All We Know About Maximizing CPU Related Performance

[braindeadfool]

Hi BDF, Tutor, (also Voyagerd and anyone else who contributed):

I don't want to put the cart before the horse but I wanted to share some encouraging news. Well, I used these BIOS settings:

Frequency/Voltage Control (main screen)
No Dummy O.C.
CPU Freq. - 165
PCIE Freq. - 100
CPU Multi - 13
QPI - 5.8666
Memory Freq. - 1333 Mhz
CPU Uncore Freq - X17

Frequency/Voltage Control
CPU 0 Vcore boot - 1.4500V
CPU 1 Vcore boot - 1.4500V
CPU 0 Vcore eventual - 1.4500V
CPU 1 Vcore eventual - 1.4500V

CPU VTT both boot - 1.35V
CPU VTT both eventual - 1.35V

CPU 0 DIMM Vcore - 1.65V
CPU 1 DIMM Vcore - 1.65V
CPU 0 PLL Voltage - AUTO
CPU 1 PLL Voltage - AUTO
IOH - 1.35V
CPU 0 DDR PWM Freq - 800 KHz (AUTO)
CPU 1 DDR PWM Freq - 800 KHz (AUTO)

Memory Configuration
DRAM tCL - 8
DRAM tRCD - 10
DRAM tRP - 8
DRAM tRAS - 26
Command Rate - 1

Signal Tweaks
IOH QPI 0 - -75
IOH QPI 1 - -15

and then enabled everything that I needed to get Mac OS X working to see if things would not only start up, but also see if all the rendering apps would work without any issues (lockups and whatnot), Well I did a GB and our new high score is 35,176 !!! To me this is a HUGE VICTORY !!! Foolish as this may sound, but my heart was racing with anticipation, hoping that thing wouldn't freeze while testing things out; praying that it would reach over 35,000 and it did !!! Also my Cinebench score is Open GL - 41.41 / CPU 22.37 !!! To me this is also amazing !!! My temps during the tests didn't go over 62C (pretty much most of the time it stayed between 30C - 57C). Only once did I see it go to 62C. I realize that I can't keep the VCore at 1.45V forever, so with some more tweaking I will work at bringing it down to 1.35V at least.

I can't thank you enough Tutor and BDF for all the time you spent (Tutor - MANY MONTHS OF PATIENCE WITH ME !!! & BDF - DAY & NIGHT THE WHOLE WEEK !) helping me through all of this stuff. I just hope that those that are willing to take the dive (challenge) into learning this, will be able to reap the rewards. Now that I understand things better when it comes to the Target CPU - calculated value....= cpu multi x CPU freq and how other things in the BIOS are affected by that has been such a big benefit for me learning this and again, I hope this helps others in the process to learn through my mistakes from this experience.

If there is anything else that you see that I need to change/tweak, please let me know. Thanks...

EDIT: I just did another GB & CB test (with the same BIOS; except I just upped the CPU Freq to 167) and for the new GB score: 36,085 & CB score: OpenGL: 43.64 / CPU: 22.55. Again, this is encouraging. I tried to up the CPU Freq to 170 and the apps either quit out on me or the system locked up. So now I just brought everything down a bit to this:

No Dummy O.C.
CPU Freq. - 164
PCIE Freq. - 100
CPU Multi - 13

Frequency/Voltage Control
CPU 0 Vcore boot - 1.43125V
CPU 1 Vcore boot - 1.41875V
CPU 0 Vcore eventual - 1.44375V
CPU 1 Vcore eventual - 1.43125V

Everything else is the same. I will be bringing down the Vcore when I do some more testing. BTW, when I bring down the Uncore Multi, am I not to bring it down below the CPU Multi x CPU Freq? Again, I really want to thank the both of you for all your help and everyone else as well for your contributions to making this work. I look forward to your reply with anything else you can suggest. Later...

I'm not sure why you believe that you can't stay at 1.45 V forever; the whole purpose of our exercise this week was to find a stable setup. If you move down in VCore you will move towards an unstable set of voltages. You will in all likelihood move on to another computer well before there is an impact of your chip life being shortened by running at this modest overvoltage. Your temps are great...again another advantage of the underclock. But as I alluded to earlier, even the most demanding tasks don't usually push a machine like a torture test does, so you may "get by" with lower voltages.

For the Westermere chips, the Uncore Frequency needs to be 1.5x the RAM multiplier (again, the SR-2 bios doesn't directly tell you this, but it only offers 6x, 8x, and 10x as ram speeds of 800, 1033, and 1333). So the minimum is Uncore multiplier is 15x. I've found that moving from about 17 on up requires more VTT. There's very little difference in benchmarking scores from 15x to 20x, so I keep mine at 15x.

 

[PunkNugget]

I'm not sure why you believe that you can't stay at 1.45 V forever; the whole purpose of our exercise this week was to find a stable setup. If you move down in VCore you will move towards an unstable set of voltages. You will in all likelihood move on to another computer well before there is an impact of your chip life being shortened by running at this modest overvoltage. Your temps are great...again another advantage of the underclock. But as I alluded to earlier, even the most demanding tasks don't usually push a machine like a torture test does, so you may "get by" with lower voltages.

For the Westermere chips, the Uncore Frequency needs to be 1.5x the RAM multiplier (again, the SR-2 bios doesn't directly tell you this, but it only offers 6x, 8x, and 10x as ram speeds of 800, 1033, and 1333). So the minimum is Uncore multiplier is 15x. I've found that moving from about 17 on up requires more VTT. There's very little difference in benchmarking scores from 15x to 20x, so I keep mine at 15x.

I hear you and will take heed to your advice. My thoughts on this are as a result of what Tutor mentioned (about keeping the Vcore at 1.35 and below), and I understand what he's saying too. At the same time I'm not using this machine at full OCCT TT levels all the time anyway. Only when needed usually for 20 to 30 min at a time a few times a month. Then rest of the time it will stay idle around at around 27C to 29C; even at the 165/100/12 / Vcore 1.45 / VTT 1.35 setting. The highest that I ever saw the temps go in my GB and CB was 64C and that was only for a brief moment. It mainly stayed at 57C to 60C during those TT's. Using FCP, Motion, After Effects shouldn't push that much more when I'm rendering vids, and that's what I'm using it for anyway.

Again, thanks for all the advice, time and help BDF, it's greatly appreciated...

EDIT: I wanted to include a link to what I felt needed to be posted so we can now make things "official" when it comes to GeekBench Rankings. Hope you both like it...

http://www.tonymacx86.com/overclocking/70935-top-20-geekbench-scores-hackintoshes.html#post439953

 

[Tutor]

WolfPackPrime0 Update 1

Using a massively featured and software laden OS based on Ubuntu Linux 12.04 - Version 3.4 of The Ultimate Edition [ http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=ultimate ], the newly christened WolfPackPrime0's first Geekbench 2 score was only 56,323 - only good enough for third place among the top Geekbench 2 scores. At least the OS and all of the included 500+ programs and utilities were free and the hardware was bargain basement. I'll be testing first other versions of Linux and then other OSes in the near future and will post updates.

 

[DJenkins]

Using a massively featured and software laden OS based on Ubuntu Linux 12.04 - Version 3.4 of The Ultimate Edition [ http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=ultimate ], the newly christened WolfPackPrime0's first Geekbench 2 score was only 56,323 - only good enough for third place among the top Geekbench 2 scores. At least the OS and all of the included 500+ programs and utilities were free and the hardware was bargain basement. I'll be testing first other versions of Linux and then other OSes in the near future and will post updates.

Haha wow Tutor, that's incredible. I'm not sure you should feel so bad about 3rd place... the next score above you is 8 processor/80 thread!

How do you find the cost/performance ratio and was the build completed for a specific purpose?

 

[Tutor]

WolfPackPrime0 Update 2

Haha wow Tutor, that's incredible. I'm not sure you should feel so bad about 3rd place... the next score above you is 8 processor/80 thread!

How do you find the cost/performance ratio and was the build completed for a specific purpose?

Achieved a Geekbench 2 score of 57,935 using openSuse 12.2 (aka Linux 3.4.6-2.10-desktop x86_64). Including the 128 gigs of ram, the 26 terabytes of storage, the 240 gigs of PCIe OS/app storage, and the EVGA GTX690, I have invested less in this latest build (for rendering animations and editing video) than I have in my 8-core 2009 Mac Pro that I upgraded to be a 12-core 2010 Mac Pro. So I'd have to say that I'm happy with the cost/performance [ http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench2/compare/422811/1010517 ] ratio. Geekbench doesn't do this latest build justice when it comes to rendering complex scenes. The new machine renders, at least, three times as fast as my upgraded Mac Pro.

 

[DJenkins]

....(for rendering animations and editing video)....

Very very cool

Sometimes I get worried I'm going to end up spending more time fussing over the computer than actually using it haha

Would love to see some of your work, after all these things are tools for that end purpose... I'd link you to mine but I'm a bit shy if computer horsepower is an indicator of anything

 

[PunkNugget]

Achieved a Geekbench 2 score of 57,935 using openSuse 12.2 (aka Linux 3.4.6-2.10-desktop x86_64). Including the 128 gigs of ram, the 26 terabytes of storage, the 240 gigs of PCIe OS/app storage, and the EVGA GTX690, I have invested less in this latest build (for rendering animations and editing video) than I have in my 8-core 2009 Mac Pro that I upgraded to be a 12-core 2010 Mac Pro. So I'd have to say that I'm happy with the cost/performance [ http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench2/compare/422811/1010517 ] ratio. Geekbench doesn't do this latest build justice when it comes to rendering complex scenes. The new machine renders, at least, three times as fast as my upgraded Mac Pro.

This is great Tutor !!! I'd like to see when you can get Mac OS X running on this unit.

When have a moment could you give me a breakdown of the exact 3930K system setup that you mentioned that gets you a GB of 28,000+? Is this what you put together?

1. ASUS RAMPAGE IV EXTREME INTEL X79 CHIPSET MOTHERBOARD

2. INTEL SIX CORE I7 3930K 3.2GHZ - 3.8GHz UNLOCKED CPU PROCESSOR

3. ATI XFX 6870 2GB GPU (or even one of my extra 4890's that I purchased - let me know if that's fine too).

4. 32GB DDR3 2000 MHZ QUAD CHANNEL MEMORY 1.5V (if this is the type of RAM I should get or a different kind).

Everything else I already have. Let me know what you can, thanks...

----------

Very very cool

Sometimes I get worried I'm going to end up spending more time fussing over the computer than actually using it haha

Would love to see some of your work, after all these things are tools for that end purpose... I'd link you to mine but I'm a bit shy if computer horsepower is an indicator of anything

I wouldn't worry about it, everyone has to start somewhere. That's how you get better at it. As a result of asking questions and seeking advice I'm the 2nd Fastest system on GB using Mac OS X, ALL thanks to Tutor and BrainDeadFool.

What's amazing to me is that I'm using a Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD7 (v.1) mobo, W3680 CPU, 12GB 1600MHz Corsair Dominator RAM & XFX 6870 GPU and my GB is 18,585, then talking with Tutor a few weeks ago, he tells me that he has a cheap $1,700 setup using a 3930K CPU (that you can see that I'm asking him about) that he was able to get a GB of 28,000 through UC'ing. That's amazing. Not even your Top MacPro that costs $10,500+ (with all the jimmies thrown in there) can get above 23,500+. That's pretty sad for a company that touts how great their systems are. I'm STILL amazed that I can get the score and power from my SR-2 setup, but again, that's all because I ask questions and seek advice.

So, throw up your GB score to let us know what you have as well as the breakdown of your system and the OS you're using...

PS - Something else I just did; another test in Cinebench 11.5 and just received a OpenGL of 50.63 !!! Again, that's because of Tutor saying: "...the newest, isn't always the greatest." Mind you I'm using and 3+ year old Sapphire 4890 2GB GPU. Now it may not be the one I was using (which burned out), but this one seems to hold it's own and even better than the GTX 580 that I paid twice the money for, and that one didn't even perform at all. I think I my OpenGL was a little over 20. So again, I'm grateful for all the help... On top of that, I had another SSD that had Mac OS X 10.7.2 and that's the one that I was able to receive the higher OpenGL score on. So now I have two OS's, 10.6.7 and 10.7.2 on two separate SSD's...
___________________________________________
= THE HACKINBEAST = EVGA SR-2/2xX5690's/Sapphire 4890 2GB GPU/48GB Mushkin 2000MHz RAM/LEPA G1600 PSU/Silverstone TJ11 Case (http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=277433)
Geekbench Score: 36,583 / Cinebench 11.5: OpenGL: 50.63 fps, CPU: 22.55 pts

 

[DJenkins]

So, throw up your GB score to let us know what you have as well as the breakdown of your system and the OS you're using...

Hey PunkNugget, I've got an SR-2 build going as well. I've followed the likes of brandeadmac's and yours for a while as inspiration

Still some problems to get sorted out though, raid card and other pci devices weren't playing nice. I've got a few guys helping out at the moment though so hopefully will be 100% soon... then I'll probably be asking a few questions in this thread! Just didn't want to go shouting about my system until it was stable.

GB just over 25,000 at stock 3.2GHz. I plan to run permanently @ 3.6GHz which hits over 28,000 but there are issues with sleep and a few other things when OC. I've seen others improve on those scores with SR-2 systems so it's tempting to push a bit further.

No water cooling just 2 x Noctua DH14 but those things are working really well.

Specs are:
evga SR-2, 2 x 6 core X5679, GTX570, 48GB g.skill RAM, 240GB Agilty 3 SSD (OSX), 120GB Agilty 3 SSD (Windows7), 8TB Areca 1213-4i RAID 5

 

[PunkNugget]

Hey PunkNugget, I've got an SR-2 build going as well. I've followed the likes of brandeadmac's and yours for a while as inspiration

Still some problems to get sorted out though, raid card and other pci devices weren't playing nice. I've got a few guys helping out at the moment though so hopefully will be 100% soon... then I'll probably be asking a few questions in this thread! Just didn't want to go shouting about my system until it was stable.

GB just over 25,000 at stock 3.2GHz. I plan to run permanently @ 3.6GHz which hits over 28,000 but there are issues with sleep and a few other things when OC. I've seen others improve on those scores with SR-2 systems so it's tempting to push a bit further.

No water cooling just 2 x Noctua DH14 but those things are working really well.

Specs are:
evga SR-2, 2 x 6 core X5679, GTX570, 48GB g.skill RAM, 240GB Agilty 3 SSD (OSX), 120GB Agilty 3 SSD (Windows7), 8TB Areca 1213-4i RAID 5

For what you have, you've got a great setup. The amazing thing is you're still crankin' 2,000 GB over the TOTL Mac Pro that would've cost you over $10k, and I'm sure you paid less than 1/3 that. So you did very well for yourself. About the raid issue, if you want a great premade raid card you should look at what I have, the OWC Accelsior 240GB PCI-E Raid Card. You should try it, it's fast and you definitely have the slot space for it. Later...

 

[DJenkins]

About the raid issue, if you want a great premade raid card you should look at what I have, the OWC Accelsior 240GB PCI-E Raid Card. You should try it, it's fast and you definitely have the slot space for it. Later...

Not sure if the accelsior is actually a raid card? pci-e SSD I think? But yes with the way adobe after effects works now I'm going to get one of these as a dedicated cache! The Areca raid card I have offers RAID 5 redundancy and still holds around 400MB/s read & write which is decent for 6TB usable capacity (4 x 2TB drives).

Sorry I'm probably clogging this thread with non CPU related ranting... I'll just read along with your underclocking experiments and try and understand it all haha

Ok this may be on topic but I'm nervous as to whether my X5679 CPUs will over/underclock ok as I think they were made as OEM for a series of HP servers... do intel tend to restrict things on OEM chips?

 

[PunkNugget]

Not sure if the accelsior is actually a raid card? pci-e SSD I think? But yes with the way adobe after effects works now I'm going to get one of these as a dedicated cache! The Areca raid card I have offers RAID 5 redundancy and still holds around 400MB/s read & write which is decent for 6TB usable capacity (4 x 2TB drives).

Sorry I'm probably clogging this thread with non CPU related ranting... I'll just read along with your underclocking experiments and try and understand it all haha

No you're not clogging, you're fine, but now, why don't you give OWC a call or at least watch this vid.

Here's one directly from OWC:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAfZ0E_3eoI

but this is a better breakdown not only using a Mac Pro, but also a Hackintosh. As usual, the Hackintosh performs better -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTT5tfylS3c

You can even use TWO of these RAID PCI-E cards for INSANE WARP DRIVE SPEED (it should work, but contact OWC and EVGA on that one to verify)

I'm a reseller for OWC so if you need anything I'll take care of you just PM me. Also, I spoke to Mike (who did the vid at InsanlyGreatMac) and he said for a great RAID card. But again, if you need more specifics then call or email OWC and give them what you have setup now and how it compares to the Accelsior Raid PCI-E SSDs. I like mine. Fast enough for my needs...

Here's OWC's site:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/PCIe/OWC/Mercury_Accelsior/RAID

Lastly, here's another post on this PCI-E SSD. Ironically it's here on MacRumors if you want to ask more questions on real end users:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1389926/

Ok this may be on topic but I'm nervous as to whether my X5679 CPUs will over/underclock ok as I think they were made as OEM for a series of HP servers... do intel tend to restrict things on OEM chips?

No need to be nervous, just have a Windows SSD or HD and use OCCT and follow this thread from Post #285, but read it FIRST before you do anything, then proceed with cautionary fun... You'll be just fine. the worst that will happen when you push your system, is that the app (OCCT) will "fail" shutting off the app and then you'll have to go into your BIOS and figure out what to change or if you get a BSOD, then take a pic (for yourself) and then go here:

http://www.overclock.net/t/935829/the-overclockers-bsod-code-list

That will tell you what's jacked up if your system BSODs on you (as it has on me). Always remember, YMMV (Your Milage May Vary). It depends on your system. Hope this helps, later...
_________________________________________________________________________

= THE HACKINBEAST = EVGA SR-2/2xX5690's/Sapphire 4890 2GB GPU/48GB Mushkin 2000MHz RAM/LEPA G1600 PSU/Silverstone TJ11 Case (http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/ind...owtopic=277433)
Geekbench Score: 36,583 / Cinebench 11.5: OpenGL: 50.63 fps, CPU: 22.55 pts

 

[Tutor]

WolfPackPrime0 Update 2

This is some of the output that I got from running, in Terminal, the command: dmidecode --type 4. Note well max CPU speed. Looks like underclocking with a little more cpu tweaking may be possible.


SMBIOS 2.7 present.

Handle 0x0004, DMI type 4, 42 bytes
Processor Information
Socket Designation: SOCKET 0
Type: Central Processor
Family: Xeon
Manufacturer: Intel
...
Flags:
FPU (Floating-point unit on-chip)
VME (Virtual mode extension)
DE (Debugging extension)
PSE (Page size extension)
TSC (Time stamp counter)
MSR (Model specific registers)
PAE (Physical address extension)
MCE (Machine check exception)
CX8 (CMPXCHG8 instruction supported)
APIC (On-chip APIC hardware supported)
SEP (Fast system call)
MTRR (Memory type range registers)
PGE (Page global enable)
MCA (Machine check architecture)
CMOV (Conditional move instruction supported)
PAT (Page attribute table)
PSE-36 (36-bit page size extension)
CLFSH (CLFLUSH instruction supported)
DS (Debug store)
ACPI (ACPI supported)
MMX (MMX technology supported)
FXSR (FXSAVE and FXSTOR instructions supported)
SSE (Streaming SIMD extensions)
SSE2 (Streaming SIMD extensions 2)
SS (Self-snoop)
HTT (Multi-threading)
TM (Thermal monitor supported)
PBE (Pending break enabled)
Version: Not Specified
Voltage: 0.0 V
External Clock: 100 MHz
Max Speed: 4000 MHz
Current Speed: 1200 MHz
Status: Populated, Enabled
Upgrade: Socket LGA2011
L1 Cache Handle: 0x0005
L2 Cache Handle: 0x0006
L3 Cache Handle: 0x0007
...
Core Count: 8
Core Enabled: 8
Thread Count: 16
Characteristics:
64-bit capable
Multi-Core
Hardware Thread
Execute Protection
Enhanced Virtualization
Power/Performance Control

... . [it was repeated for the other 3 sockets].

This is what cpupower frequency-info shows:
linux-uydo:~ # cpupower frequency-info
analyzing CPU 0:
driver: acpi-cpufreq
CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 0
CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 0
maximum transition latency: 10.0 us.
hardware limits: 1.20 GHz - 2.70 GHz
available frequency steps: 2.70 GHz, 2.70 GHz, 2.60 GHz, 2.50 GHz, 2.40 GHz, 2.30 GHz, 2.20 GHz, 2.10 GHz, 2.00 GHz, 1.90 GHz, 1.80 GHz, 1.70 GHz, 1.60 GHz, 1.50 GHz, 1.40 GHz, 1.30 GHz, 1.20 GHz
available cpufreq governors: conservative, userspace, powersave, ondemand, performance
current policy: frequency should be within 1.20 GHz and 2.70 GHz.
The governor "performance" may decide which speed to use
within this range.
current CPU frequency is 1.20 GHz (asserted by call to hardware).
boost state support:
Supported: yes
Active: yes
3100 MHz max turbo 7-8 active cores
3200 MHz max turbo 4-6 active cores
3400 MHz max turbo 3 active cores
3500 MHz max turbo 2 active cores
3500 MHz max turbo 1 active cores

 

[PunkNugget]

Can't wait to see the results Tutor! BTW, I'm looking into the ASRock mobos that you and spoke about the other day. It will either be one of the 3 mobos. Not sure yet which one to go with to use a 3930K:

1) X79 Extreme9

2) X79 Extreme11

3) Fatal1ty X79 Professional

Now when speaking to ASRock's tech support they told me that the Fatal1ty X79 Professional mobo would be the better one to go with because it's the most Overclockable Mobo available; which translates to me the probably the best UC'able Mobo. But I'm going to poke around on some other forums sites and ask more questions, unless you know which ASRock board you were talking about...

 

[Tutor]

C... . But I'm going to poke around on some other forums sites and ask more questions, unless you know which ASRock board you were talking about...

Extreme4 to 9, depending on your other needs.

 

[PunkNugget]

Extreme4 to 9, depending on your other needs.

Thanks. After reading the specs on all the boards, my gut was telling Extreme9. That's funny... But that's good to know that I can try this board out and OC; I mean UC it. I'll be looking at the reviews later... Thanks again...

 

[PunkNugget]

Extreme4 to 9, depending on your other needs.

Hi Tutor, I've been poking around trying to find out if anyone else has used this mobo for this type of Hackintosh build and haven't found much success. Can you give me your breakdown on what you used for your build?

- Mobo
- CPU (i7-3930K obviously)
- RAM
- GPU
- PSU

Thanks... Later...

 

[Tutor]

Hi Tutor, I've been poking around trying to find out if anyone else has used this mobo for this type of Hackintosh build and haven't found much success. Can you give me your breakdown on what you used for your build?

- Mobo
- CPU (i7-3930K obviously)
- RAM
- GPU
- PSU

Thanks... Later...

I don't recommend that you try to replicate my system. I use my mobo and the case that encloses it and the ram, the gpu and the psu that accompanied it because I economize and I had them all on hand from a purchase on Ebay of a used system (for under $1500) that I bought solely to get a $1800+ 2687W cpu (now the second of dual cpus in my Asus WolfPack1 - the SR2 builds have been re-denominated as WolfPack2 and WolfPack3). My recommendation to you is to get an ASRock for a single cpu 2011 system, and get ram (at least 2,000 MHz), psu (at least 1000W) and gpu (Radeon-4980); but as always, my concluding recommendation to you is to do as you see fit.

 

[Tutor]

Trust your own judgment in the end, for "In lumine tuo videbimus lumen."

 

[SR2Mac]

.

 

[PunkNugget]

I don't recommend that you try to replicate my system. I use my mobo and the case that encloses it and the ram, the gpu and the psu that accompanied it because I economize and I had them all on hand from a purchase on Ebay of a used system (for under $1500) that I bought solely to get a $1800+ 2687W cpu (now the second of dual cpus in my Asus WolfPack1 - the SR2 builds have been re-denominated as WolfPack2 and WolfPack3). My recommendation to you is to get an ASRock for a single cpu 2011 system, and get ram (at least 2,000 MHz), psu (at least 1000W) and gpu (Radeon-4980); but as always, my concluding recommendation to you is to do as you see fit.

I usually do that anyway (and sometimes that gets me into trouble... he, he). Something else, both (used) 4890's gave out on me and I took a chance and put in my XFX Radeon 6870 1GB GPU and it worked just fine and eeked out a bit more performance on my Cinebench score; but just by a little bit. I just ordered the 2GB 6870 for $200 and it works great. If you're ever looking for a slightly more updated ATI GPU over the 4890 then this might be a great replacement as it was for me (since both you and I have similar systems).

Trust your own judgment in the end, for "In lumine tuo videbimus lumen."

True that. Thanks for shedding "light" on that subject. Later...

 

[Tutor]

Another OS on i7-3930k

Per dollar, the < $600 i7-3930k inserted in a $250 MSI X79A-GD45 LGA 2011 Intel X79 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard RULES in Windows! How about in Linux or another OS?

This is the second OS on WolfPack4. Geekbench2 performance (23,317) is much lower (by over 4k points) than on Windows (27,605), but overall performance is very competitive with retail systems running the same OS, particularly given the fact that this system cost under $1,500.00. Runs at 4.3 GHz (non-Turbo) and turbos to 4.87 GHz. Window's Geekbench2 score (see URL in sig.) is higher than average for all Mac Pros (2010 and 2012) running 64-bit benchware [ http://browser.primatelabs.com/mac-benchmarks ], but under this OS, Geekbench2 performance is only better than that of Mac Pro running (a) Intel Xeon X5650 2670 MHz (12 cores) and (b) lesser powered systems. This version of the OS may be the cause of this relatively low performance of this Sandy Bridge chip. Under 10.6.7, a single underclocked Westmere 5680, running on the EVGA SR2, scored 22,265 points in Geekbench2 [ http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench2/426755 ], so I would have expected the Sandy Bridge to yield a score at least 10% higher or 24,492 as a base improvement.

 

[Tutor]

Glimpse of WolfPack2

WolfPack2 is still a work in progress. It has 2 E5-2687Ws residing on an ASUS Z9PE-D8 WS Dual LGA 2011 Intel C602 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 SSI EEB Intel Motherboard. As with WolfPack4, it performs much better under Windows 7 [ http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench2/655752 ], attaining a Geekbench2 score of 38,173 (without any tweaks) and a Windows 7 Cinebench 11.5 score of 26.2. I have yet to run Linux on this system. WolfPack1 and WolfPack3 (both based on the EVGA SR2 and running dual 5680s and 5675s Westmere Xeons, respectively,) both outperform WolfPack2 under the currently running OS, but not under Windows 7, except that WolfPack1 beats it on Geekbench2 on both OSes. Note that I've overclocked these Sandy Bridge puppies the little that they allow. Could this go, at least in a small way, toward explaining why we've yet to see a Sandy Bridge dual Xeon based Mac Pro?

 

[PunkNugget]

WolfPack2 is still a work in progress. It has 2 E5-2687Ws residing on an ASUS Z9PE-D8 WS Dual LGA 2011 Intel C602 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 SSI EEB Intel Motherboard. As with WolfPack4, it performs much better under Windows 7 [ http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench2/655752 ] attaining a Geekbench2 score of 38,173 (without any tweaks) and a Windows 7 Cinebench 11.5 score of 26.2. I have yet to run Linux on this system. WolfPack1 and WolfPack3 out perform it under the currently running OS, but not under Windows 7, except that WolfPack 1 beats it on Geekbench2 on both OSes.

Nice work... Although the higher score in Windows is great, I still prefer Mac OS X when it comes to the User Friendly OS. That's my preference though. Again, great work there Tutor... Later...

 

[PunkNugget]

To Tutor and BDF:

I'm now FINALLY using FCP 7 and I wanted to find out why is it not rendering at full speed? I get done with a sequence and then go to Sequence > Render > Both (to render both audio and video files). But unlike my single processor machine that is OC'd it would render my file at full tilt (iStat would report 600% to 700+%), the SR-2 is only rendering around 12% - 25%? Why? Is there something in the BIOS that I haven't checked off or is there something in the preferences in FCP 7 that I need to select to enable full speed rendering? Also, when I do see any type of rendering I only see 12 threads being used and not all 24. But even with 12 threads, this thing should be cookin' through these files... Whatever help you can give would be very helpful...

 

[DJenkins]

I'm now FINALLY using FCP 7 and I wanted to find out why is it not rendering at full speed?

Hey PunkNugs, what codec are you rendering to and what codec is your source media? Final Cut has always had a major preference for ProRes for obvious reasons. If you are using h.264 native Canon 5D material or XDCAM long GOP material maybe there's a bottleneck with the codec?

Also I don't think Final Cut 7 was ever 64bit, not sure what sort of impact this has though.

I have a bunch of different media on my machine at the moment, I might do some tests and see how the different codecs behave.