anyone using socket 2011?

[Neutron]

I am thinking of building a new studio PC with the i7 3930k and a socket 2011 board (maybe asus P9X79 pro)
I believe everything i use is compatible with win7 64 bit so its probably time to upgrade my 875k at the same time.

I really like the idea of 4 channel memory, for native plugs, and of course the high clock speed for single threaded stuff, as well as having 6 cores.

sounds great but there is always a catch! that's why I'm asking if anyone did it.

i would like to hear if anyone has gone that route yet.

my other option is using a 2600k which i already have in a not very good first generation motherboard for it, and a new motherboard. or just keeping it the way it is. (it get bogged down sometimes probably due to 32 bit memory limit) maybe it will be freer to do more being 64 bit.

[dawman]

I know 2 guys who have pre ordered 2 x Clevo X79 Laptops w/ the 3820 which is what I want to get after I see how well the Quad RAM helps with Kontakt, PLAY and other streaming VSTi's. Omnisphere is VSTi synth that can only use a single Core according to the dev, but the samples being streamed will also benefit from Quad RAM.
One chap I know is strictly a VST guy and he bought the Gigabyte even though I told him the MSI boards are alike the old Intel boards w/ short trace lins, no frills, etc.
He is having issues with the OCZ Hybrid 1TB drive, but with Sonar and several VSTi synths and samplers I can atest that it runs great, and will really get a boost when the OCZ Hybrid starts working. But even now using the 500GB/32MB cache 7200 WD drive, the performacne boost using Quad RAM is noticable with the polyphony and simulatanoeus realtime playback of mulitple instruments w/o crackling the RME card.
A good i7 is no different with synths and DAWs really unless they are sample based.
In other words if you have Kontakt or PLAY, you won't notice much difference. But having 32GB's of RAM using 4GB sticks is cheap and very sexy.

[jhulk]

now if you were doing grafix or rendering 3d images then i would say i7 is great and 64bit

but with audio especially vsti you dont benefut from multicore processors

and so many good 32bit xp softsynths just dont work on w7

my scope machine is a single processor p4 3ghz its a 6 pci intel chip set with 3gb of memory

running xp sp3 32bit and is rock solid does not crash and never get pci overload like you do with i7 motherboards

my i7 machine also runs xp sp3 32bit and becuase of this i have to close down 4 cores as xp wont see them but still does not make any diffrence

if there was a software way that you could assign softsynth to what processor you want it to run from

then it would be grate but until there is a os that can do this you are still limited by os

i have yet to hear any difference in sound from 32bits to 64bits if its there then its out of audio range of our ears

[Neutron]

I decided to stay with the 2600k.

why would a 32 bit OS "sound" different from a 64 bit one? the reason for a 64 bit OS is to address more memory.

[jhulk]

i know that but in the vsti community they go on about that it has to be 64bit as it sounds better which is a load of tosh

as its mostly rendered as 16bit audio any way

[jksuperstar]

I have great benefit from having multiple cores. My DAW divides the load across processors by putting each track (and all associated VSTs) on different cores. The result is I can run more tracks and more VSTs...so yes, very good benefit. And for me, I also run MAX/MSP in parallel, which is also on it's own core. This keep latency to a minimum. I know I could run the same system I have with less than four cores, and still get the real time response I need.

[valis]

I decided to stay with the 2600k.

why would a 32 bit OS "sound" different from a 64 bit one? the reason for a 64 bit OS is to address more memory.

2600K is plenty strong for audio, it nips at the heels of the previous generation that the new lga2011 cpu's are replacing (970/980 i7's) anyway, so why go for an incremental upgrade to the new sandybridge-e stuff if you're not really needing what it has to offer. Jimmy already mentioned that but in short it's the same as X58: more memory bandwidth, potential for higher core counts (6 and soon 8 cores) and more memory bandwidth. The per core performance is the same or slightly less even due to thermal limits with a 6/8 core cpu...and 2600k/2700k should see a new replacement within that family when Ivy starts to hit the desktop end of spring/summer. Which imo seems a more sensible upgrade if you're not pushing pcie lane counts (1024 channel i/o devices are probably not the norm here) or memory bandwidth (heavy rompler usage) as you'll probably wind up at roughly where the sb-e chips with 6 cores perform right now (which is a good time to expect the extra 2 cores to 'magically' become unlocked by intel to keep the price margins well defined).

[dawman]

Yes indeed. The Ivy looks to be a very noticable upgrade.
I like the idea of a laptop that's already working in tests with 32GB's.
64GB's might work, but it's expensive and I won;t be taking that chance.
But 32GB's...................Nike.

[Neutron]

I ended up deciding to use a 2600k i already had (which was on a cheapo motherboard with the SATA bug) and ordered an ASUS P8Z68-V PRO, intel 311 caching drive, and 2 8 GB sticks of corsair DDR3 1600 RAM for $75 each. damn its cheap now!

Of course now, my 875k is behaving really well and not doing any of the things that were making me want to upgrade! and i am not looking forward to reinstalling everything, (wont be upgrading till new years anyways, i have some things to finish)

Does anyone know if the intel "smart response" Z68 hard drive caching requires the drive that is being cached to be wiped? it is my sample/project drive and im not looking forward to saving it all over the network, then copying it back. (i would just buy a new drive, but have you seen the prices!)