Dual Xeon Z9PE - 16 core - Triple 7970 X-Fire + Nvidia Quadro FX W00T!!!!

[imchrisbrains]

BRAINSPRO - 10.8.4 - Video Editor Z9PE - 16 core - ATI 7970 HD - W00T!!!!



Just wanted to get my first post out, big thanks to the tonymacx86 board, I've been lurking for awhile and pulled the trigger on the following:

Z9PE D8 WS
DUAL XEON E5-2670 ES 2.6GHZ 8 CORE 16 THREAD
LEPA 1600W PSU - 80PLUS
ROSEWILL THOR CLASSIC BLACK (REDRILLED FOR EATX)
64GB CORSAIR VENGANCE
2X 128GB SSD SANDISK EXTREME
2X 2TB WD CAVIAR BLACK 6GB/S
3X GIGABYTE RADEON 7970 IN CROSSFIRE
1x GIGABYTE RADEON HD 7970
1X NVIDIA QUADRO FX 3800

ROSEWILL USB 3.0 MULTI CARD READER (SD / CF ETC)
TP Link PCIE 450mb/s
TP LINK USB N300 WITH TWO WAY OMNI BOOST ANTENNA(S)


ALREADY OWNED:
1X OLD 1ST GEN SATA DVD BURNER

So I do video editing and production work and wanted to upgrade to edit / color 4k video in davinci resolve with some FCPX and PP CS6.

Originally I was looking for a UP5 TH due to the thunderbolt but wanted more from my mobo and found the dual xeon info and geekbench which turned my gears

In addition to video and wanting a dual boot hack pro I also wanted to be able to mine... After hella hours of research I decided on the Z9PE. I plan on running my 3x7970 in xfire on win7 for davinci and CS6 as well as mining.

I plan on running 1 or 2 (gui & rendering) 7970 cards in osx or will use the Quadro FX card if I need cuda (benchmarks and updates to come if I can get it working). ADD- Not going to happen, will be possible purchasing a Geforce 680....

Prelim research tells me that I should be able to get all cards running with my dual boot WIN7 / OSX 10.8.4 and pick and choose what works when I get it all running.

I really wanted to do Z9PE but all the terrible feedback I've read online disuaded me and I bought a RIVE, shortly after (after assembly that is) I realized that the RIVE wouldnt run my LGA2011 E5 xeon! Despite the fact the sabertooth x79 board runs xeon....

ARGGH, so I returned the RIVE to amazon (three way SLI blocks all the headers at bottom of board anyway :/ )

Waiting on my 64gb ram to arrive tomorrow, then I'm going to load OSX, then win7, then start stuffing this girl full of GPU's

I'll double check my bios and post my results of installing 10.8.4.

 

[scorza]

You are not fooling around, friend. Can't wait to hear how this machine runs.

 

[trs96]

You are not fooling around, friend. Can't wait to hear how this machine runs.

+1 What about cooling. Air or water cooling? That build will be producing some heat !

 

[imchrisbrains]

Its air cooled, and sits in front of a 12.5k A/C unit

The cards were overheating in xfire so I removed one and spaced it out which took care of the high temps. i ordered a couple pcie risers to get better airflow inside to non reference design).

Got my osx 10.8.4 installed today, i have bluetooth and correct hardware ids, the onboard firewire400 ports work, i havent started on usb3 and attached sd card controller, or the 7970 yet. I have audio working on my studio monitors through usb on my line 6 UX2!

Using internet through horndis and my cell phone-hopefully will get the USB based tplink with gain antenna working and quadro. Waiting on parts will post updates as I can, reformatting to come to this thread also.

 

[imchrisbrains]

UPDATE::

I had an osx meltdown after recklessly throwing some kexts around. Requiring a re-download and re-install of OSX 10.8.4 (from the mac store- duh!).

After dozens of hours of work / problems and cloning redundant boot drives for safety I am proudly running again with Audio, Bluetooth, eSata, WiFi, USB 3, AND my ATI card working at 2550x1440 on my Dell 2713HM !!!!

It has been HELL!

The first two PCIE 3.0 slots dont like the ATI card in them, I get a deadbeef in ati.c or a device_inject.c line 220 memory allocation error, or framebuffer stall. Ports would show at 0....

With the 7970 installed in PCIE 3.0 Slot 3 it POSTS!!!!

BUT-it gets to white screen with Apple and hangs on spinning wheel. No sleep trick to work here...

In verbose boot in would hang on the AMDTahitiGraphicsAccelerator: Device in Slot SLOT 1 line

I loaded the kexts from SALCAZAR and still could not get this thing to boot with the radeon installed in any card slot, after hours of reading and re reading I saw that someone reccommended the older chimera install via multibeast...

Installed the chimera/chameleon 2.0 and I booted all the way through and my ati card ACTUALLY WORKS!!!!!

I almost **** myself, whilst simultaneously crying and barking

 

[animalflynn]

"I almost **** myself, whilst simultaneously crying and barking"

bhahaaaha nice.

I am interested to hear how this performs with 4K video and exactly which formats you are working with (sony raw, r3d, phantom, DPX). I have been getting pretty good performance editing 4K r3d in premiere on my i7 2600K system but it could be better.

 

[hugh1988]

I've got a problem with the USB 3.0 driver kexts. I've tried the caldigit ones and the one in multibeast. They work, but then system fails to shut down and start after that (only starts in safe mode). Any ideas what I could try to get USB 3 working? I've tried the caldigit ones and the one in multibeast.

Thanks!

 

[thewisevaloo]

Hey guys, I'm planning a Hackintosh build mainly for editing in FCPX and Davinci Resolve. I've been doing a bunch of research on which video cards works best with these apps and I realized something interesting. It seems that none of the Nvidia GPUs are configurable to run in tandem. But because the newest version on the Mac Pro has dual AMD GPUs, it seems it's possible to replicate this setup. It looks like you changed your mind and went with an Nvidia. Why is that? Did it not work as you had hoped?

I'm planning on buying two MSI Radeon 7970s for this setup. Any input would be greatly helpful.

Thanks for you time.



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