jcschild

Xeon vs desktop. they are the exact same processor. 
dont buy the marketing hype. 
the Xeon in the SW is a 3770k renamed. 

Not the exact same/renamed processor. Maybe based upon same die, but several significant differences between the xeon E3 1270v2 and Core i7 3770k:

Xeon E3 1270v2 supports ECC DRAM, 3770k doesn't. 

3770k can be overclocked, Xeon E3 can't. 

3770k includes an IGP, which E3 1270v2 lacks.

E3 1270v2 supports VT-d, 3770k doesn't.

Closest corresponding Xeon to 3770k is E3 1275v2 (w/ same IGP). 
 
That said, no real performance difference between E3 1270v2 and 3770k at stock.

Dunno why Sweetwater would spec a Xeon E3 for a Z77 board when Z77 doesn't support ECC. Also odd that the two higher priced PCs lack DP video which the lower priced models offer.

B75 and Q77 support 3770k and "native" (non-bridged) PCI, but may not offer much if any support for overclocking (varies between brands/boards). B75 also has only 1x SATA 6Gb/s and no RAID support.

UA were offering a UAD-2 upgrade trade-in deal on UAD-1s a while ago but dunno if it's still on.

slartabartfast

I didn't see any listing of the actual motherboard that is used.

That is industry standard. If they told you what motherboard they were using, you could just build your own.

Oh please. Don't be such a rube. What so-called "industry standard"?


Plenty of DAW builders/vendors' listed system specs identify what motherboards they are using, e.g.
http://3xs.scan.co.uk/Cat...stemMasterCategoryID=2


http://www.reyniersaudio.com/


to list just a couple.


Time was, even the DAW vendor "gurus" who frequent this forum used to be a lot more sharing with info like what motherboard worked with what, e.g.


http://groups.google.com...3zRWsyKq9C4/discussion

Here we go again...

Goddard,

really? ECC support? oc vs no oc  get a freaking life dude  they are the exact same procesor
VT-d ? what anality. next you are going to describe the box they come in

  exact same with a few things turned on or off that dont make a hill a beans difference in this forum or with concern to Audio

You just really can't ever admit when you're wrong about something, can you Scott? Which seems to be rather frequently.

Yeah, VT-d. For VMs. And ECC, for servers where memory booboos matter. And no IGP. I could go on, but....

If you wanted to say, no practical performance differences for a DAW, then yes. But that does not make them the exact same processor.