the money, a dual CPU machine could make sense even if the
primary application doesn't support dual CPU.

By allowing all the system and background services and activities run on one
CPU and the core application run on the other, you can really improve
performance of the core application. Also, several DAWs run multiple apps at
the same time, such as Gigastudio AND Cubase/Protools. These could be
running on different CPUs.



"reddred" wrote in message
...

"Zooper" wrote in message
...
Just wondering how compatible a dual Intel XEON workstation would be
with
audio apps like Cubase.

Also, I believe you can run a dual XEON with hyperthreading.. meaning
the
OS
'sees' 4 CPUs!
Anyone know how compatible this would be to our own niche applications??
Typically these boxes are used for servers.

cheers!

zoop


Offhand, I don't know of any windows based apps that are multi-proc
capable.
Anyway, it'd be overkill.

jb

"flint" wrote in message
...
If you have the money, a dual CPU machine could make sense even if the
primary application doesn't support dual CPU.

By allowing all the system and background services and activities run on
one
CPU and the core application run on the other, you can really improve
performance of the core application. Also, several DAWs run multiple apps
at
the same time, such as Gigastudio AND Cubase/Protools. These could be
running on different CPUs.

Exactly. Even an ordinary dual CPU helps a lot because one CPU can handle
the hardware interrupts while the other is still available for applications.
Dual Xeon HT servers can really move some data around.

Just got four of these at work, man I'd love to pick one up for recording!
http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/s...proliantdl360/

Sean

Sean Conolly wrote:
Exactly. Even an ordinary dual CPU helps a lot because one CPU can handle
the hardware interrupts while the other is still available for applications.
Dual Xeon HT servers can really move some data around.

Plus there are a few other benefits:

(1) Latency can be reduced. If you have two CPUs, there is a higher
chance one of them is sitting idle. If there are no idle CPUs
and a task becomes runnable (because an I/O completes or whatever),
then the task cannot run until whatever's using the CPU either
gives up the CPU or its timeslice expires. With a dual CPU system,
there's a much greater chance your task can immediately start
running on an available CPU.

(2) Miscellaneous crap will have less of an impact on real-time tasks.
Let's say you forgot and left a web browser open in the background
while you were recording something. And let's say the web browser
is on one of those pages that refreshes every 30 minutes and reloads
all its graphics (a news site or something). On a dual-CPU system,
that web browser can probably do all that unexpected processing
without interfering with the recording, because there is another
processor it can run on.

Anyway, the new trend in processors is to put two cores on one die.
That means when you buy a system a few years from now, it'll be a
two-CPU system, even though it only has one chip. At that time,
there will be a big trend to ensure software takes advantage of
multiple CPUs.

Also, I'm not a Windows expert so I don't know if this typically
happens with Windows apps, but one way of writing a program is
to have one thread running the GUI (drawing the windows, menus,
graphics, etc.) and one or more other threads doing the actual
work. All apps that do this should be able to benefit from
multiple processors.

- Logan

"flint" wrote in message
...
If you have the money, a dual CPU machine could make sense even if the
primary application doesn't support dual CPU.

By allowing all the system and background services and activities run on
one
CPU and the core application run on the other, you can really improve
performance of the core application. Also, several DAWs run multiple apps
at
the same time, such as Gigastudio AND Cubase/Protools. These could be
running on different CPUs.


Do the math and ask yourself if it's worth the money. How long before you
replace the box anyway?

jb

"reddred" wrote in message
news
"flint" wrote in message
...
If you have the money, a dual CPU machine could make sense even if
the primary application doesn't support dual CPU.

By allowing all the system and background services and activities
run on one CPU and the core application run on the other, you can
really improve performance of the core application. Also, several
DAWs run multiple apps at the same time, such as Gigastudio AND
Cubase/Protools. These could be running on different CPUs.

Do the math and ask yourself if it's worth the money. How long before
you replace the box anyway?

Other things to consider is whether a single CPU is any kind of a serious
bottleneck.

I might imagine that there are more than a few people who go the dual CPU
route, but have a single hard drive.

From: "Arny Krueger"

Other things to consider is whether a single CPU is any kind of a serious
bottleneck.

I might imagine that there are more than a few people who go the dual CPU
route, but have a single hard drive.

A single CPU is a serious bottleneck. I max out my CPU usage on all but the
most spartan of projects. I'm disinclined to constantly have to apply effects
offline and hope that I don't need to tweak the effect later. I do have 2 hard
drives though! At one point I was using a RAID setup, but found that to be
overkill. The extra HDD throughput simply wasn't needed. Processing power
will always be in a shortage. CPU's will ever increase in power, and plugins
(and users) will increase their demand accordingly.
-John Vice
www.summertimestudios.com

Zooper wrote:
Just wondering how compatible a dual Intel XEON workstation would be
with audio apps like Cubase.

Also, I believe you can run a dual XEON with hyperthreading.. meaning
the OS 'sees' 4 CPUs!
Anyone know how compatible this would be to our own niche
applications?? Typically these boxes are used for servers.

cheers!

zoop

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for posts by Dave Haynie.

cheers

geoff