6 posts tagged “dell”

With my Visa bill arriving with the Dell Precision on it, I could now go ahead and order the X-Fi card. As I had done with the Audigy, I selected the version that had the external control unit - the Elite Pro. Selected next day delivery with Amazon so that it would arrive in time for me to work on it this weekend ... which it did.

First order of business was to finish removing the old Dell from my desk area. Disconnect the last few cables, tidy it all away and I've got some space to work in. Unpack the X-Fi system ... boy, is that control box BIG! It looks really smart but it is also very wide - about as wide as a laptop. That meant shuffling some stuff around my space so that I could put it somewhere sensible.

Installed the card into the one PCI slot in the workstation, connected up the control box, started it up and booted to XP. Installed all of the software and connected the speakers up. Front left works, but none of the others. Check the connections and cannot find a fault. Now front left doesn't work. Reboot ... and get the BSOD. Oooops.

Power off and try again; still get a BSOD.

Power off and try again - this time I notice that the BIOS is complaining that it couldn't allocate an I/O bar to a PCI device. I hadn't noticed that before. Unfortunately, there is virtually nothing on the web that Google could find about it.

Take out the X-Fi card, power up and the system starts, so clearly the X-Fi card is causing something to go wrong. Have I broken the card somehow or was it faulty in some way?

I'm trying not to panic, mainly on the basis that I know Dell sell the X-Fi with the Precision 690 so it must work; the reason I didn't buy it with the system was partly because of cost and partly because I wanted the Elite Pro, which isn't the model that Dell sells ... but I didn't think that a variance in the X-Fi models could be the cause of the problem.

So I tried the only option open to me ... move the card into one of the PCI-X slots. Thankfully, PCI-X is compatible with PCI, so the card fitted. Power up ... and XP starts! XP finds the "new" hardware (well, it had changed slots) and adjusts the drivers to use it. Start up the Creative Diagnostics and run the speaker test ... and it works!

So, clearly there was a PCI bus interaction somewhere. Part of the problem is that a lot of the built-in hardware is also connected to the PCI bus so there isn't a lot you can do but try different slots. Thankfully, that solved the problem.

So, having enjoyed the X-Fi in all its glory under XP, it was time to try Vista. Reboot into Vista and let the system try to find drivers ... which it doesn't. I'm not too surprised by that as most manufacturers seem to be using January 30th as a magic "switch on" date, even though corporates, MSDN subscribers and other customers have had valid RTM copies of Vista for quite some time now. So I don't have a lot of choice but to install the latest beta driver off the Creative web site. They work ... in that they play audio, but they are just drivers. None of the applications are available and it would seem from the forums that Creative customers are getting fed up and aren't actually expecting any deliverables now until some time in Q1.

Time will tell ...

It has been a long time coming but I've finally got the new video editing computer (a.k.a. The Beast) home, waiting to be married up with the Matrox RT.X2 SD/HD video editing card.

The first struggle is getting the box out of the car & into the house. The system is so big & heavy, it needs two people to carry it. It is too wide to fit through the door, so we have to turn it sideways - carefully as I had opened the box at work and not taped it up again! Having done that, I've got to get the system out of the box & into my room. It is really heavy and I shouldn't be carrying it by myself but the doorways & corners are just too awkward to try to do this with two people.

Next hassle ... fitting the RT.X2 card. This is a full length PCI Express card, which means that not only must the card fit into the socket, but the card also has an alignment strip at its far end that must be slotted in ... all while trying to dodge the cables that are strewn throughout the system. I finally manage it, but I've still got to fit the additional harddrive (& its SATA cable) so I'm a bit anxious that I might not be able to do that without removing the card - it is a bit close to the SATA sockets.

Power-on and the system produces a nice crisp images on the Dell 24" widescreen display. Pretty much the rest of the evening was spent installing the Adobe Production Studio. 5 DVDs ... and I'm beginning to wonder if this should be going faster than it is.

This morning, I installed the RT.X2 software and ran the validation software. My video card isn't validated, even though it is on the Matrox site. I'll upgrade the driver tonight & try again. Boot-up for the workstation is pretty darn fast, so I'm a bit happier about the performance of the system.

I'm currently downloading a 3.3Gb update to the RT.X2 software. As this rate, I'm not going to get it all down within a day - Matrox need to upgrade their connection, I think.

I'm a bit disappointed about one thing, though. The update includes some new effects and, according to the Matrox site, my graphics card doesn't have enough video memory to perform the cube effect. Now, that is a bit of a cheesy effect so I'm not too worried, but it annoys me that I've gone to all this trouble to build a system that is going to last me a really long time and it is already out of date. Still, the graphics card was probably one area that I was expecting to upgrade during the lifetime of the workstation in order to maximise its performance under Vista when everything becomes Vista compatible.

Well, I know I was expecting it to be delivered today but I certainly didn't expect it to be waiting for me when I arrived at work! That was good service.

It is certainly heavy! The box is heavily marked with symbols warning you of the 32Kg weight and the fact that it requires 2 people to carry it.

Slight problem with the order - Dell use plastic mechanisms to hold the drives in place. Since the 500Gb drive was ordered as a kit part, I don't have any holders for it, so I can't fit it yet. It is a shame that the Precision 690 doesn't actually come with all of the possible holders. I guess it cuts down on waste. Thankfully, Dell are sending some to me today, so I should get them tomorrow or Wednesday.

In the meantime, I'm installing all of the XP patches that it is missing. Currently 38 and counting!

The best news? This box is quiet. It has got two massive fans at the front of the case and it is currently whisper quiet. It will be interesting to see if it stays like this once I get it home and I start taxing it.

It will also be good to eventually be able to install a 64-bit OS onto it. 32-bit XP loses almost 1Gb of my 4Gb memory! Still, I knew this when I specced the system - this is a waiting game now.

I love the Internet and what companies can do with it! Thanks to the wonders of Dell's just-in-time manufacturing process and the fact that they've got a customer-oriented interface to it, I can see that my mega-box has now been built and is currently being packed ready for dispatch.

It is just a shame that we then have to rely on dreary transportation methods like boats & lorries to get it from the operation in Ireland to me in the UK. Ah, well, I can be patient a little bit longer!

Update: it has now been despatched. The Dell site is still giving an ETA of the 11th, but I am hopeful that it will be sooner than that - possibly as soon as the 8th. I won't know for certain until I get the tracking details for the courier.

Update: the courier's tracking information says that it will be delivered on Monday! Fingers crossed!

Update: the system has safely made it through the ferry crossing and is now sitting in a TNT depot, ready (hopefully) for delivery on Monday. 

I've finally done it ... I've just placed the order with our Dell account manager for the Beast!

If you've been reading earlier postings, you'll know that I've been (im)patiently waiting for Dell to make the new Quad core Xeons available ... and they now are. The main hesitation I had was the clock speed for the processors. My initial quote from Dell was for the 2.66GHz Quads but, not only did this put the price up by £500, they run a lot hotter than the other processors (120W). I've therefore gone for the 2.33GHz processors, which are in the same "bucket" as the 3GHz Dual core Xeons, i.e. Intel are charging the same price. They are also rated at 80W like the 3GHz processors.

It was a difficult choice, though. These are very early days for the quad-core processors and there isn't really a lot of hard evidence as to how well or badly they perform. In addition, there is no information as to how how the Precision 690 gets, or how noisy as a result.

I was a bit nervous about placing the order. I don't like being as close to the bleeding edge as this. I prefer to read other people's comments and views and then make up my mind. I've done my best on the research but it is a bit closer to that edge than I would like ... but the RT.X2 card has been sitting in a cupboard for too long now and I need to get on with finishing my sister's wedding video.

I'm still intending to built a dual-boot system, initially XP (video editing) and Vista (everything else) and then (hopefully) Vista & Vista. The "everything else" partition may need to wait until the end of January at the earliest, or until I've finished editing that video :).

One snag with the ordering process is that Dell's order placement system wouldn't support the configuration of drives that I wanted - 500Gb boot, 2x750Gb data - for some really strange and inexplicable reason. So the system is coming with 2x750Gb and I've got to fit the 500Gb drive. Not a big deal but I've also then got to Ghost the XP partition off the 750Gb drive and onto the 500Gb drive as that will be the boot drive. A bit of hassle and I know nothing about SATA drives so I'm not yet sure how to change the boot order of these harddrives.

I wonder how long before Dell will deliver it ... ?

I've been persuing video editing as a hobby for quite some time now and, lately, I've been trying to push that hobby into some sort of money-earning exercise, particularly around weddings. To that end, last year I upgraded from two Sony DV camcorders to two Sony HC1 HDV camcorders. I didn't have the software or the hardware to support them but the pricing in Tokyo was good enough to persuade me to take advantage of the opportunity and worry about getting the footage off them later! That, and the fact that you can actually use them as very nice DV cameras as well.

Wind the clock on a bit and we get to the release of Adobe's Premiere Pro 2 which comes with native HDV support. This significantly improved on the previous version which needed to transcode the HDV footage into an internal format ... and that didn't work for me. Native HDV support needs a lot of processor power, though. My n-year old Pentium 4 2.8GHz PC just doesn't cut it. My new(ish) Core laptop does - just.

So it is time to replace the main video editing PC. I've been a big fan of Matrox video editing enhancements for quite a while now, starting with the 2500 then the RT.X100 and now the new RT.X2 - a reasonably low cost add-on card that provides good support for HDV footage in realtime. The downside is that you still need a fair amount of processing power - a minimum of two processors or cores.

For the RT.X2, Matrox have been persuing a policy of validating motherboards & systems in order to provide the most efficient level of support. I'm not entirely happy with building my own system so I've opted to go for a brand-name, even if that adds some $ to the cost.

As a long-standing Dell customer, my initial intention was to go for a Dell system ... but Matrox didn't have any validated. They primarily had dual-processor AMD systems. Intel were just about to launch dual-core CPUs, though, so I waited. It took Matrox a while to validate them but there are now dual-core systems on their list ... and the dual-core Xeon based HP xw8400 and Dell Precision 690.

Those two workstations are simply fantastic. I've done a careful comparison between the two and there isn't a lot between them. The primary differences are in the number of drives, the built-in RAID compatibilities, slot configuration and power capabilities. One curious thing from Matrox's testing is that the best-of-breed graphics card that works OK in other systems - the Radeon 1950 - does not work well in these workstations. Matrox are still looking into that.

With the quad-core Xeons about to be released, I'm almost set to place an order ... with Dell. As there wasn't much between the two workstations, I'm taking advantage of the corporate discount we get so the Precision 690 wins on price. What am I getting ... ?

2 x quad-core Xeons (8 cores!!!!)

4GB memory (4x1GB)

500GB SATA boot drive, 2x750GB SATA data drives

Dual-layer DVD +/- RW drive

ATI FireGL V7200 graphics card

plus the Matrox RT.X2 card. At some point I might then add the Creative X-Fi card as the default is only stereo as far as I can tell.

I'm probably going to set this up for dual-boot - XP for the video environment and Vista for everything else. In a 32-bit environment, 4GB memory is the maximum that can be used, so I'm not going to be in a rush to change that.

The rumour is that Adobe Premiere Pro 3 will be set for Vista so I'm hoping that if that is the case, Matrox will release Vista drivers and also update their compatibility test so that newer DX10 cards like the amazing Nvidia G80 are supported.

Now all I need is my own nuclear power station to keep that lot running!