Subject:Acid Pro 5 and Dual Core Processors

Posted by: J Psycle

Date:6/8/2005 7:36:50 PM

Ok, my system has gone absolutely haywire, so I gotta either waste money replacing parts, or just go ahead and upgrade. I've pretty much decided I'm going to upgrade with a whole new system, and I want to go big, but keep it under $1400. My main concern is squeezing the most plug-in power capabilities out of Acid Pro 5 as is financially sane.

My current (now-crippled) system:

Self built PC
Intel 3.06 Ghz 533Mhz FSB
1 GB of, i think, 266Mhz RAM
M-Audio Audiophile USB Soundcard
Jetway, Intel chipset, shitty motherboard
Western Digital ATA100 80GB HD

With this system, a typical Acid project for me, by the time I was finished, would be about 48 tracks, Waves Linear EQ and L2 on master bus, 2 or 3 instances of Waves RVerb plugins, 2 or 3 Waves Metaflangers, 1 or 2 Delays, 3-5 various compressors, and just about all tracks with 2 or 3 bands of Track EQ applied. As long as I used a fairly high latency setting on my M-Audio Audiophile USB, this would be about the breaking point before my CPU started to make Acid choke and start gapping, or even crashing.

Now, for my money, I'm trying to get a fairly decent improvement in how many plug-ins I can run, and being able to run at lower latency.

I've pretty much made up my mind on all the components I'm going to use with the exception of which CPU I want to go with.

I'm looking at doing something like this:

Sound Card: Echo Gina 3G
Motherboard: ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe [with the nForce 4 chipset, Socket 939]
RAM: 1 GB of Corsair XMS TWINX1024-3200XLPT (DDR400, dual channel,2 CAS latency, 2.2.2.5, PC-3200)
Hard Drive: Samsung Spinpoint P SATA150, 160GB
CPU Cooler: Zalman CNPS7000B-Cu CPU
Power Supply: Antec Truepower II 550 2.0 [550 Watt]
Graphics Card: I dunno yet, but it looks like it'll have to be PCI Express based. It'd be nice if it was cool for games, but basically, it just needs to be able to run two monitors at independant resolutions. Any suggestions?

So, my big question is (Sony people, please chime in on this!):

Can Acid Pro 5 even take advantage of the new dual-core CPU's that just came out?

I was looking at the new dual-core AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ and 4400+, which is really stretching my budget hard, so I'd only want to go with something like that if there's going to be a significant difference in how many plug-ins I can run before my CPU starts hitting 100% load. Significant being something like being able to run like 5 to 8 more instances of Waves RVerb or something like that.

Would I be better off just going with something like an AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego or a 4000+?

Is even that going too insanely high for the possibly nominal differences in performance I'll see between them (I do realize the difference in clock speeds and performance ratio levels out a bit at the higher range, I just don't know how this relates to VST plugin capabilities. All the benchmark tests I can find for audio are encoding tests. Is that even useful for gauging plug-in power?)

Also, last question... Any compelling reasons to go with with Intel CPU's over AMD?

I'd be grateful for all the advice I can get on this, especially from the Sony people as you guys probably would be able to predict how your software will interact with the dual-core chips better than most people.

Thanks,

J

Subject:RE: Acid Pro 5 and Dual Core Processors

Reply by: stuffedspacedog

Date:6/10/2005 9:02:07 AM

Sorry, I had posted a reply to go with Dual Opteron 250 for maximum plugins, but it may be outside your budget... if you can stretch to it I would highly recommend it, I'm happy to post my system specs if you like.

Subject:RE: Acid Pro 5 and Dual Core Processors

Reply by: J Psycle

Date:6/10/2005 4:11:26 PM

yeah, please do post it! I'd be interested in knowing what the ultimate setup would be, since I'm going way deep into the credit card anyways by the looks of things =-/

I'm just try to find out what element of a system truly maximises the amount of plug-ins you can run, as that's what's most important for the way I work. I'm kinda leaning towards the AMD Athlon 64 4000+ with the San Diego core, but can't find enough information as to whether it would be worth it to get that over a 3700+ San Diego, which is about $110 cheaper, but is only running at 200Mhz less clockspeed.

The next new detail that I'm currently agonizing over is which way to go with my RAM.

I can get 1GB of super high quality Corsair XMS, 2 CAS Latency, 2.2.2.5, dual channel memory for $190

or

2GB of Value-Select Corsair, 2.5 CAS, for $160, and seems to be rated as reliable as long as you're not overclocking.

Quality over quantity?

Dammit! This is going to take forever to put together...

Subject:RE: Acid Pro 5 and Dual Core Processors

Reply by: stuffedspacedog

Date:6/11/2005 2:29:04 AM

Here's the spec, I went for tried and trusted motherboard etc... cutting edge is always a major risk:

Case Chenbro - SR105 68: 3) 5.25", 5) 3.5" EATX. no power.
Power Supply Ahanix - SilenX 550W EPS 12V Ultra quiet 20DB
Motherboard TYAN - K8W, S2885: DUAL OPTERON/Sata/8Xagp/GBLan /1394/PCI-X
Processor AMD - OPTERON 250 2.4ghz 1mb cache pga940 processor Retail Box
Processor 2 AMD - OPTERON 250 2.4ghz 1mb cache pga940 processor Retail Box
Cooling Zalman - 2) CNPS7000-AlCu 20DB Pentium 4/AMD Heatink Fan,
very quiet. Also works on
Cooling 2 Pabst - 2) Pabst 80MM 8412NGL 10DB
Memory MaLabs - Samsung PC3200 1Gig DDR400 64X8 ECC/Register (opteron)
Memory 2 MaLabs - Samsung PC3200 1Gig DDR400 64X8 ECC/Register (opteron)
Memory 3 None
Hard Drive 1 SEAGATE - Seagate 80G ATA100/7200 Rpm ST380021A
Hard Drive 2 MAXTOR - 300G SATA 16M MX6B300S0
Hard Drive 3 MAXTOR - 300G SATA 16M MX6B300S0
Hard Drive 4 None
Hard Drive 5 Kingwin - Serial ATA removable Harddrive Bay and Tray Black
Extra Storage none
Controller None
Video Matrox - MATROX MILLENNIUM P750: 64Meg DDR 3 head DVI or analog
Video 2 None
CD/CD-RW/DVD PLEXTOR - PX708ASWBL Black 8X DVD-RW Dual Format,
40x24x40x CD-RW, 12X DVD.
CD/CD-RW/DVD 2 None
Pro Audio RME - RME Hammerfall PCI DSP card:*requires either
"Multiface" or "Digiface" brea
NIC onboard
Operating System Microsoft - WINDOWS XP Professional OEM full version
w/manual and keycode.

Subject:RE: Acid Pro 5 and Dual Core Processors

Reply by: drbam

Date:6/11/2005 7:01:15 AM

"Here's the spec, I went for tried and trusted motherboard etc... cutting edge is always a major risk:"

Impressive! So what was the final tab on this system?

drbam

Subject:RE: Acid Pro 5 and Dual Core Processors

Reply by: J Psycle

Date:6/11/2005 7:29:03 AM

Oh man! You weren't F'ing around on that one! That must have been somewhere in the $3000 range, right?

My original question though, is whether or not Acid Pro 5 can take advantage of what dual-core processing does. I know, for instance, HyperThreading doesn't really help Acid much because the software is not coded to make use of that feature. Is this different with the new generation of dual-core processors (Pentium D / Athlon 64 X2?

Subject:RE: Acid Pro 5 and Dual Core Processors

Reply by: Iacobus

Date:6/11/2005 11:15:59 AM

My original question though, is whether or not Acid Pro 5 can take advantage of what dual-core processing does. I know, for instance, HyperThreading doesn't really help Acid much because the software is not coded to make use of that feature. Is this different with the new generation of dual-core processors (Pentium D / Athlon 64 X2?

It was my understanding that ACID does take advantage of Hyper-Threading—as long as it's enabled in your system. (Some BIOS' have an option to enable or disable the feature.) I believe ACID also takes advantage of dual CPUs but the operating system must also take advantage of it as well. Windows XP Professional does, while Windows XP Home does not.

I don't know about the new dual-core CPUs; it'll probably be a bit before apps and such take advantage of it.

J Psycle: It look like the weak link in your present system is the Audiophile USB, which I believe uses USB 1.1.

USB 1.1 isn't that great for streaming digital audio due to its narrow bandwidth. I'd bet that if you upgraded to a USB 2.0, FireWire or PCI solution you wouldn't have as many problems.

Iacobus
-------
RodelWorks - Original Music for the Unafraid
Buy Instant ACID by JohnnyRoy and mD!
mD at ACIDplanet

Subject:RE: Acid Pro 5 and Dual Core Processors

Reply by: stuffedspacedog

Date:6/17/2005 8:04:58 AM

Ashamed as I am to say it, it cost close to $4,500... I also bought a pair of 19" Philips LCD monitors to go with it. Ouch baby.

Subject:RE: Acid Pro 5 and Dual Core Processors

Reply by: TRANCEBOY

Date:6/19/2005 3:06:21 PM

dual core cpu's *should* appear to xp pro (home is not supported), as any other dual cpu system.

so if Acid can take advantage of dual cpu's, then it will work.

Subject:RE: Acid Pro 5 and Dual Core Processors

Reply by: stuffedspacedog

Date:6/20/2005 6:58:02 AM

The dual CPUs definitely appear in XP Pro, and the workload is spread across both processors quite effectively. When you click ctrl-alt-delete and click the performance tab, you see two CPU usage graphs, so it's pretty easy to see what's happening. You can also assign different tasks to different processors, e.g. running Acid on one CPU and FX/VSTi on the other.

Subject:RE: Acid Pro 5 and Dual Core Processors

Reply by: StormCrow

Date:6/23/2005 6:45:09 AM

Very interesting thread guys! So it looks like my next system will be XP Pro and Opteron 275, maybe even dual Opteron 275's!