LE 8.03, 003 Mac Pro - few issues

[Mark Waters]

OK Im afraid to say anything almost in case it Jinxs me. With all the problems Im seeing I was afraid to load but had some time between projects so figured what the heck.

Im running 8.03 on Snow Leopard 10.6.1 ( New MAC PRO 8-CORE 6G RAM ) and I'm having a hard time finding anything significant wrong with the exception of the yellow interface on some AIR items. This is way more stable than the previous build and I can now load some older Windows projects that crashed PT previously. Some larger projects with many plugins that used to run at 30-40% ( with 6 - 8 cores selected ) now run at an astonishing 7% .. not sure if that's the OS improvements or the Pro Tools but me Likey.

Most plugins load way faster with the exception of KORE which loads slower. Listed by brand ( too many to list individually )
Wavs Plugins good
IK multimedia Plugins good
Spectrasonics plugins good
Ohm plugins good
Native Instruments plugins - good including Kore and a lot of VSTs I have that I need Kore to load in Pro Tools - all good
Garritan ( Aria player ) good.

Im still a little bummed that I cant seem to use all 16CPU ( 8 hyperthreaded = 16CPU to the OS ) and its stupid because I've never run out of resources so don't really need it but dang it I want to turn em up ! The RTAS engine does no better above 6-8. SO at least I can run Pro Tools and VMware Fusion with Windows simultaneously with no performance impact ( just put them on separate hard drives ) .

Anyways.. Im thinking that most of the posts I see are on M-Audio interfaces maybe ? .. so maybe most of the problems are with drivers there ? Which given the cost of Pro Tools is where a majority of the user base seems to be.

Mark

[rullian]

Mark-

good to see someone getting PT to work. I'm thinking about getting close to the exact system you have but have been holding off. Can someone here clarify if 003 users have less issues than M-audio users with snow leopard?

[Mark Waters]

If your getting ready to or thinking about buying a big Mac Pro .. depending on timing and need.. rumor has it Apple will get an exclusive on new SIX Core XEON chips just after the first of the year.

Today I don't know how many out there would need 6 core over 4 core .. but 3 to 5 years down the road ? Just may extend the time to your next upgrade..

http://www.hardmac.com/news/2009/10/15/future-mac-pro-apple-to-enjoy-short-term-exclusive-use-of-future-xeon-cpu

The overall recommendation is to always buy when you really need it.. but if you are getting by and don't mind waiting just a little longer.. the model refresh will be shorter than the last round it seems.

[stustan]

Mark-

good to see someone getting PT to work. I'm thinking about getting close to the exact system you have but have been holding off. Can someone here clarify if 003 users have less issues than M-audio users with snow leopard?

I have been running smoothly since 8.0.3PR was posted. I only have minor glitches that do not affect my work, such as no visual rewind or the jumpy ruler in play ,etc. Absolutely no crashes at all and I take my session from home to work everyday without a problem.

[rullian]

thanks for the advice from both of you. It's very refreshing to hear of a user who is actually getting pt to run smoothly. I've read through this entire board and it really does appear that a lot of the issues are with folks using m-audio. Seems like the 003 on a mac pro is fairly stable ("stable" being an objective term of course). I will most likely wait until christmas or slightly afterwards. That new mac pro sounds enticing but there always seems to be a better machine around the corner. Rather than the latest and greatest, what I'd really love to have is a stable operating system with stable software-kind of like my very old 001 on system 9.3-that thing never crashed on me. And it's still going despite me having to replace the two internal hard drives and the power supply - twice. This is why I'm itching to upgrade. I have a great project coming up and don't really want to start it on a machine that old. I was ready to drop serious coin on a new mac pro before snow leopard came out and Apple started shipping it on the new machines. Speaking of which, the new Imacs look impressive and, according to sweetwater, they run PT just fine. May just go for that and use the rest of the money for...hell...another guitar or something.

[zodo]

Hyperthreaded cores can cause some real performance headaches for apps that have to reliably process data in real-time. Because the hyperthreaded cores aren't 'real', they don't have all of the on-chip resources that a normal core would. That can lead to the different processes stomping on each other as they fight over said resources.

When you're running real-time audio, you need to be able to count on each core performing in a consistent manner. If Pro Tools fills all 16 cores, it expects all of those cores to perform equally. When they don't (if some are hyperthreaded for instance), you end up with a wide variety of CPU and RTAS performance errors.