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Dual G5, 2.5Ghz Purchase

Inukshuk

Member
Has anyone purchased the Dual G5, 2.5Ghz? How is it running etc.??


:) 8) :p
 

jedsounds

New Member
For me it was completely unusable and caused major CPU overloads, PCI card connection loss, and Kernel panics until I called tech support and was given a list of settings for the cards prefs. All problems immediately cleared up, and it has worked tremendously since then with no problems whatsoever. I'm running it in 10.3.4 in Ableton Live 4.0.1 on an RME 9652 with 2 gigs of RAM, at 2 ms latency. Its pretty insane, the performance increase is mind boggling from the G4 dual 1.25 I had before.

:D
 

jedsounds

New Member
I'll have to check when I get home.

I would suggest calling them directly though to avoid confusion. I don't understand why the prefs aren't provided somewhere on the site either. I had a very stressful weekend before i got in touch with them.

That being said, last night I had another Kernel Panic which seemed UAD related, a continual build up of phantom plugs listed as in use by the UAD but not actually in existence, and the UAD card periodically disconnecting itself and becoming unavailable requiring a restart. So I guess I'm not out of the woods yet.

But when it works, I am in love with the plugs! they are incredible, that's for sure.
 
The most important setting as far as the G5 is concerned is the AMD-8131 mode in the UAD-1 Meter configuration window. This MUST be turned on for current G5 models (except for the new dual 1.8 G5, which doesn't use the 8131 PCI-X controller). This is documented in the manual and the online technical notes page.

When you do a new install of the UAD-1 software (i.e. on a machine that hasn't had the UAD-1 software installed on it previously), this setting is set correctly automatically. The only time you should see this issue is if you use a drive from a different machine that had the UAD-1 software already installed on it.
 

Ninja

Active Member
Jim:

:eek:

I've just ordered a dual 1.8 G5 (the newest model). The order is legally binding.

I have researched this computer to death, but apparently I haven't done my homework well enough, because after I read this thread I went on to do even more research. I wasn't aware that this revision of the dual 1.8 uses normal 64-bit PCI ports (as opposed to 64-bit PCI-X ports).

Apparently most of the issues UA are working on has to do with the other pci slots - but does this mean that I'll have even more problems using this configuration than the other people using the 'updated' pci ports (with the AMD chips) ?

If so - This is so typical of my luck. :roll:

Please respond if you can. Thanks!
 
Many of the issues in the current G5's (and I suspect this goes for other PCI devices besides the UAD-1) are due to issues with the AMD-8131 PCI-X controller. The latest dual 1.8 G5 does NOT use the AMD-8131. So far, it is the only G5 model that doesn't use it. In preliminary testing, the dual 1.8 G5 performed much better than a dual 2.0 G5 in terms of how many plugins you can run, when using built-in audio. However, performance varied quite a bit when using other audio interfaces, and also varies depending on whether you're running multiple UAD-1's or not. We're looking into it.

Most likely this computer will work fine for you, and depending on your setup may work better than other G5's. If you have any issues you might want to try different settings for the AMD-8131 mode... A clean install on this machine should set that setting \"off\", since it will detect that there is no AMD-8131. However, this machine (as well as all other non-G5 Macs) will also work if you turn *on* 8131 mode. The downside is increased host load per plugin, but on the other hand the UAD-1 DSP load will actually go down in 8131 mode. Depending on your exact setup, you might get better performance in 8131 mode.

Also note that this model runs the PCI bus at 33 MHz, and there is only a single PCI bus for all 3 cards. Basically it's like the old single 1.6 G5, except minus the AMD-8131 (which the single 1.6 used).
 

Ninja

Active Member
Jim: Thank you dearly for putting my mind to rest. Allmost anyway. :)

I'm not going to rid myself of any of my current DSP cards any day soon, and to the best of my knowledge both the uad-1 and the powercore are designed to work with standard 33 mhz pci controllers. Hence - as you pointed out - this might not be so bad after all.

Regarding only one bus... Do you see this becoming a problem? Magma have 7 (and even 13?) port expansion chassis' that's only connected to one pci port, hence sharing alot of cards on one bus and people seem to be using them with great success. I'm not sure what the technical limits here, but under normal circumstances, wouldn't I run out of DSP power long before I max out the pci bus if we're talking about max throughput here ? Apple still refers to it as a 64-bit pci port though, which should account for something ? Before I forget - please tell me that it's only the 3 pci cards that share the same bus and that Apple haven't gone back to their old design where agp, pci, firewire and usb all share the same bus? :eek:

Again Jim - Thank you for kindly sharing your knowledge.
 
I don't think the single bus is a problem. You can see the current G5 hardware block diagram here, and the G4 block diagram here. Click on \"Architecture\", then \"Block Diagram and Buses\".

You'll note that the dual 1.8 G5 block diagram does look kinda similar to the G4's. But before you get all worked up, consider this... the G4 works great with the UAD-1. Better than the G5 currently does, in fact. :) So it's not just a simple matter of what is sharing what bus.
 
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