{"id":45,"date":"2015-03-05T12:51:25","date_gmt":"2015-03-05T19:51:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wiki.lillerant.com\/?p=45"},"modified":"2015-03-14T17:48:56","modified_gmt":"2015-03-15T00:48:56","slug":"avid-media-composer-8-3-requires-sse-4-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wiki.lillerant.com\/?p=45","title":{"rendered":"Avid Media Composer 8.3 requires SSE 4.1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leave it to Avid to change system requirements in a point release<\/em>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Is there a solution?<\/h4>\n

tl;dr<\/strong> no there is not<\/em><\/p>\n

Don’t believe me?\u00a0 Let’s go down the rabbit hole…<\/p>\n

The Issue<\/h4>\n

Older systems whose CPUs do not support the SSE 4.1 instruction set<\/a> will not be able to install or run MC 8.3.\u00a0 As well it appears that the 8.3 updater.avd writes an expiration date<\/a> to your dongle (if using one).<\/p>\n

Anyone still rocking an HP xw8400, your bus stops here.<\/p>\n

Hardware Compatibility<\/h4>\n

The HP xw8400 technical documents state official CPU compatibility with only 5100 (woodcrest) and 5300 (clovertown) Xeon processors.\u00a0 None of them support SSE 4.1, so that’s a dead-end.<\/p>\n

The earliest SSE 4.1 support arrived with Penryn<\/a>, and although theoretically the xw8400 might be able to run<\/a> the FSB1333 XEON 5200\/5400 processors, HP never provided support for them in the BIOS<\/a> and their last BIOS revision<\/a> (02.38 Rev.A)<\/a> was in 2010.<\/p>\n

I’d say that’s a dead-end.<\/p>\n

Modders to the Rescue?<\/h4>\n

Thankfully there is an active community online who modify BIOSes.\u00a0 Sadly it seems HP is a tough nut to crack<\/a> as they are often encrypted.\u00a0 Here’s a few tutorials <\/a>on modifying BIOSes<\/a> for the brave, though it seems like you have to find an alternate OEM BIOS as a starting point, and that seems unlikely<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If that’s not a dead-end, it’s awfully close.<\/p>\n

Emulating SSE 4.1 calls<\/h4>\n

That leaves emulating SSE 4.1, which was shown to be possible by resourceful coders<\/a> working on the Oculus Rift.<\/p>\n

Luckily enough Intel produced an emulator<\/a> themselves, and it seems to have been met with some success<\/a>, at least within the confines of operating an Oculus Rift.<\/p>\n

A dead end?\u00a0 Probably.\u00a0 I gave it a try and no dice; the installer still bails at the same point.\u00a0 Avid might be doing a processor-class check as opposed to simply trying to make a SSE 4.1 call, and I suspect there’s nothing the emulator can do about it.<\/p>\n

I’d say that’s the end of the road.\u00a0 In a theoretical sense I suppose you could install Avid on a qualified system, transfer that install back to an xw8400 and then<\/em> invoke MC with the emulator but I’m not about to try it.<\/p>\n

Just gather up some pocket change and hit eBay for an xw8600.\u00a0 Those should work with 8.3.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Leave it to Avid to change system requirements in a point release.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":74,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[13,14,16],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wiki.lillerant.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wiki.lillerant.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wiki.lillerant.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wiki.lillerant.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wiki.lillerant.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/wiki.lillerant.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47,"href":"http:\/\/wiki.lillerant.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions\/47"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wiki.lillerant.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/74"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wiki.lillerant.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wiki.lillerant.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wiki.lillerant.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}