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Ultimate Audio Playback / XXHighEnd Support / Re: New system : Distortion only - Any experiences anyone ?
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on: October 09, 2010, 08:51:24 am
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Peter, did you compare playing on 2 cores vs. 4 cores? I'd unlock my 2 spare cores, but the Cantatis go crazy if I do this and hangs after few seconds of playback I don't know if it's just my PC or these are really cr*py drivers - I can't change any hardware setting without reinstalling OS. Luckly for me, I can change CPU frequency, so now I'm running my Phenom at 3.6GHz, unfortunatelly I had to use fan, because it got to hot - I have a copper heatsink, which doesn't work great in a passive configuration, eventhough it's the best on the market - http://www.techpowerup.com/71605/Thermalright_Ultra_120_Cu_Limited_Edition_up_for_Grabs_Next_Month.htmlTo sum up - is there any benefit for XXHE from more cores? I could get a 6 core Phenom
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170
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Ultimate Audio Playback / Your thoughts about the Sound Quality / Re: We all fell in the W7 pitfall
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on: October 08, 2010, 11:55:47 pm
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Nick,
Do you install drivers for your GPU?
Marcin, No, I was careful to select a mother board with a very basic Intel on board GPU built in, I use the basic out of the box Vista drivers and over clock it in the Bios then limit video traffic as much as possible in config. I have used PCI and PCIe video cards and tried to buy the slowest most basic possible. The problem is they all have mega 600Mhz +++ processors and complex drivers these days. They have high IRQ priority and can command a lot of CPU interupts. As a principle try to limit the PCI traffic to the card by doing whatever you can with the config to do this. That's like I thought, but didn't you mean underclock in BIOS? GPU speed is not required for XXHE Sorry forgot you question on power schemes. I start with the max performance one then go with Never sleep Display off in 1 min (I read an interesting comment from Peter saying this may platue CPU speed so I will look at this) Hard disks off in 1 min And turn off everything that means the OS has to monitoring something. For a bit of fun (sad) I used to follow how quickly the PC shuts down, it gets quicker and quicker as things are stripped and tuned. From the moment you click the power down button to the PSU relay clicking off with a dead screen it takes 3 seconds ! Now RAM disk is installed and writing the disk from memory it takes ages Nick. Same here
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172
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Ultimate Audio Playback / XXHighEnd Support / Re: New system : Distortion only - Any experiences anyone ?
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on: October 08, 2010, 10:55:45 pm
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Peter, I can't wait until you manage to run your new setup. My idea of best sound from PC has just changed 180 degrees and I wonder - how much is to be gained with really fast CPU/PC. Do you think there is a a boundary and having faster than e.g. top core i7 CPU won't bring further improvements? You're the only one who is able to answer this, because no-one know how complex is XXHE and what are 'the requirements'?
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174
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Ultimate Audio Playback / Your thoughts about the Sound Quality / CRUCIAL DISCOVERY
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on: October 08, 2010, 10:21:06 pm
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've had this post written and ready to post when I accidently closed my browser, so I'm gonna be short now (frustrated...) I did a comparison between underclocked/undervolted PC (CPU set as dual core at 1GHz, 2x2GB RAM DDR3 at 800MHz CL5) and default settings (2.8GHz, RAM at 1600MHz CL7). I have few important things to say: 1. THe faster the PC is, the larger SFS setting is needed for XXHE to sound right. (12MB for very slow PC is fine, but once I brought the power back, I needed to increase it to 150 MB) 2. Underclocked/undervolted PC (slow) could help you bear with wrong system/settings (like W7) - it will cover its flaws and hide details at the same time. But now that we have tuned Vista and XXHE on RAMdisk, there are no flaws to cover. 3. The fastest PC will get the best out of XXHE, but if you have something wrong in OS or bad recordings - it will throw you all the flaws right on your face. So I guess I should wait until Sandy Bridge (next generation of Core architecture) is released and get the fastest one
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177
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Ultimate Audio Playback / Your thoughts about the Sound Quality / Re: We all fell in the W7 pitfall
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on: October 08, 2010, 08:00:39 pm
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Roy,
What dpclat are you getting from your tuned OS? This is not a hard wired indicator to music performance but it gives me a feeling for how far you have gone with tuning. Are you on vista? What have you stopped / done so far?
When settled what are max, min and estimated average dpclat scores ?
Nick.
Nick, do you use underclocked and undervolted system? It brings great improvements imho...
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