Interesting discovery RE: VIA chipset and AMD x 2 CPU

[areptiledysfunction]

I wasn't holding out much hope for this combination because I had heard a few negatives about Creamware not playing nice with these particular factors.

Right now I've got the following scenario working and seemingly stable:

ASUS A8V-Dlx mobo (VIA KT800 chipset)
AMD 64 4400 x 2 CPU
2G Corsair XMS RAM
NVidia GEForce 5500 dualhead video card-256 MBVRAM (128 per head)

2 x Pulsar II cards in a 7 x slot Magma with the host card in mobo PCI slot #3 (occupies IRQ's 17 & 18 and IRQ 17 shares with Marvel LAN controller so far with no problems)

4 x UAD-1 cards in a 13 slot Magma with the host card in mobo PCI slot #4 (all cards occupying IRQ 19 and no other devices are shared by this IRQ)

I just repaired a 13 slot Magma this morning and I am getting ready to do some experimentation with getting the Pulsar II cards all on one IRQ. It's much easier to do something like this with the 13 slot Magma's.

I don't recommend running out and trying to recreate this scenario just yet (as if anyone would want to anyway ). I haven't put it through it's paces with a large mix yet, but I've been using a similar scenario or the last year with 3 x RME HDSP cards - 2 x of them in the 7 slot Magma with the host card in mobo PCI #3 and one in mobo PCI #1 (they shared IRQ 17 & 18) with the 4 UAD-1/Magma with the host card in mobo PCI slot #4 (all sharing IRQ #19).

If anything, so far, the Creamware drivers seem a bit more compatible with the mobo chipset than the RME cards did. There were occasions with the RME drivers wherein the system would hang and upon reboot, prompt a choice between rebooting into last normal configuration/safe mode, etc. Booting to last normal configuration always worked, but the Creamware drivers have not had any similar problems so far and the system overall seems a bit more stable. It's one of those things you really don't notice until you can compare apples to oranges so to speak.

If I can get the cards configured to my liking in the 13 slot Magma today I'll be adding a third Pulsar card to my setup........well, actually......maybe a third card and a 15xDSP SRB Anyone know where I can get a cable to connect 4 x cards?

.

[musurgio]

Hey DJ,
Welcome to Pulsar community !!
Thats the DJ we all know at Paris forum !
Tremendous source of trials and success.
I am sure all pulsarians will benefit from your jump to Scope.
Thanks !
Dimitrios

[astroman]

well, the cable is no problem - given you find a supplier for the plug

sidenote:I have to correct my earlier statements where I assumed it might be tricky to 'press' plug and cable together - that was based on memories about the procedure with much broader cables, like SCSI etc.

with the S/TDM connector it's in fact (agree with musurgio - who once made a post about that) pretty easy, you can almost do it between thumb and index finger - for the 'final cut' put the connector on a table and press with a ruler or something similiar.

you can plug an additional connector between the existing ones, just check positions carefully (one slot distance will always work, not sure if it spans 2)

there is no problem to get the cards going with VIA boards - unless you load reverbs and delays, lots of Asio channels and samplers.
In short words: devices that (have to) access memory on the motherboard.
THEN and only then the VIA will reveal it's bad PCI performance...

Do the infamous Masterverb test:
take an empty (or a simple) project and load one Masterverb (the 'regular', not classic, not pro) after the other - until an error occurs.
usually this will be something with PCI bandwidth, probably between the 3rd and 5th MV - on a good chipset you may load 12 to 16.

cheers, Tom

[garyb]

you can make the cable yourself, the parts are available easily, but if there is disaster, exploding powersupplies, etc. you're on your own.

the main disadvantage is the via chipset is in the amount of pci traffic allowed. for your application, this might never matter. reverbs are affected the most because of all the read/write with system memory required(when scope was created memory was very expensive, so onboard memory is limited). there is a sort of standard test of pci performance called the "masterverb test". basically, clear the routing window of everything so that you have an empty project and start putting masterverbs in until you get a pci overflow message. sometimes you can reload(optimize) the dsp usage(if you can, the system will offer to try) and get a couple more mvs. good performance is 10-15 master verbs.

the magma will throttle down performance itself a bit, if you can get 7 or more masterverbs, that would be pretty good. i'd expect about 5-7, which, as i said, is probably just fine for your purposes.

i agree with you about the drivers. really, i don't know what some are doing to their systems to complain about drivers. in a healthy environment, scope should be pretty rock solid. there are a couple of bugs in the software that will cause failure, but they are rarely encountered(like never for me) in most circumstances.....

[areptiledysfunction]

Hey DJ,
Welcome to Pulsar community !!
Thats the DJ we all know at Paris forum !
Tremendous source of trials and success.
I am sure all pulsarians will benefit from your jump to Scope.
Thanks !
Dimitrios

Hey Dimitrios!!

Looks like I'm going to have to send my 13 slot Magma in for repairs and stick with the 7 slot chassis for the Pulsar II cards right now. I actually got it to recognize and load drivers for one of the Pulsar's, but got BSOD when trying to load the 2nd one, then all sorts of memory dump problems. I've done all I can here and it may need a new backplane, unless the existing one can be fixed. I've tested the cable and host cards in identical chassis' and those are good. It may also be that the firmware got scrambled. I bought it on EBay for $100.00 and the seller said he thought it was a bad cable but wasn't sure what the problem was. He was wrong about the cable, but I knew I was taking my chances. For the price I paid, the cable and host cards are worth 3 x as much and it may be worth the $$$ to get it up and running. Otherwise I'll probably part it out and mod the case for a DAW or something.

Did you ever get that preamp I sent?

.

[areptiledysfunction]

you can make the cable yourself, the parts are available easily, but if there is disaster, exploding powersupplies, etc. you're on your own.

the main disadvantage is the via chipset is in the amount of pci traffic allowed. for your application, this might never matter. reverbs are affected the most because of all the read/write with system memory required(when scope was created memory was very expensive, so onboard memory is limited). there is a sort of standard test of pci performance called the "masterverb test". basically, clear the routing window of everything so that you have an empty project and start putting masterverbs in until you get a pci overflow message. sometimes you can reload(optimize) the dsp usage(if you can, the system will offer to try) and get a couple more mvs. good performance is 10-15 master verbs.

the magma will throttle down performance itself a bit, if you can get 7 or more masterverbs, that would be pretty good. i'd expect about 5-7, which, as i said, is probably just fine for your purposes.

i agree with you about the drivers. really, i don't know what some are doing to their systems to complain about drivers. in a healthy environment, scope should be pretty rock solid. there are a couple of bugs in the software that will cause failure, but they are rarely encountered(like never for me) in most circumstances.....

I've got a Gigabyte GA-K8NS Ultra 939 mobo (Nforce3 chipset) here that I will using for a newer DAW in the near future. I left you a message on your phone at work. Give a ring when you have the time today.

[musurgio]

Oh yeah sorry got it Friday !!
Thanks ,great packing as always !!
So you likw Materverb Pro , so hold your breath until your hear Timeworks A-100 P-100 !!
Also the fanatastic RMX160 from digitalaudiosoft !
Youy can download demos for these.
Try them !
For compression I am in love with Timeworks CompressorX and limiter !
Cheers,
Dimitrios

[Shayne White]

If you get clicks and pops in your ASIO stream, it could be a result of the dual-core CPU -- insert /onecpu into boot.ini and see if that fixes anything. I'd be intersted to get a third confirmation with that problem.