New "old" DAW - Dual Intel Xeon 5160

GTE

Hello,

I have a chance at getting a Dell Precision 690 with a dual Intel Xeon 5160 setup.

It has 4gb of RAM, max is 32 and a 400gb HDD. So its 64bit.

It's going for about 300 quid and I was wondering what you guys think of it.

My logic is that I am a very long way off a powerhouse from places like Scan and this computer seems like a bit of a relative beast.

My current DAW is a Toshiba P300 with a dual core centrino CPU with 2.4 ghz and a 800mhz front side bus.

Its a great laptop but moving it from desktop use can get fiddly, especially as I have a 24 inch monitor to plug in as well. Oh, the dell has a two output gfx card too.

My plan is to have a main DAW at home (the Dell) and my laptop as my mobile hard disk recorder.

What cha think guys?

Thanks :-)

DamagedTrax

depends on your choice of DAW. if you use protools native i wouldnt touch a dell or any other off the shelf build as the BIOS is generally locked and can play havoc with protools.

if you use reaper or cubase you'll most likely be ok.

GTE

DamagedTrax wrote: »

depends on your choice of DAW. if you use protools native i wouldnt touch a dell or any other off the shelf build as the BIOS is generally locked and can play havoc with protools.

if you use reaper or cubase you'll most likely be ok.

Its Cubase myself. I'm trying to find more info on dual could support for Cubase.

The benchmarks are strong for the dual xeon setup however would Cubase even use more than two of the 4 cores available or would the VSTs use the extra. Allegedly Cubase or Nuendo 4 didnt use the dual CPU setup as efficiently as it could have. I am running Cubase 5 though. The research continues.

son.of.jimi

Hey bbk,

I have the precision 670. It has a dual 3.2 xeon setup with 4gb Ram. I uprgraded the discs to 500gb each. and threw in a 9800gtx (card that came with it is good but the 9800 was just lying around) And I'm running everything on 7 Ultimate.

Only problem i had with it was the 1394 controller was tuned off in BIOS... spent hours trying to fix it in windows then felt like a plank when all i had to do was switch in on int the BIOS settings.

I've had several sessions running on it and it has never once stalled, glitched or given me any problems.

Software used so far :

Cubase 5
Pro Tools Le 8
Reaper
Reason
Ableton Live

Highest CPU usage i've recorded is 38% with everything running at full tilt.

for 300 blips your gonna get one hell of a workhorse. but the only complaint i have about my 670 is that i wish i could throw in ore than 2 internal drives.

bbk wrote: »

Hello,

I have a chance at getting a Dell Precision 690 with a dual Intel Xeon 5160 setup.

It has 4gb of RAM, max is 32 and a 400gb HDD. So its 64bit.

It's going for about 300 quid and I was wondering what you guys think of it.

My logic is that I am a very long way off a powerhouse from places like Scan and this computer seems like a bit of a relative beast.

My current DAW is a Toshiba P300 with a dual core centrino CPU with 2.4 ghz and a 800mhz front side bus.

Its a great laptop but moving it from desktop use can get fiddly, especially as I have a 24 inch monitor to plug in as well. Oh, the dell has a two output gfx card too.

My plan is to have a main DAW at home (the Dell) and my laptop as my mobile hard disk recorder.

What cha think guys?

Thanks :-)

GTE

son.of.jimi wrote: »

Hey bbk,

I have the precision 670. It has a dual 3.2 xeon setup with 4gb Ram. I uprgraded the discs to 500gb each. and threw in a 9800gtx (card that came with it is good but the 9800 was just lying around) And I'm running everything on 7 Ultimate.

Only problem i had with it was the 1394 controller was tuned off in BIOS... spent hours trying to fix it in windows then felt like a plank when all i had to do was switch in on int the BIOS settings.

I've had several sessions running on it and it has never once stalled, glitched or given me any problems.

Software used so far :

Cubase 5
Pro Tools Le 8
Reaper
Reason
Ableton Live

Highest CPU usage i've recorded is 38% with everything running at full tilt.

for 300 blips your gonna get one hell of a workhorse. but the only complaint i have about my 670 is that i wish i could throw in ore than 2 internal drives.

Hello,

Thank you very much for that response. Great to have some first hand experience.

An extra harddrive would be good, and the two Firewire ports this comp has would be used by my interface and something else.

I do have some external drives, perhaps an eSata port would be a good upgrade and hook that up as an extra third drive.

I will have to go check and see what my biggest projects are doing CPU % wise. Though, since I use the Focusrite Liquid mix a lot, a fair whack of the plugin stuff is happening in that and not the laptop CPU.

Thanks again.
Food for thought =D

EDIT: Could I ask what firewire audio interfaces you use, if any?

son.of.jimi

I'm using an Alesis io/26 through the firewire port on the back.

GTE

Cool, it sounds like it has a FW card that does not need to be replaced for a Texas Instruments one like other PC based firewire ports.

I have everything running at full tilt on my dual core 2.4GHz and 800Mhz FSB. I am hitting about 80 to 90 percent :eek: