oldsneakers
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Tyan GX28 as a DAW
Hi,
I aquired a former game server, a Tyan GX28 that I want to use for a DAW.
It has:
Dual Operton 248's
4 Gig of DDR400 RAM
2 WD Raptor 10K 76 Gig HD's in a RAID 0 array
The drawbacks to the machine are the following:
1. It only has two PCI slots due to it's 1U rackmount type chassi.
2. USB 1.1
3. no Firewire
4. no AGP
The onboard graphics are ATI rage 8 MB PCI.
I was considering getting an M-Audio Audiophile 192 card with a DMP3 preamp, installing Win XP 64 and purchasing Sonar 5 when it becomes available.
My concern with the machine is the video. Will using the onboard graphics drag down the performance of the machine? If so, with no AGP, would a PCI card in the remaining PCI slot be adequate for the video demands. Thanks
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dcastle
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RE: Tyan GX28 as a DAW
2005/09/15 15:54:02
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Greetings Jim, Welcome to the forum! My concern with the machine is the video. Will using the onboard graphics drag down the performance of the machine? If so, with no AGP, would a PCI card in the remaining PCI slot be adequate for the video demands. This is a big concern! The unified memory model steals memory cycles for the video and it does degrade performance --- a lot. The PCI video card solution will fix this. You really don't need much video performance for SONAR, but high resolution is a serious bonus. You still may have problems with PCI bandwidth between the video card and the sound card. There may be ways to get around that. Search! WIN XP64 is probably problematic overkill unless you are sure that all of your audio card drivers and plugins will work. Regards, David
ASUS M3A78 AMD 9950 Quad 2.6G 8GB Shure • Rhode • Audio-Technica • Allen&Heath GL2200-24 MOTU 24i • Presonus Firepod • E-MU 1212m • Zoom H2 SONAR 2XL-8PE • Sound Forge 1-9 • Audacity 0.1-1.3
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oldsneakers
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RE: Tyan GX28 as a DAW
2005/09/15 17:38:35
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Thanks for the help dcastle. I was looking thru the new things that they added to Sonar 5 and one of them is this:
NEW—Video output to 1394 FireWire devices for high quality viewing with lower CPU and disk usage
Would it be better to get a pci addon Firewire board and an external Firewire Video device (have not seen one of these)? Or is it really no difference since it would all still be going thru the pci bus. The slots are called 64 bit 133/100 PCI-X slots. I did some searching on PCI-X and didn't find what advantage that has.
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thunderkyss
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RE: Tyan GX28 as a DAW
2005/09/15 18:30:56
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the firewire video output, isn't related to you regular computer screen, but to a video program you may be working on.
IMHO, I'd go with the onboard video. you got 4gigs of ram, I think you'll be ok. I wouldn't want to use any of my PCI throughput for video. I'd put a firewire card in there, and use at least one Fireface 800. 56 input channels. Then buy Sonar5
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oldsneakers
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RE: Tyan GX28 as a DAW
2005/09/16 07:07:34
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Thanks for the help thunderkyss. I will check out the Firewire 800's.
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Muziekschuur
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RE: Tyan GX28 as a DAW
2005/09/16 11:59:46
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Wouldn't a MAGMA external 7x PCI chassis be a good extra investment? Doesn't have the computer have an extra pci-x slot?
Then you could use the pci-x card of magma and have no bandwith issues whatsoever.
Muziekschuur
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steverispin
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RE: Tyan GX28 as a DAW
2005/09/16 12:11:23
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Hmm, Nice machine!
PCI-X is a 64-bit slot that works at 3.3 volts not 5v. The 100/133 is the speed of the buss, twice as fast as standard PCI (33/66)
This gives you up to 3-4x the speed and twice the bandwidth, over a standard PCI slot.
Some PCI cards will work in it, if they're dual voltage and if the PCI-X buss is designed to fall back to 33/66.
This is a bit shaky.
Thunderkyss is spot on with the Firewire option, I've got a LaCie PCI-X FW800 card for my audio drives and it's been solid from day one.
I don't run a fireface800 audio interface, but the consensus on these forums seems it's the box of the moment!
Best of luck with it all
Steve
Ain't no plant can outwit me! -Steve (despite all evidence to the contrary - Mrs Steve)
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steverispin
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RE: Tyan GX28 as a DAW
2005/09/16 12:20:19
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Just a thought,- there are quite a few dual-opteron motherboards available with more slots, plus PCIe etc. - see Tyan
It might be an option to gut the machine and install a new Mobo in a new case. - about $300???( not sure cos I think in £££)
This would make things much more flexible for the future.
Steve
Ain't no plant can outwit me! -Steve (despite all evidence to the contrary - Mrs Steve)
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calaverasgrandes
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RE: Tyan GX28 as a DAW
2005/09/16 14:58:25
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If you are averse to replacing the motherboard (it will probably be a pain) you also might consider a combo usb/firewire card. As far as the video, most servers arent designed to be outputing a display all the time. You would be best off with a cheap radeon PCI card like a 9100 or a 7500. These can be had for around $50 or so.
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Muziekschuur
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RE: Tyan GX28 as a DAW
2005/09/16 15:19:50
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Here you have the specs of this machine. As you can see it does have PCI-X wich means it is ideal to use together with an Magma expansionchassis for PCI sound grafic etc.
Specifications
Motherboard
• TYAN Thunder K8SR (S2881)
• Dual AMD Opteron™ system board
- S2881G2NR for B2881G28S4H
- S2881UG2NR for B2881G28U4H
• Extended ATX footprint (13" x 12")
Processor
• Dual PGA 940-pin ZIF sockets
• Supports up to two AMD Opteron™ processors
• Supports single/dual core
Chipset
• AMD-8131™ HyperTransport™ PCI-X Tunnel
• AMD-8111™ HyperTransport™ I/O Hub
• Winbond™ W83627HF Super I/O ASIC
• Analog Devices ADM1027 Hardware Monitoring IC
Memory
• 128-bit dual channel memory bus
• (8) 184-pin 2.5-Volt DDR DIMM sockets
• Supports up to 16GB of Reg. DDR memory
• Supports ECC type memory modules
• Supports DDR 400/333/266 memory module
Expansion Slot
• (2) 64-bit 133/100MHz PCI-X slots
• Support 1 full height / 1 half height cards
Integrated LAN Controllers
• (2) GbE ports (Broadcom BCM5704C dual-channel
GbE LAN controller connected to PCI-X bridge),
with teaming feature support
• (1) 10/100 Fast Ethernet port (Intel 82551QM)
BIOS
• AMI BIOS 8.0 on 4Mbit LPC Flash ROM
• Supports ACPI 1.0b & 2.0
• PnP, DMI2.0, WfM2.0 Power management
• Power Management S1, S4, and S5 support
Back I/O Ports
• Stacked PS/2 Mouse & Keyboard ports
• Stacked two USB 1.1 ports; (2) RJ45 connections
• (1) 9-pin UART Serial port; (1) 15-pin VGA port
Integrated PCI Graphics
• ATI® RAGE™ XL 8MB PCI graphics controller
Chassis Form Factor
• Industry 19" rack-mountable 1U chassis
• Dimension (inch): 17" (W) x 26.5" (D) x 1.7" (H)
• Dimension (mm): 432 (W) x 673 (D) x 43 (H)
Storage
• (4) external 3.5" HDD bays
• Pre-installed slim 24x CD-ROM drive
• Hard Disk Drives
- B2881G28S4H: support 4 hot-swappable
SATA HDD bays with RAID 0, 1, and 10
- B2881G28U4H: support 4 hot-swappable
Ultra320 SCSI HDD bay
Integrated Storage Controller
• Dual channel IDE
• Silicon Image SI3114 4-port S-ATA RAID
controller for B2881G28S4H
• Adaptec AIC-7902 dual channel Ultra320 SCSI
controller for B2881G28U4H
Power Supply - EPS 12V 400W output w/ PFC
System Cooling
• Six 40 x 40 x 28 mm ball-bearing fans
• Two passive CPU copper heatsinks
• Special-designed air duct
Front Access I/O ports
• I/O - (1) USB 1.1 ports
• LED indicators
- (1) IDE channel activity LED
- (2) LAN link/activity LEDs
- Power LED
• Switch - power & reset
Server Management
• Optional Tyan SMDC (remote server
management kit), IPMI 1.5 compliant
• System fan speed control
Regulatory
• FCC Class B (Declaration of Conformity)
• CE (Declaration of Conformity)
• UL (Underwriters Laboratories Inc.) certified
I use Bagend speakers. You should hear em too.
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oldsneakers
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RE: Tyan GX28 as a DAW
2005/09/16 16:10:25
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Thanks for all the info guys. I looked at the Fireface & Magma options. Both are $1000+. I think I will give calaverasgrandes idea a try first. Find as cheap of a pci-x video card that I can find that has XP 64 drivers. I read somewhere that with a dual processor PC I have two separate PCI buses so maybe I will be ok with just a PCI card.
I loaded XP 64 into the thing just now. The video is very sluggish. Don't know if this is a good test, but if I bring up the Windows Task Manager on the machine, put it on the performance tab and drag the window around the screen rapidly. The CPU spikes up to 50%. I do the same test on my P4 2.8 with a ATI xt800 Platinum AGP card and it stays between 10 - 25 %. So I think I can expect the onboard to adversely affect things.
As far as gutting it, I would consider it if it were a desktop model. This is a rack mount 1U server chassi. It's 1 inch tall. Thats why it has only 2 PCI slots. They are horizontal in the case, not vertical. And the opterons get so hot, there is a very custom cooling setup of 7 fans, 6 of which blow right on the heat sinks on the opterons. Not the type of machine you can do much with.
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dcastle
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RE: Tyan GX28 as a DAW
2005/09/16 17:05:33
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As far as gutting it, I would consider it if it were a desktop model. This is a rack mount 1U server chassi. It's 1 inch tall. Thats why it has only 2 PCI slots. They are horizontal in the case, not vertical. And the opterons get so hot, there is a very custom cooling setup of 7 fans, 6 of which blow right on the heat sinks on the opterons. Not the type of machine you can do much with. I think the gutting idea was to keep the processors and memory, etc. But, get a new motherboard and case. This would be my recommendation and shouldn't set you back much over $350 including a low-end PCI-express video card. You will end up with an awesome monster at a fraction of the cost. I think this would be better than cobbling a PCI-based video solution. Regards, David
ASUS M3A78 AMD 9950 Quad 2.6G 8GB Shure • Rhode • Audio-Technica • Allen&Heath GL2200-24 MOTU 24i • Presonus Firepod • E-MU 1212m • Zoom H2 SONAR 2XL-8PE • Sound Forge 1-9 • Audacity 0.1-1.3
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oldsneakers
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RE: Tyan GX28 as a DAW
2005/09/16 18:21:38
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Oops, your right, I missed the point. Thanks for setting me straight dcastle. And that does sounds like a very good idea. I will look into it. It isn't easy to find a spot for a 28x17x1 inch object anyways. And the thing is really loud too. It's meant for a data center, not your average home.
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