Older Dual Xeon Workstation query

[digimaton]

I'm seeing a lot of older dual Xeon workstations turning up on ebay for very little money.

I have a second computer that I use as a back-up recording unit but it belongs to the university I'm based at.

Would like to replace this, but will not be buying new.

For less that a couple of hundred quid I could pick up a dual Xeon 3.2GHz workstation.

The machine I'm looking at is a Dell Precision 470, which wil take up to 16GB of RAM (ECC DDR2, currently fitted with PC3200R), which is not something a newer entry level box would offer.Figuring I could also use it as a stand alone sampler.

I would just like to have some idea what the older dual Xeons will do for me; relative to say a Core Duo 3.2GHz, for example (it's the only reference I have for CPU power right now as that's what my main machine runs, have noticed it tops out pretty quickly running projects at 24/96, so I'm feeling very limited right now).

Someone did say that the RAM on the older workstations will run much slower that what's currently available, which offsets the advantage of being able to load so much of it, but DDR2 isn't so bad, is it? Should check MHz right?

The vendor does not seem to know exactly which Xeon chip model it is (other than a step code SL7ZE).

On another note, also seeing a lot of used multi-drive RAID based server units going very cheap. It seems for little cash it would be possible to create a nice little network based studio.Does anyone have any experience buying used server gear?

Cheers

d

[psvennevig]

The Dell 470 will sadly not get you far these days.
I ditched my 670 3 years ago (the bigger brother of 470).

It will work great as a server, video stream machine, video satellite, etc. As a DAW, not anymore..

P

[MattiasNYC]

There is a website called "dawbench"(.com) that contains a lot of great information on performance of different systems/sub-systems and software. I think that could be a good starting point.

I also suggest you ask "TAFKAT" here on this forum and maybe he can give you some valuable recommendations. My hunch is that most people will tell you not to bother with the computer and instead buy new.

[Animus]

The Dell 470 will sadly not get you far these days.
I ditched my 670 3 years ago (the bigger brother of 470).

It will work great as a server, video stream machine, video satellite, etc. As a DAW, not anymore..

P

How on earth did you manage to get by on that thing? jeeeesh! Thank god the new systems came out.

:D

[TAFKAT]

Hey D,

Some of the guys have already beaten me to the punch.. :-)

Judging by the Xeon spec you listed its a really old Dual single core unit, one of the last of the Netburst based line, its not even on the same playing field as your current rig.

Check out the graphs below..

http://dawbench.com/images/blofelds-stage1.jpg

The Xeon 3.40 listed is the same vintage as the SL7ZE (http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sSpec=SL7ZE) Xeon 3.2 system you are looking at.

http://dawbench.com/images/blofelds-sp-lynx-0307.jpg
Compare the early Xeon to the results for the later single Dual / Quadcore systems, and its already looking bleak..

http://dawbench.com/images/Blofelds%20DSP%20X-Scaling%20March%2008.JPG
This last graph with the first generation Dual Quads highlights the widening gap..

I would seriously steer clear of them for any DAW work..

Hope that helps

[neilwilkes]

As an example, I recently (well, last summer) finally dropped my old Dual Xeon 3.06 system. It has SCSI HDD (Ultra 160, bloody rapid at 15,000 RPM and never twitched) and 2Gb RAM.
400MHz FSB.
It was fine in 44.1/48KHz, but hit the rails fast in 96KHz.
I still have a surround mix with 76 tracks - varying between mono/stereo/surround and scads of FX (3 UAD-1 cards) mainly UA, URS etc.
Not a problem, but this mix was as far as I could go CPU wise pegging at 85%.

Same project on a Quad Core setup hits 30% CPU.
2Gb DDR2, SCSI HDD for Video, SCSI HDD for Audio, SATA system drive, EIDE Authoring drives.
32-bit OS (Win XP SP2)
I have run up a 235 track project, using at most 20% CPU (24/44.1) that I got wrong with ProConvert - I added in all the alternative takes that should have been stacked or left out!
HDD still not really peaking except on relocating the cursor - and I have it throttled back in the SCSI BIOS.

Will Xeons do you? Depends on what you want to do.

[digimaton]

Hey Vin, thanks for getting back to me, as promised, and thanks to everyone else for the feedback, the answer to this is pretty clear! it's a bad buy.

Since posting that question, I looked into it more, now gravitating towards Dell Precision 390 Quad core, though a bit more expensive used, looks like a wiser buy, it will also fit in a 19" rack case.

However, on the flip side of this, looking at the Dell Studio XPS (http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/desktop-studioxps-435mt?c=uk&cs=ukdhs1&l=en&ref=dthp&s=dhs) also, and wondering if I should just go into red, and use my dual core as a the secondary machine becasue the Duo E6850 3.0GHz is really letting me down on 24/96 work where a lot of inserts are in use, and I don't like freezing tracks, rather keep everything open ended

Any views on this machine?

Intel® Core i7
Intel® X58 Chipset

Up to 12GB 1066 MHz Tri-Channel DDR3 SDRAM - 3 DIMMs
Six (6) use-accessible DIMM connectors, Installed in three for Tri-Channel memory performance

Up to 1 TB Multiple Serial ATA Hard Drives with both hard drives utilized
With two hard disk drives, optional RAID 0 (striping) or RAID 1 (mirroring with Data Security DataSafeTM Internal

Power: 360 Watts

Is it to early to buy into Core i7? This seems like a reasonable machine for the outlay, no?

Or maybe do my own build instead? haven't doine that in a few years, off the shelf is less on a headache, less time wasted mucking about, but I am seeing some interesting reports on overclocking the i7 920, seems straight forward, some good X58 Chipsets out there that make tweaking a doddle.

Another note, regarding benchmarks, why do they generally never present results for applications/plug-ins that utilise real-time FFT based spectral processing? That is clearly the most taxing operation you can present a CPU with in the audio domain, if I'm not mistaken. For instance how many instances of GRM Frequency Warp @ 48kHz, for example, could one safely run before maxing the CPU? Or, what about benchmarking for FFT intensive Max/MSP patches?
Would also like to see benchmarking for physical modelling computations in MatLab, are they out there somewhere? I'll google now.




Best

[TAFKAT]

Hey Vin, thanks for getting back to me, as promised, and thanks to everyone else for the feedback, the answer to this is pretty clear! it's a bad buy.



Hey D,

No problem.. :D

RE X58's, well I can only vouch for my own development , and they were definitely a little green earlier on, but I have had great success with them of late.

You can read my X58 performance reports in another thread I posted here on the forum.

Can't really comment on the Dell variants, as I have no idea what ODM motherboards are being used in their systems, so its a bit of crap shoot there.

Re what plugins I use for the benchmarks, I choose something that can give me an incremental and quantifiable load , not necessarily the biggest load. With a smaller individual loading we can get some accurate scaling figures across even slight variations of system configurations.

I don't mind running up some FFT plugins in a modded version of my DAWbench DSP test session for you if they are readily available, even in demo form as long as its time limited and not crippled.

Let me know

:009: