4 posts tagged “precision 690”

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'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 ... ?