[ddots-l] Re: Ultimate DAW!
- From: D!J!X! <megamansuperior@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2012 16:45:39 -0400
Not really, sandy was around since 2010
They usually last 2-3 years.
D!J!X!
-----Original Message-----
From: ddots-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ddots-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Jack Conti
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2012 4:38 PM
To: ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [ddots-l] Re: Ultimate DAW!
Lord sandy alreadhy on the way out??? easy come easy goAt 04:15 PM
7/19/2012, you wrote:
>It's nice. However if you want close performance to that and you are on
>a budget, Sandy can help! She's on her way out and prices are low, but
>a sandy bridge system tweaked and configured right with the right
>overclock, can kick up some power! It runs right up there with intel's
>$1000 previous i7 980 extreme!
>
>Having just built a few including one for myself, I can say it's
>certainly a beauty! And AVX will prove its usefulness when we can
>finally use x1 or whatever later version of Sonar comes out...
>
>I'm surprised they didn't opt for a 24 core setup, with 2 3930k's (12
>physical cores and 12 virtual ones), run it on a dual CPU server board...
>Would be nice.
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: ddots-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>[mailto:ddots-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Chris Smart
>Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2012 3:27 PM
>To: midimag@xxxxxxxxxxx
>Cc: ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: [ddots-l] Ultimate DAW!
>
>Take a look at this super powerful DAW, reviewed in Sound on Sound's
>August issue.
>Chris
>
>Scan 3XS Intel SAX6 PowerDAW PC
>
>Music Computer
>
>Published in SOS August 2012
>
>Scan's new hex-core machine offers huge amounts of processing power and
RAM.
>Is it the perfect studio PC?
>
>Martin Walker
>
>Scan seem to have carved out a fairly unique niche in the PC
>marketplace, not only offering a comprehensive range of digital audio
>workstations, gaming PCs, video editing and CAD workstations and media
>entertainment systems (all of which come under the 'Scan 3XS' moniker),
>but also stocking a huge range of components that they sell to other
>specialist professional and home PC builders alike. Their audio
>specialists therefore have an enviable choice of components with which
>to check compatibility, as well as excellent access to the parts
manufacturers themselves.
>
>This particular review model is based around Intel's i7 3930K Sandy
>Bridge CPU, whose six physical cores and six virtual ones offer a huge
>amount of processing power for the musician, especially since this one
>has been carefully overclocked beyond its stock speed of 3.2GHz to a
massive 4.4GHz.
>The chosen Asus motherboard is also unusual for a single CPU model in
>offering two banks of quad-channel RAM slots, enabling those with huge
>memory requirements (such as Vienna Symphonic Library users aiming to
>create full orchestral scores) to install up to 64GB, although the
>review model was fitted with a more modest 16GB.
>
>Under The Bonnet
>
>I've heard a lot of praise aimed at the Swedish-designed Fractal Design
>Refine cases, and I can now see why. Most builders opt for the smaller
>R3 model, but given the power and cooling requirements of this 12-core
>monster, Scan chose the rather more imposing XL version, here in Black
>Pearl but also available in Titanium Grey as an option. This case is
>built like a tank from heavy steel, coupled with a lining of dense
>sound-deadening materials for its main panel surfaces, while the hinged
>front door is also acoustically lined and closed via a magnetic catch,
>with an elegant blue illuminated on/off switch at top front, along with
>two handy USB 2 and two USB
>3 ports.
>
>Case cooling is taken care of by of two low-noise 140mm fans (one
>mounted on the case front panel and one on the rear) and one massive
>180mm fan at upper back, at a close to horizontal angle.
>Remember, the larger the fan, the slower it needs to turn and the lower
>its noise contribution. The 625-watt Enermax power supply also houses
>its own 120mm cooling fan with integral speed control for low noise.
>Overall, this case should last a lifetime, although I wouldn't fancy
>moving it after initial installation, as it has an impressive size and
weight.
>
>There's a wealth of rear-panel connections, which are augmented by two
>USB 2 and two USB 3 ports mounted on the top of the case.
>
>Inside, I found possibly the neatest wiring I've ever seen, with all
>cables beautifully grouped into several looms. There was also plenty of
>expansion room for those who need it, with seven empty hard drive bays
>and a further three 5.25-inch drive bays still available on the front
>panel beneath the supplied Samsung 22x DVD-RW Writer. Four of the eight
>RAM sockets were filled by the 16GB of high-quality Corsair RAM, and I
>was also pleased to see that, despite the huge Thermalright Archon air
>cooler mounted on the CPU with its associated low-speed 140mm fan, all
>four empty RAM sockets were still easily accessible for those who want to
add more later on.
>
>The Asus V-Pro P9X79 motherboard features Intel's X79 chip set, and has
>been available for about six months (new enough to have plenty of the
>latest features, but established enough for any issues to have been ironed
out).
>Compared with the previous Z68 chip set, the
>X79 supports the newer LGA2011 Sandy Bridge CPUs and quad-channel
>rather than dual-channel memory architecture, which should help to
>boost performance for heavy users of samples. This motherboard also
>boasts its own SSD Caching, USB 3 Boost for even faster external data
>transfers, and a unique BIOS Flashback update that lets you update your
>motherboard using a USB flash drive and a single rear-panel button press.
>
>It does, however, lack PCI slots, so anyone with a good but elderly
>soundcard should perhaps look for an alternative board or interface.
>However, for those who have already moved on, there are a healthy six
>PCIe slots on offer, and this system would normally arrive with three
>still available. The other three were already in use on the review
>model for the NVIDIA 512MB GeForce G210 fanless graphics card, and two
>more expansion cards providing twin Firewire and twin USB 3 ports (to
>supplement those already on the
>motherboard) respectively. Overall, there are plenty of ports
>available: I counted a total of eight USB2 and four USB3 ports across
>the top and rear panels, as well as the two Firewire ports on the
>expansion card.
>
>On the drive side, the case houses two of the ever-popular Western
>Digital Caviar Black drives of 1TB capacity each, along with a single
>Corsair Force
>3 series 240GB Solid State Drive that, with the motherboard's SATA 3
>6Gb/s interface, allows read/write rates of up to 550MB/s and
>incorporates the well-respected SandForce controller, which uses a
>proprietary compression system to minimise the amount of data actually
>written, which in turn increases its speed and lifetime. In other
>words, it should speed up your boot time and Windows performance
>without compromising long-term reliability. Finally, talking of
>Windows, this machine had Windows
>7 Pro 64-bit installed to take advantage of all that RAM.
>
>General Performance
>
>This overclocked 3930K processor turns in an excellent performance,
>outperforming a similarly overclocked 2600k Sandy Bridge processor by
>around
>18 percent, and with a huge 34GB/second memory bandwidth for those who
>run vast sample-based orchestras.
>
>As always, switch-on time is the moment of truth for any audio PC, and
>this one didn't disappoint. Noise levels at the front were extremely
>low, and what noise remained was mostly at top back where the main case fan
exhausts.
>When the case is mounted in a typical 'under the desk' scenario, it
>should be very quiet indeed. Thanks to the Corsair 240GB Solid State
>Drive, it only took about 12 seconds from the 'Starting Windows'
>message to reach the desktop.
>As expected, the drive turned in a jaw-dropping performance, with an
>average transfer rate of 393 MB/second. When compared with the
>254 MB/second of the same SSD in Inta Audio's i7 Ultimate Audio PC,
>reviewed in SOS March 2012, this rather proves the effectiveness of the
>Asus SSD caching on this motherboard.
>
>Idling temperature was a comfortable 41 degrees Celsius, and none of
>the six cores rose beyond a somewhat high but quite safe 72 degrees
>during my torture tests, accompanied by a slight increase in acoustic
>noise that fell within a few seconds of this 100 percent load being
>removed. On the software side, Windows 7 Pro only needs a few tweaks for
optimum audio performance:
>Scan have set up a custom power setting profile, disabled Windows sound
>mapping and allowed Windows Update to check for new updates, which the
>user decides whether to download.
>
>The Sisoftware Memory Bandwidth test measured 34GB/second, a huge
>increase over any system I've reviewed to date, even compared with the
>21GB/second of the overclocked Sandy Bridge quad-core 2600K system I
>reviewed in June 2011, proving the effectiveness of the
>X79 quad-channel RAM architecture. Meanwhile, the CPU Arithmetic score
>was 176GIPS Dhrystone (an increase of around 30 percent over the
>aforementioned 2600K), the Integer CPU Multimedia was 388Mpixel/s (50
>percent higher than the 2600K), and the CPU Multimedia Float
>performance was an excellent 545Mpixel/s (almost 80 percent higher than
>the 2600K), all auguring very well for the audio performance tests.
>
>Audio Performance
>
>Once I'd fired up the trusty DAWbench test inside Cubase, I soon found
>that it wasn't torturous enough. Using a conservative 256-sample buffer
>setting with the supplied RME HDSPe AIO audio interface, I didn't get
>any glitching, even when running the maximum 320 instances of the
>Reaxcomp multiband compressor plug-ins! I am therefore indebted to Vin
>Curigliano (the creator of
>DAWbench) for supplying an extended version of his utility capable of
>even more punishing plug-in counts, which finally enabled me to run a
>massive 356 plug-ins at the 256 buffer setting, 322 with a
>128 buffer size, 320 with a 64 size and 310 with a 32 size. This pushes
>the Scan 3930K to the top of my chart with a 17-18 percent lead over a
>similarly overclocked 2600K quad-core model. To put it another way, a
>2600K would need to run at a totally unachievable 5.3GHz to match it.
>
>Final Thoughts
>
>Some musicians may still be waiting for the incremental improvements of
>the new quad-core Intel Ivy Bridge CPUs, but although I've yet to
>personally test any of the newer versions of these, mainstream
>benchmarks suggest results reasonably close to Sandy Bridge models at
similar clock speeds.
>More importantly, no hex-core Ivy Bridge options are so far available,
>so Ivy Bridge simply isn't an option if you need the level of
>performance achieved by this Scan 3930K hex-core review machine. It
>obviously won't be the best choice if you're on a strict budget, and,
>as always, this is just one snapshot from the Scan 3XS range, which
>offers plenty of tailored options.
>
>The bottom line is this: the six cores of the Scan 3XS Intel SAX6
>PowerDAW PC offer a lot more processing grunt than a quad-core
>2600K-based machine and up to 64GB of RAM for sampling duties, yet
>remains significantly cheaper than a dual-CPU Xeon-based system. If
>that's a compromise, it sounds like a good one to me! 903106
>
>Alternatives
>
>If you want more processing power than the musician's favourite 2600K
>can provide, various specialist builders have systems that might suit.
>For instance Inta Audio (www.inta-audio.com) offer their Ultimate Music
>PC with a similar spec to this review system, as do Rain Recording
>(www.raincomputers.co.uk) with their Element Pro X79, and Music PC
>(www.music-pc.com) with their Vortex Ultimate range. If you need even
>more processing grunt, Direct Resolution
>(www.directresolutions.co.uk) have more powerful dual Xeon quad-cores
>in their DARC Ultimate range, while Scan themselves have the 3XS Xeon
>55 PowerDAW range.
>
>Brief Specifications
>
>Case: Fractal Design Define XL Case fitted with 625-watt Enermax
>MODU82+ PSU.
>
>Motherboard: Asus V-Pro P9X79, featuring Intel X79 chip set, one LGA
>2011 Socket for second generation Intel Core i7 series processors, two
>banks of four DDR3 DIMM sockets supporting up to 64GB of 2400MHz system
>memory, three PCIe 3.0 compatible x16 (3 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16), one PCIe
>3.0/2.0 x16 (x8
>mode) and two PCIe 2.0
>x1 expansion slots, two SATA 6GB/s connectors, four SATA 3GB/s
>connectors, four USB 3 ports and up to 12 USB 2 ports.
>
>Processor: Intel Core i7 3930K overclocked to 4.42GHz.
>
>Cooling: Thermalright Archon air cooler with low-speed 140mm fan.
>
>System RAM: 16GB Corsair Vengeance Gold 1600MHz CL9 DDR3 Quad Memory.
>
>Hard Drive: two Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB drives, one
>Corsair Force 3 series 240GB SSD drive.
>
>Graphics Card: NVIDIA EVGA 512MB GeForce G210, equipped with one D-Sub,
>one Dual Link DVI-I and one HDMI port, and passive (heat
>sink) cooling.
>
>Fitted Expansion Cards: two-port Firewire 1394a LoPro PCI-E, two-port
>Silverstone EC01 Int USB3 PCI-E.
>
>Optical Drive: Samsung 22x DVD-RW Writer.
>
>Installed Operating System: Windows 7 Pro 64-bit.
>
>Scan 3XS Support
>
>Each Scan 3XS system is built in-house to order, with a 24-hour burn-in
>period and various quality-control checks. A hidden partition holding a
>complete system image is also created, so you can return to the factory
>default if you need to. The standard warranty lasts 12 months, and
>there are options to extend this to two or three years. Technical
>support is handled in-house by a dedicated team available on the telephone
and online.
>
>Published in SOS August 2012
>
>--------------------------------------------------
>CTS MASTERING: http://www.ctsmastering.com
>Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/CTSMASTERING
>Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/CTS-Mastering/139114066128698
>Linked In: http://ca.linkedin.com/pub/chris-smart/46/824/536
>Dropbox: Have your stuff when you need it. 2GB is free:
>http://db.tt/bQ2GuIt
>
>PLEASE READ THIS FOOTER AT LEAST ONCE!
>To leave the list, click on the immediately following link:
>ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe
>If this link doesn't work then send a message to:
>ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>and in the Subject line type
>unsubscribe
>For other list commands such as vacation mode, click on the immediately
>following link:
>ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=faq or send a message, to
>ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx and in the Subject line type faq
>
>
>PLEASE READ THIS FOOTER AT LEAST ONCE!
>To leave the list, click on the immediately following link:
>ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe
>If this link doesn't work then send a message to:
>ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>and in the Subject line type
>unsubscribe
>For other list commands such as vacation mode, click on the immediately
>following link:
>ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=faq or send a message, to
>ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx and in the Subject line type faq
PLEASE READ THIS FOOTER AT LEAST ONCE!
To leave the list, click on the immediately following link:
ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe
If this link doesn't work then send a message to:
ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
and in the Subject line type
unsubscribe
For other list commands such as vacation mode, click on the immediately
following link:
ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=faq or send a message, to
ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx and in the Subject line type faq
PLEASE READ THIS FOOTER AT LEAST ONCE!
To leave the list, click on the immediately following link:
ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe
If this link doesn't work then send a message to:
ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
and in the Subject line type
unsubscribe
For other list commands such as vacation mode,
click on the immediately following link:
ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=faq or
send a message, to
ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
and in the Subject line type
faq
Other related posts:
