Our new system. Any thoughts? [Archive]

ted

05-27-2007, 03:43 AM

I'd love to get opinions on the system I'm ordering. It should be a screamer, at least for a good year or so. :D

Windows x64 Operating system.
SuperMicro X7DAE+ 64bit XEON 1333fsb
Dual Dual core.
1,000watt power supply.
4 Gigs of Ram. (I could go as much as 32 gig with this board, but I don't know if more memory would help and how) ???

GeForce 8800 GTX video card 768MB

DRIVES: SATA 300 16MB buffer mem., 1-120 gig OS drive and 2, 250gig drives. One mostly for applications and one for client data, i.e. EDL's, GFX etc.

2, 2 Terabyte 4 Drive SATA 300 arrays on a Highpoint Rocket Raid hardware Controller, likely at raid 0. (I should get a few streams of RT HD with this).

Likely a Blue-Ray DVD Drive Burner.

Haven't decided on 1-32' or 2-20+" monitors???

I had planned to hold off a while, but an upcoming HD job forced me to do it now. And I'm excited.
If anyone has any thoughts let me know. Mostly on the 4 gig system memory, and of any bottlenecks I might not be seeing. At this point a few more bucks would be worth getting all the power from these components.

But I'm fairly confident this will be a system that will show SpeedEDIT's capabilities pretty well and hopefully work for VT5 when it's released.
I also hope this keeps me from having computer envy for a while. :D

By the way, I am having this built by my local VT dealer. It's the fastest one they've built so far.

JackJ

05-27-2007, 06:56 AM

Wow, you weren't messin' around! Looks like quite a build. I think the main thing at this point would be making sure its all set up optimally all down the line (matching memory speed, populating in pairs, raid controllers not fighting each other, getting all the 64-bit drivers, paring down the OS, etc.) and maybe double checking everything with a voltage calculator. That board says it wants a minimum of 500W to be happy, and then that vid card, driving a screen that big, plus 11 drives and any other accessories...never thought I'd say this...but is 1000 watts going to be enough? heh.

They've hopefully figured in some likely peripherals in their estimate, but outside of a wonky memory stick, the biggest headaches I've run into have been over systems that had almost, but not quite enough power (or poor quality power). Care to make us all drool a bit more by giving the speed on the processors? And if you're setting up those raids on card anyway, maybe take advantage of the onboard raid to either speed up or protect the system drive?

bbeanan

05-27-2007, 09:47 AM

Take a look at this company for your monitors:
http://digitaltigers.com/

They have some really cool muti monitor set-ups and are pretty cheap (well as comparied to other muti monitor set-ups I've seen)

Bobt

05-27-2007, 12:52 PM

With that monster you should think of another graphics card an
three 22 inch monitors (22 inch wise screen are the 299 kind currently)
I imagine you are getting dual Quads.
3 monitors will truely impress :)
Bob

Jim_C

05-27-2007, 11:48 PM

Hi Ted,

My thoughts would be (I think kinda like Bob's) get one or 2 monitors for the SE/VT interface but then get a completely separate montor (nicest of the 3) to put the SE video window.

You lucky Bast$#@ :beerchug:

ted

05-28-2007, 12:45 AM

Thanks ya'll. I wondered the same thing about the 1K PS. I'm assured it is OK, But I'll bug my dealer again to make sure. I originally suggested a couple PS's, but he's pretty sure this will do.
I've also heard many frustrated users get relief after upgrading their power supply.

Yeh, the monitor situation is still to be worked out. I love the digital tigers stuff but I'm leaning towards just two monitors. I guess I'll have a couple more nights reading through the internet.

Thanks for the feedback. It's almost like Christmas in June.

ScorpioProd

05-28-2007, 02:15 AM

I'd go with a pair of 24" Dell monitors.

rycar_m

05-28-2007, 10:26 AM

I use to have dual 19 inch monitors but i tried a 26 inch model and it blew me away. the increased length of the timeline, made work a lot easier not only because i could see ferther up and down the timeline and have a big picture but also because it was bettter for my eyes, less strain. i do have a second monitor but use it rarely the real estate on the 26 is so awesome i would imagine a dell 30 would be orgasmic.

ric marty

bbeanan

05-28-2007, 10:28 AM

I just did a set-up that was:

4 19" LCD
2 22" LCD Widescreen
1 24" LCD Widescreen
1 30" LCD Widescreen

all off of 2 systems... has nothing to do with VT as the system if for a Stock Market Trader. It is a pretty cool sight... not exactly what I would have done for my system but we used the monitors he already had and added a few.

rycar_m

05-28-2007, 10:37 AM

Bobt

05-28-2007, 10:39 AM

Well I have seen the Apples large 30 inch Cinema and was blown away.
First time I had to move my head to scan the monitor. And for a video
display well. Thats like a medium size TV next to you.
But hey truth be told I was thinking about the $..

Bob

imagic

05-28-2007, 10:51 AM

I'm using twin 24", which are 1920x1200 native... the logic being that I can use one of them to preview full resolution HD, yet the price stays affordable for having such a huge desktop. I hate the law of diminishing returns, 30" will have to wait a year... too expensive.

ted

05-28-2007, 12:41 PM

Jim_C

05-28-2007, 02:05 PM

I'm probably going with 2 22"'s.
The options and cost of 1920 X 1200 is limiting. Is it possible or practical to mix a lower res AND a 1920 X 1200? Mostly using the 1920 X 1200 for the SE monitor.
I think not, but would love to hear otherwise.
So many options???

Yes it is possible.

But go ahead and jump to the 24". You can get Dell 24" refurbs for $530 thru the Dell outlet. They come with the exact same warranty and coverage as the new ones.

I love mine.

Or if you insist on buying new, I bought a 15% off Dell monitor coupon thru ebay for 2 bucks.

imagic

05-28-2007, 02:06 PM

You could easily mix a 1920x1200 and a 1600x1200 monitor. More annoying are mismatched vertical resolutions, but still doable.

I'm probably going with 2 22"'s.
The options and cost of 1920 X 1200 is limiting. Is it possible or practical to mix a lower res AND a 1920 X 1200? Mostly using the 1920 X 1200 for the SE monitor.
I think not, but would love to hear otherwise.
So many options???

JackJ

05-29-2007, 05:31 AM

Good point on the drives. Its amazing sometimes how two drives with almost identical factory specs can have differing performance. We use mostly Hitatchi's, since when we were putting everything together, I saw several benchmarks that put their performance ahead by a significant margin, all else being equal, and they've been really reliable as well. So on any components where you might have a variety of vendors to choose from, it might be worthwhile to hunt up some bench tests and see if there might be another brand out there with similar specs and cost that will be a little faster or more reliable for you. (mostly the hard drives and ram, but even all GeForce 8800's are not necessarily created equal).

And if you can get a case setup and power supply with as many of the fans as possible being 120mm, the difference in air movement and quiet operation can be considerable.

NVentive

05-29-2007, 10:18 AM

We've got a pair of 22's, there's so much screen to work with that we sometimes loose our mouse pointer and have to go looking for it.....

SBowie

05-29-2007, 10:36 AM

We've got a pair of 22's, there's so much screen to work with that we sometimes loose our mouse pointer and have to go looking for it.....I find the same thing. There's a mouse option in Windows that does a sort of 'reverse-radar ping' animated concentric circle around the mouse pointer when you hold down the CTRL key for a moment.

tfrank

05-29-2007, 11:07 AM

I am just curious for some feedback. In discussions of LCD monitors, I never see any mention as to people's views of such issues as refresh rates, contrast ratios' etc. When I check the Apple web site for the specs on their Cinema series for example, many of their technical specs are inferior to monitors that cost considerably less. What am I missing or overlooking?

doc debolt

05-29-2007, 03:06 PM

right now i've got a 30" apple cinema display with a dell 21"WFP rotated 90degrees for my setup.....

total of 3760x1600 resolution -

i did have dual 30"s at one time - but it was almost too much monitor -

doc

BeniToaster

05-29-2007, 07:41 PM

Hola
Right now I have this system with SpeedEDIT and I'm able to edit HD uncompressed 1080i with no problems at all, on a QX Core 2 Extreme 4 cores 2 gig ram 1 Nvidia 8800 GTS on a EVGA 680i motherboard with 6 Western Digital 500gig ys Hardrives for video in RAID 0 a Hitachi 320 IDE system drive, and a Pioneer DVD burner. Multibridge Extreme.
For display I have 2 30inch HP LP3065 monitors capable of displaying full 2k.
The only problem I see is that in the current place where I have set up the monitors they are too close, but with proper distance this are the best monitors to use at 2k resolution, better than Dell and Apple, because they have a 1000 to 1 contrast instead of the 700 to 1 from Apple and Dell.
For sound I have a Sony Dolby reciever and 5.1 monitoring.
Hope this helps

ted

05-30-2007, 02:21 PM

New Question...in theory.
Is it better to install the operating system, (win X64), on one drive and the programs/applications i.e. VT, SE, Photoshop, After Effects etc, on another drive that would sometimes also be used for EDL's, GFX etc?
Or the OS and Programs on the same huge drive?

I've heard both ways over the years, but I gotta tell the builder what way to go. In all I'll have 1 OS drive, 2 data drives, and 2 2TB 4 drive arrays. All will be SATA ll 16mb.

Thanks for all the feedback. This is a great community! :thumbsup:

JackJ

05-30-2007, 02:49 PM

Personally, I've always gone for all major programs on the OS drive. I tried installing some on an off drive for a while (mostly for lack of space), but didn't really notice any difference, other than the occasional hassle when some inflexible program or plugin/update wanted everything to be in C: Program Files.

Freeing the programs from the OS drive (or at least the OS partition) can make it easier to keep any default saves that put themselves in the install folder, personal settings, etc if you have to format and reinstall windows, but to get the programs to work again after that is usually going to require reinstalling them anyway, or at least having a backup of the registry to remind the new Window's that they're there, which can involve its own adventures. If you're comfortable with Ghost or some other drive recovery software, my vote would be to have all your core software and settings in one nice little partition you can recreate, independent of all the other data.

bbeanan

05-30-2007, 02:55 PM

God... having spent the last week of my life trying to recover data... Here is my new recommendation

System Drive
2- 320 gig 7200 rpm SATA drives set up in a RAID1 mirroring Install OS and Programs here (NO DATA GOES HERE)
Data / Working Drives
3 – 500 gig 7200 rpm SATA drives set-up in a RAID5 with Distributed Parity (you can increase this up to 14 hard drives for more storage but you data is safe from loss)

Last do an additional SATA array again set-up as RAID5 (or even RAID5+1) to allow full drive images to be created of all drive during the night. A great program for this (which is free) is DriveImage XML which can be found here: http://www.runtime.org/

The reason for the above is #1 data security, #2 if windows completely crashes (which is what happen to my me) you can pull the other drives and continue to work as you reinstall windows and all of your software, which can take days (in my case I’m still doing it, after 3 days)

Hard drives are cheap so back up back up back up…. (I just got 500 gig 7200 rmp SATA drives for $150)

ScorpioProd

05-30-2007, 04:59 PM

In the old days a separate partition for the OS used to be recommended... BUT, creating multiple partitions on a drive results in a slight speed penalty, or so I've heard.

So, nowadays I'd go with OS and programs on one drive (or drive system) and video, audio, and image data on another drive system.

I don't even worry about putting my swap file for the OS on a separate drive, it works fine on the OS drive, IMHO. I do keep my swap file locked in size to minimize fragmentation.

It's just simply drives are so much bigger and faster than they used to be.

ted

05-30-2007, 11:07 PM

Thanks guys. That helps. How often does everyone agree on anything! :hey:
Eugene, I guess I remember "the old days" when it was recommended to have them on different drives too.
Now nobody disagree with this plan! :)

ted

06-01-2007, 01:21 AM

I'm screwed. Well, at least I found out early enough.
After finding a way to get everything on the SM Mother Board, I found that the 8800GTX takes 2 slots! :thumbsdow
Now I've been spoiled by the specs and gotta settle for less.
Why don't these manufacturerers put more slots. I've always filled my systems before even getting it delivered!
Any suggestions on GFX cards? Heck, maybe MB's?

rbartlett

06-01-2007, 03:12 AM

I think for NLE 2D, 2.5D and a good fat amount of 3D video work you'll be as satisfied with a slimmer 8600 nvidia card (maybe a smaller ATI but the DX10 ring-fenced units aren't about below the X2900). Whatever you choose from the latest breed, the drivers could be a bit of a dance about. Be ready for a bit of nuisance over the first few months of these latest gen cards.

Anyway, reading the manual the PCI-express X16 with a fat gfx-card in it will overspill into the "One SIM Low Profile IPMI slot".

ie nvidia 8800 cards need X16 lanes of PCIexpress to work, they (so far) don't like a X16 physical slot with less lanes presented electrically. So (using the manual's numbering) the gfx card goes into slot 6 and overspills into slot 7.

If you need more PCI slots you could break out the PCIexpress X4 into a X1-requiring expansion box. (See the MBloor VT general discussion post for details). I imagine Ted that you'll be popping the VTPro card in a PCI-X slot?

Hey Ted :- Can you please list the config (cards/slots) as it is in the plan right now?

Jim_C

06-01-2007, 12:21 PM

Yea the fat 8 line 'may' be a bit of overkill. Although I kmow you want to jump the curve instead of keep up with it.

If I remember right there was a thread here of a fella having problems with an 8 series, SE and drivers. I think it was the ILM fella.... forget his name...oh.. Bob I think.. anyway...

Also when I peruse our favorite dealers sites and use their VT/SE configurators, even choosing highest end offerings they stay in the top end of the 7 line.

Although you're still alucky bast$#@! :D

ScorpioProd

06-01-2007, 05:39 PM

Yeah, if only the rest of us could play craps as good as Ted! :hey:

wvp

06-01-2007, 07:55 PM

Put the programs on the same drive as the OS - the only advantage to doing otherwise is if you fill up the drive as squash the swap file - but drives are big enough now that shouldn't be a problem.
I'm also with Brett on your drive setup --- I don't see a full fledge backup in your setup.
I'm looking at doing a Raid 0+1 (sometimes referred to as raid 10), which is a a set of drives striped (4 in my case) and then mirrored with an identical set of 4 drives. As I understand it the only down side on this (vs. Raid 5) is if a drive goes south I have no backup until I replace the drive (and the raid gets re-mirrored). But a Raid 5 will have some performance loss, correct? (And I like the idea of a complete backup without having to run something overnight).
In any case, Ted, don't have a bang up system without a solid backup -its not pretty!

ted

06-02-2007, 01:53 AM

Thank you, ALL OF YOU!!! :thumbsup:
The latest changes...
We moved up to the SuperMicro X7DA3+
We are now using the MB's 14 ports for 13 SATA ll devices. This saves the slots that I ran out of.
(Any thoughts on this method would be GREATLY appreciated).

WinXP 64bit. Still a few months too early for VISTA for me.
XEON QUAD CORE E5335. I can add one more, but prefer to save the money until I find a bottleneck.
6 Gigs RAM.
Enermax Gallexy 1K Power supply.

1 150gig Raptor 10K SATA ll 16mb for the OS and programs. (thanks).
2 250gig SATA ll 16mb for VT/SE content and client data i.e. EDL's & GFX.
8 500gig SATA ll 16mb drives set up into 2, 2 Terabyte Raid 0 arays.
I really wanted SCSI, but I'd have to sell myself and I'm just not that pretty!

Back to the 8800GTX in the PCI Express slot! Yea!
VTPro card probably in the single 64bit 100MHz channel. (Any thoughts)???
IEEE card in the other available 64bit 133MHz slot.

Blue-ray DVD on a SATA channel.

I'm not living on the edge too much. :) We always back up to external drives as soon as we finish a project, sometimes in-between.
I don't mind this process and prefer the storage and speed.

Again thank you all for your suggestions and comments. It's times like this that friends make a huge difference! :thumbsup:

bbeanan

06-02-2007, 10:16 AM

Just keep in mind that with all hard drives there is a chance of failure... and with your 8 500 gig SATA II that actually means your chance of a unrecoverable falure is actual 8 times as likely if you only had 1 hard drive....

Not to scare you but... from Wikipedia read up on it.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID0#RAID_0

consider changing that to RAID5... I only say this becuase it just happened to my buddy with a RAID 0 set-up that was only 8 months old and he tried to make sure to get the best drives he could

JackJ

06-02-2007, 11:56 AM

One thing to consider is that the biggest performance differences in the raid levels is during writing to disks. Playback from a RAID5 is nearly as good as from RAID 0, so you can get a fair bit of disaster protection with only a minimal perfomance hit.

We've been running RAID5 (using a RAIDCore controller) on one of our Toaster machines for quite a while, and its been fast and solid. Only had one drive crash, but we were able to get back up and running quickly, and with a lot less human effort than it would have taken to recapture all the footage (we offline to hard drives for storage as well, but as you said, usually only after a project's finished...which doesn't help much if the drive goes down right before the deadline).

Anyway, food for thought.

rbartlett

06-02-2007, 03:56 PM

and do note that I was barking mad when I spoke about which slot your 8800 would overspill onto. I had it the wrong way about so share you concern somewhat over the original motherboard quoted.

All the best there Ted.

wvp

06-02-2007, 04:01 PM

...I'm not living on the edge too much. :) We always back up to external drives as soon as we finish a project, sometimes in-between.
I don't mind this process and prefer the storage and speed....
Yeah, we were doing that too last month. To bad one of the drives crashed just before the 108 hour project was completed and just after 32 hours was spent starting the next one.
Ontrack wanted a minimum of $8000 to recover the array. We opted to digitize an authored DVD of the 108hr project to make minor changes and re-do the 32 hours.
I'll take a small performance hit to save those kind of hours anyday.

Jim_C

06-02-2007, 04:05 PM

One thing to consider is that the biggest performance differences in the raid levels is during writing to disks. Playback from a RAID5 is nearly as good as from RAID 0, so you can get a fair bit of disaster protection with only a minimal perfomance hit.

Sorry to go slightly OT, but this may help Ted decide things...
What is the downfall of RAID5 over 0 besides a 'slight' performance hit.
Don't you lose half of your drive space or something like that?

And getting in Ted's corner a little (on the side of RAID 0). I have had several drives in a raid die on me, but , at least for me, it was never a sudden POOF, footage gone, I always had warnings, either thru sounds or performance wise or thru disk management, that gave me enough time to make back ups.

So I guess with a VERY diligent nightly back up of working footage, RAID 0 is a slightly safer bet.

~~Slightly....

Jim

JackJ

06-02-2007, 04:47 PM

With RAID5, one drive out of a given array is used for parity (its actually distributed across all the drives, but thats the space equivalent). So you are losing some space. If you usually work from a limited number of source tapes, and especially if you can use an EDL or some other method to quickly recapture what you've lost, RAID0 might be the way to go.

We're usually working with several different projects at a time, with a combination of fairly short turn-arounds and long-term work, so the large number of sources and the way we ingest makes RAID5 a worthwhile investment (as I said, we've only had to use it once, but I'd say that one time more than paid for it.) I've also been fortunate in the past with detecting drives that were starting to act up and getting the files off them before they went south, but this one was totally out of the blue.

One way to look at it is like an automatic backup that can keep 1.5 terabytes of data (or whatever size and number you're using in your array) on one 500gig drive. For pure speed and size, sure, the Zero is the way to go. Five is a viable option though.

ted

06-03-2007, 02:17 AM

Thanks for all your concern guys, but the speed and drive space is what I'm building this system for. I'll roll the dice! :hey: But with caution, I promise. (Watch me cry in 6 months when a drive fails) :cry: Then you can all say...I told you so dummy!

My big question is your thoughts on connecting the 11 SATA ll 16mb drives and 2 other SATA devices directly to the mother board, avoiding the need for 2 HighPoint RocketRaid controllers. There are just not enough slots on any 64bit MB's available today! But I've filled all my slots on every system I've ever purchased. :D

Have any of you done this or heard of doing this? The reading I've done looks promising, and it was highly recommended by a friend, but not fully clear. At least to me.
And thanks again guys. Maybe I'll be able to sleep once this beast is configured and delivered.

ScorpioProd

06-03-2007, 02:43 AM

Ah, Ted... The motherboard you named has 6 SATA ports on it.

Where are you getting the 14? Did you add a SATA controller card?

rbartlett

06-03-2007, 01:33 PM

There are just not enough slots on any 64bit MB's available today! But I've filled all my slots on every system I've ever purchased. :D

PCI-X aplenty:

http://www.globalspec.com/FeaturedProducts/Detail/TrentonTechnology/GraphicsClass_PCI_Express_Backplane_BPG_6600/36714/0
http://tinyurl.com/2u97pp

http://www.anewtech.net/pdf/2007152274.pdf

This company has single-board-computer solutions that accept two Clovertown (Xeon 5300 series) and you can have many variations of PCI-express X16 in combination with PCI-express, PCI-X and PCI slots.

http://www.trentontechnology.com/products/

The SBC come in at about $750 (plus CPUs and memory) and the backplanes vary depending on whether they have to break down the PCIexpress via bridges into PCI-X or PCI slots. The cases and PSU options aren't prohibitively priced either. There are also cable options to extend PCIexpress into external housings (and further break down to PCI-X or PCI). However I think we'll see a lot more of this type of kit when PCIexpress 2.0 arrives (X38 chipset LGA775 etc) as PCIexpress 2.0 specifically covers comfortably long (is that too much Pink Floyd ;) ?) connectivity to external housings.

Of course I can't qualify if any of this stuff has Windows or NewTek issues. However it is built to the same essential design as any other motherboard you might just go and try. However the stockists are rather more specialist in the overall glue-chip and interfacing market.

Perhaps system 2 could use something like this Ted? Once you've outgrown your more traditional workstation PC. ;)

bbeanan

06-03-2007, 03:31 PM

ah man.... the phone just rang from another person asking me to help them recover their data from a crashed drive... man that is 9 in two weeks!!!

My thought is since it is starting to get hot (here in Vegas... and yes it does get cold once in a while) Nevada Power boosted the power up for all of the AC units which is killing systems left and right. (I checked the voltage about 3 minutes after one of my laptop got hit and it was at 124.5 volts!)

ted

06-03-2007, 03:50 PM

Thank you guys for following this with me. I'm off to spend a couple hours by the pool with my wife. :cool:

I've been reading non-stop for days. Love the info on the internet, but a lot of conflicting info too.
After a brain rest I'm sure I'll be learning new problems by Monday. :D :compbeati
Thanks again guys, especially Richard. You always give me more hours of educational reading as well. :thumbsup:

ted

06-03-2007, 03:57 PM

Brett, just caught your post. Are you messing with me? :hey:

I agree about the clean power. I run the systems, monitors and decks all on different UPS systems. Gotta be clean!
Of all the reading I've done, the NUMBER ONE killer of drives is by far, power issues. Especially with as many drives as we use now days, gotta protect yourself.
Splash!

ldituri

06-03-2007, 04:38 PM

Ted, I have been using XP64 for over a year and to this day have trouble finding drivers especially for on board controller cards. Video cards are better but not much.
So in light of that I changed to Vista Business 64 with much better results…

ted

06-03-2007, 08:01 PM

Eugene, I heard from a dealer that you can run at least 14 to 16 SATA ll devices directly off that mother board. I hope he is right!
A controller card might give me a slight improvement, but even that gets contradidcted in my readings so it isn't night and day. And there just aren't enough slots if I go that way.
Are any of you running the drives directly off the MB? Good vs. bad?

And the system's memory just went up to 8gigs. Builder already got it so I'll deal with it.

Louie, Vista Business 64 sounds like an excellent suggestion. The MB and GFX card both claim Vista ready. That would keep me from hacking an upgrade in the next 6 mos to a year.
Have you had luck building any VT/SE systems similar to this. I could use some reasurance right now. :help:
Thanks.

ldituri

06-03-2007, 08:21 PM

"The MB and GFX card both claim Vista ready."

You need to make sure they mean vista 64...
As for that mother board I have gone away from SM for a while but hope I can return now. Super micro has had problems in the recent past and because of the poor placement of heat sinks on the chipsets it was almost imposable to a VT card in a fast slot.

Jim_C

06-03-2007, 09:33 PM

I heard from a dealer that you can run at least 14 to 16 SATA ll devices directly off that mother board. I hope he is right!

If you are still talking about the X7DA3+, you might want to check behind him.
The Supermicro site reports it as having 6.

http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon1333/5000X/X7DA3+.cfm

ted

06-03-2007, 10:32 PM

If you are still talking about the X7DA3+, you might want to check behind him. The Supermicro site reports it as having 6.

Thanks. But "I think" that's pertaining to the available "Slots". He sounded sure you could use 14 via the "back plane"???

Louie, Since it's a full 64bit card/MB and is VISTA aproved, I assume so, but thanks. I'll check on that as well.
One guy told me about this tyan board that looks awesome, but I've not herd the best long term about TYAN. Plus I'm close to being stuck with this board unless we find a showstopper issue.
http://www.tyan.com/product_board_detail.aspx?pid=439

ScorpioProd

06-03-2007, 11:32 PM

Thanks. But "I think" that's pertaining to the available "Slots". He sounded sure you could use 14 via the "back plane"???

Let us know what you find out Ted, but no, I read the info right from the SuperMicro site for that motherboard as well, and it was talking about SATA devices.

Not sure what you mean by "back plane", are you saying he's saying there's over twice as many SATA ports available, except they don't have connectors so he's going to modify the motherboard to access them?

Do note the motherboard has SAS connections also, are you sure that isn't what's being confused for the SATA or perhaps added to the total number?

bbeanan

06-03-2007, 11:39 PM

I really wish I was messing with you... but something strange is going on here in Vegas (maybe an Area 51 issue??) We did an install at a wax museum a few months ago and their power went out Friday and when it cam back on it killed the JBL EON speakers... Then last night power went out downtown Fremont St. and when it came back up killed 3 Martin Wizards in a strip club I designed...

So it sound like we need a power conditioner, surge protector, UPS on everything plugged in...

this is killing me...

ted

06-04-2007, 12:07 AM

Eugene, the actual builder hadn't planned on it, but understood this option and felt it was doable. He's going to confirm this tomorrow from SM.

Brett, that bites. Good info so nobody forgets to put anything important on a UPS. I use some cheaper UPS's for the decks and monitors but high end ones for my computers. Drives are finiky about power.

rbartlett

06-04-2007, 03:20 AM

One guy told me about this tyan board that looks awesome, but I've not herd the best long term about TYAN. Plus I'm close to being stuck with this board unless we find a showstopper issue.
http://www.tyan.com/product_board_detail.aspx?pid=439

Not a bad board, but any 5000 chipset that has a PCIexpress X16 slot with X8 signalling isn't going to like the current crop of nvidia 8800 graphics cards.

GeForce 8 states that it must have X16 signalling. One would suppose that X8 signalling will be OK when the mainboards and the cards are PCIexpress 2.0 compliant as this is double-rated. However we are not there now and there is no 8800 with a means to run on a lower denomination of lanes.

As for the number of SATA sockets. This does seem to be a lower figure than your builder has intimated. I'd recommend going for a PCIexpress SATA expansion rather than sharing anything at all on PCI-X.

With heaps of drives and XP as well, you'll be able to try various RAID options other than '0' if you care to. It also works out fairly sensible to run RAID-0 and then backup to a cheap gigabit or usb2 connected storage device or devices. You probably make use of these types of units already for the modern equivalent of tape for 25Mbps to 200MBytes/sec media?

PC component selection is a challenge at times. The backup of a professional dealer/builder takes away the anguish parts of all this. Keep us posted please Ted.

JackJ

06-04-2007, 11:13 AM

Looks like it has 6 SATA and 2channel SAS that will control 4 SATA each for a total of 14, so theoretically possible to connect 14 drives to it, but I'm not sure what all would be involved with the SAS side, and whether that would help or hinder performance. To free up slots, you could get a single 8-port raid controller card if you're wanting to keep the stripe sets off the mobo.

rbartlett

06-04-2007, 12:17 PM

That is it. The SAS controller will be Serial-SCSI and the backplane Ted spoke of will break this down to (the option of) SATA ports. SATA and SAS have a lot in common physically and electrically. The hosting solutions available today have backplanes that allow you to swap between SAS and SATA almost as you require. The spec of the drive dominating what classifies the drive rather than the plumbing.

ted

06-08-2007, 03:22 AM

So due to the inability to make the perfect system no matter how much you are willing to spend, here's where we are.

The biggest problem is that the hardware I'm buying doesn't always work with the software/hardware we still gotta use daily.
XP Pro doesn't take advantage of the hardware I'm buying. I don't think Win XP will utilize Dual Quad core either.
The solution was to go with a dual boot, Win XP 32bit AND VISTA Ultimate 64bit.
2 Intel Dual dual cores
Dumb down to 4gigs Mem because the 8gigs I planned on using won't work with XP which VT MUST have!
I'll merge more and more to VISTA as I find applications are OK with it.

The best thing I can recommend to others ready to buy, READ, READ, READ. I've spent at least 10 days, (not to mention following technology for years), and the main thing I've learned is that I don't know SHlT!
I'm still finalizing the hardware/software and I'll give an update after I find out how it runs! :) I'm sure there are many who are now or soon going to be going through this same nightmare.
I've got a few special thanks to give after we gitter done also.
Thanks!

ScorpioProd

06-08-2007, 07:00 PM

So Ted, the rest of the SATA are coming from the SAS?

Thanks for the heads up on WinXP with dual-Quad, I hadn't thought of that issue!

ScorpioProd

06-08-2007, 11:30 PM

Hmmh... Harlan just told me he's running plain Windows XP on his dual-Quad MacPro...

ScorpioProd

06-09-2007, 08:24 PM

And I just got confirmation from John Florek, he says that XP Pro will work fine with 8 cores, seeing them all. It's limitation is only two physical processors, but no core limit.

harlan

06-09-2007, 11:48 PM

XP Pro works just fine with multi-core systems.

PIZAZZ

06-10-2007, 10:16 AM

Building 2 VT systems right now with XPPro and dual Quad Xeons. Works fine here.

Seti Orion

06-10-2007, 05:28 PM

Jeff Please call or email me

Seti Hawaii

setiorion@islandvortex.com

ted

06-11-2007, 01:08 AM

Are you guys sure? My dealer said "XP PRO can't run the quad cores at all".
Since I'm having VISTA Ultimate 64 as a dual boot and soon should be able to merge to it more and more, I'd hate to spend money now on a dual dual and upgrade later! :confused:

ScorpioProd

06-11-2007, 02:14 AM

Well, you might want to ask your dealer why he thinks that...

Though I have no personal experience with this, I did a quick Google on it... I couldn't find anything specifically to dual-Quad, except that from the Microsoft licensing, it is within the license for Windows XP, which is for 2 physical chips and unlimited cores or hyperthreading.

The only concrete stuff I did find was an AnandTech article on it working with dual dual-core, and then a gaming article, as of March 2007, about how Windows XP was working much faster on a single Quad-core computer with the new multithreaded game than Vista was on a single Quad-core computer.

More importantly, I trust the users and dealers that have commented on this thread so far. :)

rbartlett

06-13-2007, 02:51 AM

The correction is correct Ted. 2 CPUs is the top limit for XP Pro. It maybe that the base install or anything prior to SP1 doesn't recognise all cores but with SP2 or if you have all the patches and fixes installed then you are good for 2 CPUs. XP should be good up to 16 cores per CPU. I think the dealer has this wrong or has incorrectly set a BIOS parameter or two and lost this clarity tainted perhaps through his experiences. No matter, the customer is always right anyway!

With CPUs expanding in their numbers of cores by the half-year you wonder if Microsoft ought to remove all such restrictions on CPU numbers. It is telling on how dodgy their server class software in it's positioning and differentials. "Server" ought to be an expansion/add-on IMHO. XP Home or Vista Home should be upgradable, perhaps those swayed towards Linux at the enterprise level will demand this.

There are things that might not be available to you in XP. Such as making use of virtualization extensions, directX10 [this is GPU/OS cartel/hobbling really] to name a couple. Dual booting (using Vista to upgrade the XP but keep XP intact) is the attractive option while we are in this period of OS hysteria.

Bobt

06-13-2007, 10:56 PM

Me thinks you should tell him to prove it Ted.
XP Pro can only use two physical sockets but cores are not important.
This was all shaken out when hyper threading came in fashion.
I would say get a disk of XP Pro from home and stick it on that box. It should
be more than fine. In fact tests indicated HANDS down faster.
Vista makes a great reason to buy a Mac and run OSx
Bob

ted

06-15-2007, 01:35 AM

I got kind of a "well if you have problems it's on you" reply. I didn't want to give an out for "any" problems, so I went with his recomendation. :stumped:

But the good news, I just got my new Alienware laptop this afternoon! I'll be spending time with my new Alien for a few nights until my new workstation arrives.
Thank goodness my wife is understanding at times like these! :thumbsup:

rbartlett

06-15-2007, 03:19 AM

Vista can be built lighter. However I doubt very much that any dealers are doing any strip down installations. I've seen a lighter Vista and it did seem to be a lot less sluggish than the full Vista totally Ultimated!

As far as 'out's are concerned, I would image the machine as delivered, ideally to a low cost yet bootable disk drive (as personally I rarely restore older images over seemingly 'working' systems).

One could argue that XP x64 would have an edge on Vista32 also. I'd use the dealer build as an opportunity to learn Vista. However as the working environment isn't always good for learning, I'd have a dual boot XP 32 close to hand.

Fortunately NewTek are making the switch to Vista quite easy (ok, not for VT ;) ). Vista's quirks are the main obstacle especially if you are a programmer/developer.

I'll give Vista 6 months to bond with it's troubled parents. OSX might be the dream child and Linux maybe the whizz kid but most parents find love for their children however ugly they might appear at first. :)

Jim_C

06-15-2007, 12:48 PM

I got kind of a "well if you have problems it's on you" reply. I didn't want to give an out for "any" problems, so I went with his recomendation.

Well when you carve out a small 8-10 gig partition to put XP on, you can prove him wrong. (Then it sounds like look for another dealer)

And thanks for not only flaunting your new hubble running workstation in our face but also your testicle cooking Alienware.... :D

:tongue:

Jim

ted

06-16-2007, 03:22 AM

Well when you carve out a small 8-10 gig partition to put XP on, you can prove him wrong. (Then it sounds like look for another dealer)

And thanks for not only flaunting your new hubble running workstation in our face but also your testicle cooking Alienware.... :D
:tongue:
Jim

I'm sure he's just trying to protect me, but I hated not adding the extra 4 processors since in another 6 months I'll again be behind the curve. :compbeati

Jim, the truth is I've humbled myself by admitting that until now I could NOT use SE in a real production situation. My laptop now does better with SE then my VT system does. I hope the new workstation gets here soon because then you'll hear me bragging...I hope! At least for a couple months! :hey:

ted

06-28-2007, 12:49 AM

I'm going to sumerize this since I'm heading out at 5am for a 3 day shoot, but gotta get this out.

First off, on my new system.
VT is unbelievable! I opened a timeline with 3 30 sec spots that I could not play without rendering before. Each spot had about 30 overlays most with animated properties. I opened the timeline and hit play. NOT ONE STUTTER! :thumbsup: Then it got better. I didn't realize that when my GFX guy rendered the timeline to make dubs, he saved the timeline with everything at High Quality and SS turned on. AND IT ALL PLAYED WITHOUT A HICKUP! I still can't believe it. I do this every morning just to start my day with a smile! :D

SpeedEDIT is now playing HD files with no stutter. I load them, the audio hasn't even conformed and BG renderig is just starting, but the HD files play just fine.

This is a testiment to what I've always known. NewTek is capable of building software that is only limited by Microsoft and hardware manufacturers. :D I'm hapier then I've ever been using NewTek's products.

I am still working out some issues with things that weren't done right, and for now only using Win XP Pro because some of my hardware isn't Vista Ultimate 64 ready yet. So I only boot in Vista when I accidently miss the boot prompt. :hey:

One thing I gotta add, and I have a lot to say about this, but I'm going to be brief for now.
Ken Weaver from Tuscon AZ has donated hours of his time even though he's not making a penny. He has called countless times, e-mailed just as many, and researched every component going into my system. Just to make sure I wasn't going to have any problems. I am still amazed how much he understands about cutting edge technology and how well he can explaind it to me.
If any of you are going to build a system that is slightly ahead of technology, look him up and let him build it. If he gave me this kind of attention, just think how much you'll get if you have him build yours.

Gotta go, but things are looking really good at this point.
Thanks for everyone's input!

evexon

07-01-2007, 04:08 PM

But the good news, I just got my new Alienware laptop this afternoon! I'll be spending time with my new Alien for a few nights until my new workstation arrives.
Thank goodness my wife is understanding at times like these! :thumbsup:
Ted,

Which model Alienware laptop did you get? Do you like the performance? I am looking for a mobile option for SE, LW, DF etc. So far I am tossing around Alienware, Dell M90, Apple (boot camp) and Blaines laptop offering. Thanks in advance for your opinion.

Steve

ted

07-03-2007, 01:25 AM

I got the Aurora m9700 with a single AMD Turion 64 Mobile Technology ML-40. 2 7200rpm drives striped together for 400 gigs. 2 gigs ram and nvidia 7900.
It's pretty fast for a laptop. But I might have gotten a dual processor if I had the option.
It sure impresses everyone that sees it.

JackJ

07-03-2007, 12:26 PM

Went to check that out and found, much to my surprise, that a Turion is nothing but a thick, fleshy, detachable overwintering structure. Now I have to see if I can run Windows on my meat overcoat!

# An overwintering structure that is scaley or often thick and fleshy that detaches, and then geminates or starts growth in the spring. See line drawing
www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/wq/plants/plantid2/glossary.html

# certain tubers like the tuber of the arrowhead plant are called turions. They are round and walnut-sized.
www.fishpondinfo.com/glossary.htm

# A modified bud, the leaves of which contain abundant storage reserves, by which the plant survives Winter and renews its growth in Spring.
www.kingvinnie.com/aquaria/glossary/

# Turion 64 is AMD's 64-bit mobile processor, intended to compete with Intel's Pentium M. It is compatible with AMD's Socket 754 and is equipped with 512 or 1024 KB of L2 cache, a 64-bit single channel on-die memory controller, and an 800MHz HyperTransport bus. A new socket for Turion 64 and other mobile AMD processors, known as Socket S, will arrive in 2006.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turion