Cheers Richie, I would have been quicker with it but the guy who built it left about 20 mins before you came in without informing me where he'd placed the serial list for so we could invoice it.... got there in the end through.

Did you get taken shopping for that Kinect on Sunday in the end then?

Pito - On that machine it will have been a P67A UD3.

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog

No, as soon as the machine went into the car, I was dragged into PC World on the retail park to buy it!!!

Spent Saturday night playing it next to my new PowerDAW installing sample library after sample library!!!!

Must say, BFD2 with all channels running and at 24bit resolution, Trilian and about 8 other midi instruments, 5% CPU load!!!! It's awesome!!

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Engineering Surveyor and Musician Pretty Vegas Northwest Function and Wedding Band
Wedding Band Blog

If you'd said, we could have kept you until the rest of the shops closed!

Sounds like it was put to good use through. I always keep steam open on another box when adding software. I even managed to get a game of Civ 4 in during a particularly long Kontakt install

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog

Sorry to hijack the thread a bit, but I'm thinking of upgrading soon and am wondering about compatibility of sandy bridge with other bits of my system. I have 2 UAD1s (PCI and PCI-E), a Focusrite Saffire pro 40, and an Nvidia GT240 graphics card (which I need for video editing). Would be grateful to know any of this spells trouble for upgrading to either an i5 or i7 sandy bridge system.

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www.facebook.com/owenduffmusic / http://soundcloud.com/owenduff / www.owenduff.co.uk / http://www.youtube.com/clothmotherrecords

I know people who have had that combination of uad cards working fine on SB boards. The 240 should be alright and I'm not aware of any Saffire issues.

All in all it *SHOULD be alright.

(*except if it isn't somehow)

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog

Excellent, thanks Pete, that's really helpful. One more quick question - do you think it's worth paying the extra £130ish for the 2600k over the 2500k? I'm moving from a core 2 duo E6600, using Ableton Live. I've been searching for benchmarks that give me an idea of the difference in performance between my current setup, the 2500k and the 2600k but haven't been able to find much.

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www.facebook.com/owenduffmusic / http://soundcloud.com/owenduff / www.owenduff.co.uk / http://www.youtube.com/clothmotherrecords

2500 will pull about 140 instances in DAWbench and the 2600 will pull about 190.

The main differences are hyperthreading and more cache which will both help with your software.

Personally I'd go with the 2600 but then I'm sort of sloppy loon who can max out a i7 950 with too many plug in's...

So milage may vary. If your 6600 is giving you pretty much enough at the moment then a 2600 may look to be overkill. But then if history has teachs us anything, it is that software will bloat quickly enough that you may regret not going all out a few years down the line. Without knowing how you use your machine and what your doing with it, I couldn't begin to guess what your requirements are!

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog

Thanks again Pete, that's useful info. I think my bank balance will dictate which (if any) I end up going for...

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www.facebook.com/owenduffmusic / http://soundcloud.com/owenduff / www.owenduff.co.uk / http://www.youtube.com/clothmotherrecords

So what is better, the gigabyte or the intel board?

I like the intel as its got a texas instruments firewire connection. It doesn't have ide so i'll need a new dvd burner. Stupid intel. Why can't we have a board with overclocking and internal graphics anyway? Any possibility of this happening in the near future?

Quote johnny h:

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So what is better, the gigabyte or the intel board?

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Depends what features you want. I had trouble with some Intel samples althrough I hear the issues I had in development have been fixed. I'm happy with my solution and the support we've received and I'm not looking at another currently unless someone specificly requests one in an order.... that's not to say the isn't more solutions that are suitable that may suit your requirements better.

Quote johnny h:

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I like the intel as its got a texas instruments firewire connection.
It doesn't have ide so i'll need a new dvd burner.

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Also no PS2 ports which annoyed the hell out of me. The Giga with a Firewire worked out cheaper than the Intel I was looking at plus had a few extra ports I wanted on the board.

Quote:

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Stupid intel.

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Read in the voice of Homer Simpson.

I will now start calling Intel reps "Flanders"

Quote:

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Why can't we have a board with overclocking and internal graphics anyway? Any possibility of this happening in the near future?

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Z68 chipset in a few months should allow this.

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog

Quote Pete Kaine:

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Quote johnny h:

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So what is better, the gigabyte or the intel board?

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Depends what features you want.

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Just need a good firewire port for my RME Fireface. Then its all about price/DAW performance. Also have a PCI UAD card which I'd sort of like to keep but I wouldn't shed many tears if it had to go tbh.

Quote:

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I had trouble with some Intel samples althrough I hear the issues I had in development have been fixed. I'm happy with my solution and the support we've received and I'm not looking at another currently unless someone specificly requests one in an order.... that's not to say the isn't more solutions that are suitable that may suit your requirements better.

Quote johnny h:

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I like the intel as its got a texas instruments firewire connection.
It doesn't have ide so i'll need a new dvd burner.

---

Also no PS2 ports which annoyed the hell out of me. The Giga with a Firewire worked out cheaper than the Intel I was looking at plus had a few extra ports I wanted on the board.

Quote:

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Stupid intel.

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Read in the voice of Homer Simpson.

I will now start calling Intel reps "Flanders"

Quote:

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Why can't we have a board with overclocking and internal graphics anyway? Any possibility of this happening in the near future?

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Z68 chipset in a few months should allow this.

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Maybe I'll wait for that then. Thanks for your very helpful information! Do you know what price the Z68 boards will be?

Quote johnny h:

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Just need a good firewire port for my RME Fireface. Then its all about price/DAW performance. Also have a PCI UAD card which I'd sort of like to keep but I wouldn't shed many tears if it had to go tbh.

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Quote johnny h:

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Do you know what price the Z68 boards will be?

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Afraid not, still classed as midrange through so I'd expect them to be in the same ballpark as the current P67 with perhaps a small premium for the extra features. We'll have to see through as more info comes through. Should be easy enough to meet your requirements through going off the boards so far.

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog

Not that I want to pressure anyone into giving up proprietorial secrets of pro DAW building (!)but I'm just working on a friend's new 2600k/Gigabyte P67 UD5 system running Cubase and, although DPC latency is low and steady, we're having problems getting the loading to balance across the cores (possibly problems with turbo boost?).

Any suggestions gratefully received!

Just a quicky to say thanks to Pete, Robin and all for the post.

I was on the cusp (order day) of building a 950 based system when I came across this thread but the contents convinced me to go P67/ sandybridge.

Last time I felt this early adopty (real word) I was carrying a ZX81 box!

Thanks chaps

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No dog should ever be seen at the dining-room table.... unless absolutely certain that he can hold his own in the conversation.

Quote Rain:

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Not that I want to pressure anyone into giving up proprietorial secrets of pro DAW building (!)but I'm just working on a friend's new 2600k/Gigabyte P67 UD5 system running Cubase and, although DPC latency is low and steady, we're having problems getting the loading to balance across the cores (possibly problems with turbo boost?).

Any suggestions gratefully received!

---

If you flick back a few pages to my testing threads, you'll see I was feeling the rage over this. I noticed it on a few different boards, but none of them had a single smoking gun fix for it, rather it was a selection of differnt tweaks on each one that did it.

I haven't used the UD5 but with the 3 & 4 messing about with the C-states tended to help. You have to keep C1 on for turbo this time round for it to function currectly but the rest of the power saving features can be tweaked on and off until it get's better.

Spumph - Cheers, although I feel a bit guilty now in light of the past few weeks palava over the chipset. Make sure you keep an eye on it all for when they start to sort out the exchanges in the few months.

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog

Hi

New to the forum (first post!).

I've been using an Athlon machine I built in 2001. Coming back to music, and need new comp.

Rather out of touch. Should I wait for Sandy Bridge to be sorted out, or go for i7-860?

Thanks.

Quote Pete Kaine:

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Quote Rain:

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Not that I want to pressure anyone into giving up proprietorial secrets of pro DAW building (!)but I'm just working on a friend's new 2600k/Gigabyte P67 UD5 system running Cubase and, although DPC latency is low and steady, we're having problems getting the loading to balance across the cores (possibly problems with turbo boost?).

Any suggestions gratefully received!

---

If you flick back a few pages to my testing threads, you'll see I was feeling the rage over this. I noticed it on a few different boards, but none of them had a single smoking gun fix for it, rather it was a selection of differnt tweaks on each one that did it.

I haven't used the UD5 but with the 3 & 4 messing about with the C-states tended to help. You have to keep C1 on for turbo this time round for it to function currectly but the rest of the power saving features can be tweaked on and off until it get's better.

---

Thanks very much for the input Pete (by way of karma, all the components were ordered from Scan!). I had turned off the C1 without thinking from previous experience so will try those and report back.

If its any help to anyone with this processor/mobo combination I found that turning on the bios setting 'extreme memory profile (X.M.P.)' to 'profile 1) was necessary to get the correct ram speed to be recognised and also helped performance noticeably.

Said I'd report back so - 2600k + Giga P67 UD5

First I tried running the system with the default bios settings (apart from disabling unused onboard devices) and surprisingly got results very close to those posted by Scott from ADK earlier for the 2600k using Dawbench (the discrepancy could be down to the less than brilliant low latency performance of the Firewire Steinberg MR816). All 8 threads seems to be running evenly and that's with C1, C6 and EIST all on - results almost exactly six times faster than my previous Core Duo machine and very solid.DPC latencies in the low to mid 20s. I tried turning off the C6 and EIST but have not noticed any difference yet.

I'll possibly swap out the motherboard when the new versions become available but I'm only running two discs onboard and both on the SATA3 sockets.

In short, a cautious thumbs up!

One thing I forgot to add which is of importance for music use is that the CPU runs very cool compared to previous i7s. The 2600 has TDP of 90watts but seems less than this. I have a single 140mm fan on the heatsink running at a totally inaudible 500rpm and it idles at 22 degrees C and peaks under stress test at 48 degrees C.

Quote Pete Kaine:

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I haven't used the UD5 but with the 3 & 4 messing about with the C-states tended to help. You have to keep C1 on for turbo this time round for it to function currectly but the rest of the power saving features can be tweaked on and off until it get's better.

---

What exactly does turning off C1 do to turbo? I only ask as I've turned off C3/C6 in order to get rid of some nasty electrical whine (as mentioned over PM a while back, thanks again for the suggestion!) and I noticed that the CPU never turbos past 35x any more, which is the BIOS setting for when all 4 cores are in use.
No big deal as DAWs tend to use as many cores as you can throw at them, but just wondered what else disabling C1 does..

Quote JNicolson:

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Rather out of touch. Should I wait for Sandy Bridge to be sorted out, or go for i7-860?

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You'll get a load more performance for your money going Sandy Bridge, but you'll be waiting a few months for it, so all depends how much of a rush your in.

Quote Rain:

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Thanks very much for the input Pete (by way of karma, all the components were ordered from Scan!). I had turned off the C1 without thinking from previous experience so will try those and report back.

If its any help to anyone with this processor/mobo combination I found that turning on the bios setting 'extreme memory profile (X.M.P.)' to 'profile 1) was necessary to get the correct ram speed to be recognised and also helped performance noticeably.

---

I've not acturly played about with the UD5 board that much here so you could be finding all sorts of things out I've not witnessed. Not sure why it wouldn't allow you to set in the memory manually, althrough could be something fixed in a later bios if you have an early board. I suppose if it's working fine for you with XMP then it's probably best left alone!

Quote Rain:

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Said I'd report back so - 2600k + Giga P67 UD5

First I tried running the system with the default bios settings (apart from disabling unused onboard devices) and surprisingly got results very close to those posted by Scott from ADK earlier for the 2600k using Dawbench (the discrepancy could be down to the less than brilliant low latency performance of the Firewire Steinberg MR816). All 8 threads seems to be running evenly and that's with C1, C6 and EIST all on - results almost exactly six times faster than my previous Core Duo machine and very solid.DPC latencies in the low to mid 20s. I tried turning off the C6 and EIST but have not noticed any difference yet.

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That was an easy set up then! I noticed that the tweaks seemed to vary from board to board in testing, so I'm not that suprised that some are proving easier than others. That must be the hidden benefit when you purchase the top of the line model!

Quote lazyrich:

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What exactly does turning off C1 do to turbo? I only ask as I've turned off C3/C6 in order to get rid of some nasty electrical whine (as mentioned over PM a while back, thanks again for the suggestion!) and I noticed that the CPU never turbos past 35x any more, which is the BIOS setting for when all 4 cores are in use.
No big deal as DAWs tend to use as many cores as you can throw at them, but just wondered what else disabling C1 does..

---

I was pretty sure that having C1 on would allow it to turbo rather than C3/C6. I'll find a machine later and test that here.

How did you establish turbo wasn't taking affect? Might be worth double checking using the Intel turbo monitor Intel Turbo Monitor in case the app in question isn't being acurate.

Other than that if your interested I've got a new beta here that sorts out a few board problems including the annoying bios roll back that I've seen happen a few times. Something I leant on Friday was that ALT+F12 apparently backs up the current bios to the spare recovery bios on current Gigabyte boards. Something else you'd think they'd make a bit more public knowledge as I was starting to get wound up by GB's failsafe roll backs.

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog

Apologies for hijacking this thread!

[Pete, I've emailed you on the email address on your SOS Forums profile but as it's a commercial question I didn't want to post it on the Forums in case it breached the T&C's.]

Back on topic... this thread is pushing me towards investing in the 2600k. The benchmark tests on the likes of Tom's Hardware put it really high and the 'bang for your buck' element seem to make it a no brainer apart from of course the reliability / sandybridge issues.

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.:|johnsonboro|:.