Looks like they are out .. anyone done any testing so far?

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/gigabyte-ga-z68x-ud3p-b3-intel-z68-express- s-1155-pci-e-20-ddr3-1333-sata-6gb-s-raid-atx

how does the onboard firewire compare hold up with firewire soundcards? is it better to get an additional firewire card?

A true enthusiast Sandy Bridge board at last!

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Composer;
www.ogonline.org

So they claim Oggy, but I honestly can't work out what they are thinking with this one.

That said I do like it.

Firstly through that Gigabyte is right out of the window along with the rest of their first generation offerings. They appear to all be missing the Hydra chip and as that was a major selling point of the platform it seems pretty poor value not having it on the board.

That leaves MSI and Asus. Msi I've got a GD80 here but I've had some issues getting the on board gfx working and replacement/stock has been slow to appear...

Which leaves me with the Asus V-Pro board.

And I quite like it.

Normal audio testing is going well and it's been fairly well behaved all round upto this point.

The two new selling points are the Hydra chip and the RST SSD functions.

The onboard gfx is fine for most music makers and you have the option to add in a dedicated card still if you wish. Using a dedicated card is quite interesting in this instance as you can still run the onboard in 2d applications, allowing the dedicated add in to spin down when not in use.

This means for the amateur who may wish to game on it, or the media pro who may require a quadro in there for video/cad work you can fit the card and it'll only get noisy at times when recording silence isn't so essential. Also a bonus is the ability to use the onboard as a transcoding co-processor which may appeal to some media artists, and it even adds some value to having a card in for (for instance) CUDA as it'll free up that onboard for the conversion work if needed in other applications.

The other USP this time round is the RST SSD functions that allow caching of most commonly used files on a mechanical drive to be cached to a smaller SSD. I'm liking the idea of caching my audio & kontakt library whilst I'm working on projects and that could actuary speed up load times of those bigger projects on each subsequent reload.

What I can't work out really is just who the hell Intel is trying to market these things too. Enthusiasts? I'm not sure it's all that fitting a feature set as I would have thought most of them would just spend less on the P67 board and then slap in a UberGfx card & SSD on it, where as these solutions seem a bit half cocked for an enthusiast.

The only people it does seem interesting for really is SOHO/Prosumer users who need an extra bit of performance for intensive applications which admittedly does include us guys.

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog

Im not sure exactly what you mean by the hydra chip. What does it mean for DAW performance?

Quote johnny h:

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Im not sure exactly what you mean by the hydra chip. What does it mean for DAW performance?

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It's by LucidLogix for multi GPU intergration, cool for gamers I suppose.

Not sure how it would benefit the average DAW user though?

tf

Sorry, Lucidlogix Virtu chip (Hydra by another name depending upon the licence option!) and the basics are covered here : http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/z68-express-lucidlogix-virtu-ssd-cachi ng,2888-5.html

Benfits I mentioned above:

The transcoding as I mentioned might be of use for video people.

Being able to spin down a more powerful card may enable Quadros or higher powered gfx cards to be fitted for cad/rendoring/gaming when the machine is not being used for music.

These might appeal to some people... Not the vast majority of those on here, and frankly not the vast majority of people full stop. But they are nice extras considering that the board price difference from the p67 I was using is roughly the same as the gfx card I was previously fitting.

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog

Quote Pete Kaine:

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Sorry, Lucidlogix Virtu chip (Hydra by another name depending upon the licence option!) and the basics are covered here : http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/z68-express-lucidlogix-virtu-ssd-cachi ng,2888-5.html

Benfits I mentioned above:

The transcoding as I mentioned might be of use for video people.

Being able to spin down a more powerful card may enable Quadros or higher powered gfx cards to be fitted for cad/rendoring/gaming when the machine is not being used for music.

These might appeal to some people... Not the vast majority of those on here, and frankly not the vast majority of people full stop. But they are nice extras considering that the board price difference from the p67 I was using is roughly the same as the gfx card I was previously fitting.

---

Is a H67 good enough? They seem really cheap and have inbuilt graphics. I can live without crossfire and all that gamer crap. Is overclocking necessary anyway?

Quote johnny h:

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Is overclocking necessary anyway?

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It can make a HUGE difference to overall performance if you're using the 2600K CPU model.

See my review in the latest Sound On Sound (June 2011) to see just it can do at 4GHz


Martin

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YewTreeMagic

Quote Martin Walker:

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Quote johnny h:

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Is overclocking necessary anyway?

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It can make a HUGE difference to overall performance if you're using the 2600K CPU model.

See my review in the latest Sound On Sound (June 2011) to see just it can do at 4GHz


Martin

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Yes indeedy
Although i've grown to prefer the term "unlocked" as opposed to "overclocked" with Sandy Bridge processors because you're not pushing the CPU to run at a higher speed than it should, rather you are enabling it to Turbo up to speeds higher than it should when it needs to - which is a lot friendlier and less desperate sounding

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PC-Music.com hints, tips & reviews
Rain Computers UK - Creative Audio PC's

Hi Robin,

Yes indeedy - unlocked sounds far less dangerous than overclocked, and is almost an invitation by Intel to go ahead


Martin

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YewTreeMagic

So Pete, I read on here http://www.anandtech.com/print/4330 that the dpc latency isnt that great on the asus board.

My windows partition has died so I may be forced into upgrading right now and starting fresh - what board can you recommend if you had to pick right now (preferably with firewire and 1 pci slot?

They are wrong as far as I can see so far.

Something else in the test spec is skewering the results because I'm around 40us average with a peak of 47 in testing.

Then again I'll be tweaking it rather differently than he is I imagine.

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog

Quote Pete Kaine:

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They are wrong as far as I can see so far.

Something else in the test spec is skewering the results because I'm around 40us average with a peak of 47 in testing.

Then again I'll be tweaking it rather differently than he is I imagine.

---

So you would still recommend the asus v pro ? Is the firewire chip good enough to run a soundcard from, or would a separate pcie card be useful? Seems like it doesnt have an ide port? Which means i'll need a new cd drive but I guess thats not the end of the world!

Yeah, absolutly. The Gigas are missing a feature here and there on their launch models which kinda defeats the point (may as well get a P67) and the MSI's have been problematic during testing although to their credit new bios revisions have been flowing thick and fast, and they've held back hardware whilst they resolve the issues. I'm happy enough with the V Pro at this point that I'm not looking anywhere else and unless something goes horribly wrong with the RST testing today then I'll be finishing validation on it at the start of next week and getting them set up internally.

Firewire wise it's the same chip that crops up on a few other boards that's proved fairly decent of late (it's one of the new VIA's). Most notably it was on the P8P67 board last time round and that tested quite well with a whole host of interfaces and the implimentation this time round so far has thrown up no problems althrough I've not plugged anything too rare into it yet!

Great, let me know when you have some in stock. Also what would you recommend as a good, reasonably priced ssd system drive?

There's always the Intel
http://www.intel.com/cd/products/services/emea/eng/motherboards/desktop/DZ 68DB/overview/474491.htm

Interesting in that it's billed as a Media series board rather than Extreme. Liking the three PCI slots though. You're right Pete the Z68 isn't quite sure what it's supposed to be yet.

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PC-Music.com hints, tips & reviews
Rain Computers UK - Creative Audio PC's

Quote johnny h:

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Great, let me know when you have some in stock. Also what would you recommend as a good, reasonably priced ssd system drive?

---

Depends on the size you need. The OCZ Agility 3 launched this week with some obscene speeds (around 500 MB/s for the read and 425 MB/s on the write) for around a ton on the 60GB version. Other than that your probably looking at the slightly older Sandforce based units. The boards should be back in next Monday / Tuesday and I didn't realise we had no stock as we had loads at launch so they must be ablsolutly flying out.

Robin - Intel weren't overly forthcoming in getting us stock so we didn't bother listing. The's some bundles coming from them which I think they are looking to push with included MLC based drives in the near future through, and they appear to be pushing over the standard standalone boards so that might be a good option if you guys are looking to do them.

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog

Quote Pete Kaine:

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Sorry, Lucidlogix Virtu chip (Hydra by another name depending upon the licence option!)

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It’s not a chip but purely a software solution.

nVidia are supposedly soon releasing a desktop version of Optimus which is their graphics switching technology for laptops.

Quote Pete Kaine:

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Being able to spin down a more powerful card may enable Quadros or higher powered gfx cards to be fitted for cad/rendoring/gaming when the machine is not being used for music.

---

The reviews suggest that Virtu doesn’t significantly reduce the VGA card’s power consumption compared to its usual idle mode and I’m not clear if it turns the fan off completely which can be very important for a DAW.

Optimus is a fully integrated solution which does seemingly power off the dedicated GPU completely when it is not required.
It’s harder to get that level of integration with desktops so it will be interesting to see what nVidia can manage.
Of course it will only support nVidia cards but if it offers tighter integration and better performance and features it may tip the balance towards nVidia for some. It should be free as well which helps as there’s no need to be limited to boards that ship with the Virtu software.

Quote Pete Kaine:

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Quote johnny h:

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Great, let me know when you have some in stock. Also what would you recommend as a good, reasonably priced ssd system drive?

---

Depends on the size you need. The OCZ Agility 3 launched this week with some obscene speeds (around 500 MB/s for the read and 425 MB/s on the write) for around a ton on the 60GB version. Other than that your probably looking at the slightly older Sandforce based units. The boards should be back in next Monday / Tuesday and I didn't realise we had no stock as we had loads at launch so they must be ablsolutly flying out.

---

That's some crazy fast speeds! I wonder what would be better - 60gb of that or 100gb of an older sata II drive. Does it make a significant difference to usability? Or are all ssds so much faster than regular drives that it doesn't add up to much usable difference?

Quote Agharta:

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It’s not a chip but purely a software solution.

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Sorry, stand corrected.

johnny h Quote:

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The reviews suggest that Virtu doesn’t significantly reduce the VGA card’s power consumption compared to its usual idle mode and I’m not clear if it turns the fan off completely which can be very important for a DAW.

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You could however set up fan profiles via tuning software, althrough I've not got that far yet with testing to see if it's viable either way.

johnny h Quote:

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Optimus is a fully integrated solution which does seemingly power off the dedicated GPU completely when it is not required.
It’s harder to get that level of integration with desktops so it will be interesting to see what nVidia can manage.
Of course it will only support nVidia cards but if it offers tighter integration and better performance and features it may tip the balance towards nVidia for some. It should be free as well which helps as there’s no need to be limited to boards that ship with the Virtu software.

---

Yeah, will certainly be interesting to see how well they can pull of intergration with this one.

Quote johnny h:

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That's some crazy fast speeds! I wonder what would be better - 60gb of that or 100gb of an older sata II drive. Does it make a significant difference to usability? Or are all ssds so much faster than regular drives that it doesn't add up to much usable difference?

---

The is a 60GB limit on the SSD drive you can use in this configuration. The read speed won't matter a whole deal as it's only going to need to be faster than the drive it's pulling the data off in the first place, which pretty much all SSD's will exceed. Reading it back again I suppose will be a case of the faster, the better as this is what will be helping with your load times.

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog

Quote Pete Kaine:

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Quote johnny h:

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That's some crazy fast speeds! I wonder what would be better - 60gb of that or 100gb of an older sata II drive. Does it make a significant difference to usability? Or are all ssds so much faster than regular drives that it doesn't add up to much usable difference?

---

The is a 60GB limit on the SSD drive you can use in this configuration. The read speed won't matter a whole deal as it's only going to need to be faster than the drive it's pulling the data off in the first place, which pretty much all SSD's will exceed. Reading it back again I suppose will be a case of the faster, the better as this is what will be helping with your load times.

---

Is the SSD cache route really worth it? Or is it better to just install windows + programs on a slightly bigger ssd drive and use the hard disk for storage?

Current config I'm playing with is the O.S. on a Hybrid drive to speed up the windows load time but still give you plenty of drive space to work with and then then the ssd cache drive will be used to cache the sample/audio drive. This in theory should end up cache'in the latest few projects being used so as your project grows it'll keep the kontakt/rompler load times down and stop the physical disk being accessed all the time for disk streaming. Hopefully it'll give the best of both worlds performance/space wise without taking out an overdraft going for huge SSD's.

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog

Quote Pete Kaine:

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Current config I'm playing with is the O.S. on a Hybrid drive to speed up the windows load time but still give you plenty of drive space to work with and then then the ssd cache drive will be used to cache the sample/audio drive. This in theory should end up cache'in the latest few projects being used so as your project grows it'll keep the kontakt/rompler load times down and stop the physical disk being accessed all the time for disk streaming. Hopefully it'll give the best of both worlds performance/space wise without taking out an overdraft going for huge SSD's.

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Yeah it seems great in theory but hasn't worked quite so well in practice before. Let us know!

Quote Agharta:

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Quote Pete Kaine:

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Sorry, Lucidlogix Virtu chip (Hydra by another name depending upon the licence option!)

---

It’s not a chip but purely a software solution.

---

Hydra is the real chip, Virtu is the software which basically does the same thing but lets the CPU do the calculations instead of the Hydra chip. This was needed for this platform because the Z68 chipset doesn't allow an onboard VGA connection.

Because the Hydra chip is basically a load divider of high bandwidth data and the chip is specifically geared for it, the virtu software might have a pretty huge load on the CPU. Since I don't work too much with consumer boards I haven't tested these yet, but I'll keep my eyed peeled for any review on this.

I'm not sure how it would benefit audio users either, it is mostly for optimising VGA performance using multiple GPU's on one system.

VGA fan speeds wouldn't be controlled by this but by the software provided from the VGA/MB manufacturers.

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who is Kees and why is he so special?

Quote Pete Kaine:

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Quote Agharta:

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The reviews suggest that Virtu doesn’t significantly reduce the VGA card’s power consumption compared to its usual idle mode and I’m not clear if it turns the fan off completely which can be very important for a DAW.

---

You could however set up fan profiles via tuning software, although I've not got that far yet with testing to see if it's viable either way.

---

AFAIK most VGA cards won’t allow the fan speed to drop below a minimum value which is why nVidia’s integrated approach may overcome this limitation with a BIOS and/or driver update. 3rd parties tend not to have the same low level access.

Quote Vlaaing Peerd:

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Hydra is the real chip, Virtu is the software which basically does the same thing but lets the CPU do the calculations instead of the Hydra chip. This was needed for this platform because the Z68 chipset doesn't allow an onboard VGA connection.

Because the Hydra chip is basically a load divider of high bandwidth data and the chip is specifically geared for it, the virtu software might have a pretty huge load on the CPU. Since I don't work too much with consumer boards I haven't tested these yet, but I'll keep my eyed peeled for any review on this.

---

Virtu and Hydra are very different products and Virtu certainly isn’t a software only version of Hydra.

Hi

The Lucid Hydralogix chips are PCIe multi-plexers, just like Nvidia's NF200, but GPU agnostic.

Virtu is x86 code which routes data from a discrete GPU, via FDI, to the motherboard display outputs - or, since v1.0.105, routes IGP data via the discrete card.

Hi there,

I don't post here that much but I thought I would tell you about my Sandy Bridge build. I put it together on Friday and it consists of an i7 2600K + Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3P-B3 + Corsair Memory Vengeance 16GB DDR3 1600 MHz CAS 9 XMPOCZ + 120GB Vertex 3 2.5 SSD system drive + Window 7 Home Premium x64 OEM. The rest of the system consists of existing parts including a Fractal Design R3 black case, Seasonic x400 Fanless PSU and 2 x Samsung 1TB drives plus a Fireface 400.

The build was fairly straightforward although I had one big problem. The height of the Corsair memory meant that I could not use my existing CPU cooler which is a Scythe Mugen 2 rev B. The fan was snagging on the heatsink. This meant I had to use the stock Intel cooler.

I've done some research and there seems to be limited amount of coolers which will clear the heatsinks of this kind of memory. I think they should post a warning on the website (Scan) because I never thought about that. Compatible coolers from what I've researched are Thermalright MUX-120 Black Tower CPU Cooler. This is confirmed as clearing the heatsinks.
The Corsair H70 water cooling system will do it although it has two fans and I'm worried about the noise and I'm not sure I need water cooling but it's an option. Apparently the Coolermaster Hyper 212 Plus is suitable as well. I need to sort out as the stock cooler is a bit noisy.

As far as DPC latency goes it varies. I've disabled all the usual stuff in the BIOS and set the power options to high-performance. The idle DPC latency is around 50us. However when I open up Sequoia 11 or Samplitude Pro 11 it shoots up to just under 500. It seems that the "Kernel Mode Driver Framework Runtime" is causing this. In fact as soon as I use my microphone to dictate - I'm using Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 voice recognition software. The DPC latency ramps back up to just under 500. So there is definitely an issue with audio whether it be in a DAW or just using a microphone for DNS11.

Maybe I should have gone for the Asus X68 board which Peter was testing but previous Gigabyte boards have been fairly good for me in the DPC stakes.

I guess the real test will be when I load a large project with many plug-ins at low latency. I have to see how that works out.

Cheers for now
Kraznet

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Sequoia V12Samplitude Pro X + Betas . My Samplitude tutorials:www.youtube.com/kraznet

Just a quick update. The high DPC count seems to be directly related to using the Fireface 400. If I run Samplitude using the built-in audio of the motherboard it drops down to around 50us. Also my voice recognition microphone is going via the Fireface 400 as well so that accounts for the similarities in DPC latency. Maybe it's the 1394a port which is VIA now. It did concern me somewhat as Gigabyte have always used Texas Instruments in the past and they seem to have changed to VIA.

Cheers
Kraznet

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Sequoia V12Samplitude Pro X + Betas . My Samplitude tutorials:www.youtube.com/kraznet

Quote Kraznet:

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Just a quick update. The high DPC count seems to be directly related to using the Fireface 400. If I run Samplitude using the built-in audio of the motherboard it drops down to around 50us. Also my voice recognition microphone is going via the Fireface 400 as well so that accounts for the similarities in DPC latency. Maybe it's the 1394a port which is VIA now. It did concern me somewhat as Gigabyte have always used Texas Instruments in the past and they seem to have changed to VIA.

Cheers
Kraznet

---

Doesn't sound like good news for firewire users.

Well I've done a bit more tweaking and it's down to around 200us now when using the Fireface 400.

Kraznet

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Sequoia V12Samplitude Pro X + Betas . My Samplitude tutorials:www.youtube.com/kraznet

Quote:

---

The build was fairly straightforward although I had one big problem. The height of the Corsair memory meant that I could not use my existing CPU cooler which is a Scythe Mugen 2 rev B. The fan was snagging on the heatsink. This meant I had to use the stock Intel cooler.

---

Well I had another go and managed to fit the Scythe Mugen after all, there was about 2mm clearance from the RAM. Also I had to attach the fan to the narrower side of the heatsink next to the graphics card. But it's up and running at least so I won't have to shell out for new cooler
Cheers
Kraznet

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Sequoia V12Samplitude Pro X + Betas . My Samplitude tutorials:www.youtube.com/kraznet

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/gigabyte-ga-z68a-d3-intel-z68-s-1155-pci-e- 20-(x16)-ddr3-1866-2133-sata-3gb-s-raid-atx

This board is really cheap and it doesn't need a graphics card. Any good for a DAW?

Hi Johnny

Look again - it DOES need a graphics card. That's why it's cheap.

Quote John Roberts:

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Hi Johnny

Look again - it DOES need a graphics card. That's why it's cheap.

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Well spotted! Thanks, John.

Quote johnny h:

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gigabyte-ga-z68a

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1 x Parallel (LPT)




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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog

Quote Pete Kaine:

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Quote johnny h:

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gigabyte-ga-z68a

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1 x Parallel (LPT)

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1 x Serial (COM)





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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog

I recently built a machine with a Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H-B3 / i5-2500K / Gigabyte TX-560Ti / Fractal R3 / ...

At the moment, the case fans (the two included with the R3) are the loudest thing in the machine. I should try to turn them down a bit.

The machine is partly for music, mostly for graphics, programming etc.

I'm reasonably happy as I seem to be able to use my FA-66 at low-ish latency without any hitches (I did have to bump up the buffer size a little bit).

My DPC latency is far from brilliant compared to what people here get; mostly hovering around 90 but with regular peaks ~1000. I haven't yet done much to attempt to improve this... I tried disabling a few things in device manager but haven't as yet found anything that made a significant difference.

Not sure why I didn't at least check in somewhere more audio focussed (other than spcr) before going ahead with the build.

One thing to note is that if you are running dual screens with a GPU, they will tend to idle at high clocks, which will obviously be bad for power consumption and noise. I've found that Windows deals very well with having one screen connected to the motherboard while one is connected to the GPU. Idle power consumption appears the same in this configuration as with a single display connected to the GPU, and it's able to seamlessly run windowed 3d applications across the whole extended desktop (without need for Virtu which I guess mostly applies in fullscreen mode). I'm quite happy with Z68 from that point of view.

For most audio-focussed machines, it would probably make sense to just use the integrated graphics anyway - I'm not aware of much GPGPU in music software ATM, I suspect more will appear gradually.

Oh, worth mentioning that I had no problems with fan clearance from a Scythe Mugen 2 rev.b w/ Corsair XMS3 RAM. Also, since Scan people might read this I'll also point out that I was a little unsure that it was indeed rev.b of the Mugen 2, since the website doesn't explicitly state this. http://www.scan.co.uk/products/scythe-mugen-2-quiet-cpu-cooler-for-s775-13 66-1156-1155-and-amd-754-939-940-am2-am2plus-am3

Cheers,
Peter

Quote xinaesthetic:

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Oh, worth mentioning that I had no problems with fan clearance from a Scythe Mugen 2 rev.b w/ Corsair XMS3 RAM. Also, since Scan people might read this I'll also point out that I was a little unsure that it was indeed rev.b of the Mugen 2, since the website doesn't explicitly state this.

---

Hi Peter,

Thanks for the feedback. I'll ask the web guys to update it this afternoon as they rarely seem to get pointers on revision updates unless it's a major overhaul.

cheers,

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog

Quote Pete Kaine:

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I'll ask the web guys to update it this afternoon

---

I see it's been done

Also I've not pushed it very hard, but I reduced the buffer size of my FA-66 again and it seems to be ok. I've disabled a WMP network sharing service (mostly because I remember it interacted badly with my Lightroom catalogue on my laptop), not sure if it impacted DPC but for whatever reason my DPC peaks look more like 700 at the moment.

Aye, they are pretty quick once informed

I can't really help with the Gigabytes this time round I'm afraid as I wasn't happy with the feature set at launch, so they never got included in my benchtesting and as such I've not yet had my hands on one. I have gone with the Asus and the Msi's on my usage list so I can't really give any pointers on the GB's as the bios could be vastly different and any pointers I give could be complete red herrings.

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog