P7P55D PCI overflows.... considering H55 chipset...

[Wollis]

---edited 13-8-2010---
Scroll down for H55-post....
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Hi guys, I seriously hope someone out there can help me. I keep getting the classic PCI overflow errors. And I´m not new to the game, and have tried everything I can think of to fix it... been using the hardware for over ten years now, but never had a problem this stubborn. If ther's anyone out there with a working three card setup on a P7P55D, please let me know how you got it working!

So, here´s the config:

Asus p7P55D with latest BIOS (1702)
Intel i7 870 2.8GHz
3.5GB DDR3 (4GB installed)
Nvidia GeForce 210 (ASUS) with dual 17" monitors.
64GB SSD-drive for system and programs
32GB SSD-drive for audio
300GB SATA disk for storage.
3 x Pulsar II on IRQs 16,17,18 (16 sadly sharing with Graphics card, seems it can´t be helped)
Computer in itself problem free. And pretty fast

Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit, fully updated
- Core parking disabled
- Power options set to high performance
- no anti-virus installed (except Windows defender, which is disabled)
- UAC off
- DEP off
- user account is Adminstrator with password
- unnecessary Windows programs uninstalled/disabled
- Scope and Sonar both set to be run as Administrator
- unnecessary mobo features disabled from BIOS and from Device manager.

Cakewalk Sonar 8.5 Producer with latest updates.

Sonar isn't actually part of the problem, as it happens regardless of any other program outside Scope.
The computer hardware is all new, as I recently purchased another Pulsar II-card, and my old mobo only had 2 PCI slots.

Problem symptoms, with only Scope running, or together with Sonar:

- loading big modules (Masterverbs, SC Ambience, B2003...) always causes PCI overflow, even with low DSP-load (problems usually occur between around 20% and 40% DSP-load)
- masterverb test: between 5 and 8, with various fiddling with the system.
- loading old projects made with 2 cards/scope 4.5 mostly works, but adding a big module to it causes PCI-overflows though there is DSP to spare...
- BSOD at strange times (Scope.sys, Driver IRQL.....etc)
- Problems occur regardless of number of installed cards

Another part of the problem is that I can´t eliminate possible hardware-damage as the software is locked to the card I recently bought. Sadly it's not new, a friend of mine had it before me, and always had a little trouble with it. Sonic Core has agreed to transfer the 5.0 software to another card for 98€, but I´d like to try everything I can before spending the money...

Tried solutions, to little or none effect:

- full reinstall of first scope, than windows
- cards shuffled around the PCI ports
- "Run Scope in compatibility mode for Windows XP"
- Lower monitor colours to 16-bit
- Changing hosts in cset.ini
- Scope in "Standard" screen mode
- "ACPI x86-based PC" vs "Advanced Configuration and power Interface (ACPI) PC"
- different ULLI settings
- different graphics card
- various BIOS settings (even tried running on only on processor-core...)
- and a lot of other things I've probably forgotten....

As far as I can gather, IRQs are not part of the problem...
Only thing I can think of at this point is to do yet another fresh install of everything...

If anyone knows of anything that could help me out, I would greatly appreciate it.
thanks.

(and sorry for the long post - just thought I'd give you as much details as possible at once

[astroman]

imho your 'problem' is focussed around 2 (different) aspects:
general PCI performance (only 5 Masterverbs) and a possibly faulty card (the one of your friend)

with only 5 Masterverbs don't even think about using the Ambience device
I know it pretty well because I aquired the original A100 from Sonic Timeworks when I only had 2 Pulsar Ones that usually threw the towel with the 5th MV instance.
A100 loaded in that context almost didn't allow a 2nd pair of Asio channels or so...
It IS an excellent device, but a hog on the PCI bus, at least the most demanding that I'm aware of.

If you really like your current machine with Sonar, I'd setup one of the cards in an external PC via Adat (you probably have a standard plate that already supports this) as an 8 bus FX processor, possibly extended as a midi soundsource of Scope synths (it depends...).
You can use any cheapo PC (Intel 815 chipset) which will give you enough PCI bandwidth for less than 50 bucks. I'm running such a box from a 2GB compact flash under Win 98.

cheers, Tom

[Wollis]

Thanks for the reply, Astroman!

Moving one card to an external pc would indeed be a solution if the problem only occurred with 3 card configs, but as it is, it doesn't matter how many cards are installed... The problem persists.
It also seems I now actually can load 2 or 3 Ambiences before PCI overflow - masterverbs and B2003 now seem to be more prone to causing overflows...

Going to try different BIOS revisions before I go ahead with a clean install.

If anybody out there has a working config, could you please tell me which BIOS you are using?

[garyb]

the irq shared with graphic can be a problem...or not, it depends on how you use the cards, but 5mvs and bsods is not a good sign. i would think that a bios update would help. the latest motherboards often need a couple of bios revisions before they work right. otherwise, you may have some defective hardware(bsods usually indicate a hardware issue).

[Wollis]

Well, now I have tried everything. After yet another re-install of the P55/Win7 system, which led to no improvement whatsoever, I installed the cards on a P35 board with Windows XP. Everything was a lot more stable, although the mvtest still only yielded 12-13 before overflow. SC Ambiences I could load 3 before getting various DSP placement errors I've never seen before (other than on the P55 board...) Basic projects seemed to hold up nicely though, and now it was possible to load -with various modules- to full DSP power. And no BSODs.

As I'm in a position where i can sell both systems, I thought I might get an Intel H55 Express-chipset board with integrated graphics... any thoughts on that? Had a look at the following:

Intel Core i5-661 3.33GHz + Gigabyte GA-H55-UD3H (sadly no quad-core if you go for integrated graphics)

4 PCI-slots and integrated graphics could at least give some options for trying different hardware configurations...

Anyone have any experience with the H55 chipset ?

[DrhiQ]

look at this thread:
http://forums.planetz.com/viewtopic.php ... &start=300

Gigabyte P55 UD6, I7 860, Scope 15 DSP & Pulsar 2, WinXP

Bios F3 = 8 MV
Bios F10 = 11 MV

Before Gigabyte I've tried MSI P55 GD6 - PCI owerflows all the time

[Neutron]

Do you know if Gigabyte has done this tweak for all of their p55 boards? I am looking at a
P55A-UD4P (not for running PCI scope cards but XITE and a whole bunch of USB crap , it would be nice to know things had been optimized)

[Wollis]

After installing a 1000W power supply and some more tweaking of cset.ini I now seem to have a somewhat stable system...
All synths seem to load fine (so far...) and basic eq and revs seep to load OK. Mvtest yields 10. Still can't load any of the SC-reverbs WHICH I WOULD LOVE TO USE... but can't be helped - I can't spend endless amounts of time just trying to get things to work the way they should. Maybe a BIOS update can improve things in the hopefully not too distant future.

[astroman]

sorry Wollis, I'm not too familiar with all those new multicore mobos out there, but the board you mention is less than 100 Euro in Germany.
In my own words: a piece of crap - fine if it's running (I have a cheapo Gigabyte myself), but I wouldn't waste even an hour if it doesn't do what it's supposed to. If 2 bios revisions show a 40% deviation of PCI performance then this reveals a lot about their developing quality...
If you get things more stable with a 1KW PSU with only onboard graphics engaged - then I can guess what the previous PSU was...

I don't think you need any additional time at all to get things running the way they should if you invest in quality parts.
At least I can't remember dozens of people complaining to be unable to use SC's 'new' reverbs.

But I DO remember several people on this board trying EXACTLY the same in the past with cheapo mobos, tweaking them to death over months (and that does not mean literally...)
After all they ended with those Intel boards that were suggested in the very beginning of their 'problems'.
At that time the respective difference was less than 50 bucks or so... ridiculous.

I don't mean this in any disrespective way: I'd easily spend $200 and up on a 500W PSU and $300 on a mobo if that system is anything more than an internet browser for me.
To be honest I'm frequently shocked at retail prices - that cannot be solid stuff anymore... so I call it crap.
And the (low cost) industry doesn't provide for realtime musicians: they focus on abstract benchmarks, gamers and possibly servers at home...

Those reverbs you're trying to run represent a usability value > 1k and the DSP hardware isn't a bargain either, so why pair it with supermarket gear ?

cheers, Tom
(running a 19 DSP System from a 180 Watt Industrial PSU, Asus TUSL2c)

[Wollis]

Thanks Tom! That´s the kind of reply I've been looking for!

Thing is, it seems impossible to find a decent mobo - with three PCI slots - in Finland... Everything seems to be in the same pricerange (50-150€). I did look through these forums as well as I could before ordering the stuff, but I might have been too early, as I didn´t find much at the time. Only 1156-boards with 3xPCI in the local shops at the moment are:

Intel DH55HC
Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3
Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3R
and different versions of my current Asus-P55-obvious-piece-of-crap.

Also, reverting to an old mobo with single or even dual-core is not really an option. Need the power to run the DAW without limitations. SO CAN I PLEASE GET SOME RECOMMENDATIONS REGARDING WHAT MOBO TO GET! Will probably have to make a special order, but what the heck. Just want to get things running. Price isn't really an issue - as you said, quality costs and I'm really not interested in pairing up good audio hardware with supermarket stuff. It's just been a question of accessibility - and me not being quite up to date with how choosy the scope systems are with current mobos.

BTW, the old PSU was 600W - don´t think that upgrade really mattered in the end, but at least I can now rule that out as a possible cause of any problems

[astroman]

well, you might find Supermicro mobos via industrial suppliers in Finnland
Supermicro would be my favourite choice if I had to build an all-in-one system because they are absent in the consumer domain. A server isn't exactly a DAW equivalent but at least they can afford to ignore gimmicks... of course at the expense of a higher investment.
But even they don't seem to have what you're looking for. 2 PCI slot seems the max.

I have no idea how much you expect from latest CPUs and memory architecture (to be honest I never really cared about so called calculation power). Imho it's a highly application specific feature.
A board's figures may read impressive, say 3 times the speed of the memory bus, but after all it breaks down to a mere 25% improvement in (general) applications... one or two may benefit more but they never do as much as the numbers suggest.
A well sized CPU cache usually speeds processing, but a huge one may not make any difference at all in a DAW.
Opposed to a server with hundreds of simultaneous operations.

My personal needs are fairly humble and I like to keep things simple.
That's why I prefer dedicated systems for dedicated tasks and run Scope on the old P3 board connected via Adat lightpipe.
My DAW Software is SAW Studio basic on my developement machine (currently that CoreDuo Gigabyte cheapo).
If this provides some comfort: it's connected by a RME 9652 which is great for Asio, but totally s*cks on everything else.
No support for current multimedia (YouTube and the like) and it seems impossible to adress the interface in single channels or rather in any reasonable way at all... if you're used to Scope... it's a pita.

It was indeed damn cheap (eBay) so I couldn't resist... should have taken the HDSP Version instead.
So my punishment for violating the self-set rules is well deserved...

Anyway... aside from the fact that computers are so cheap today (one can afford a 2nd, 3rd machine) I wouldn't underestimate the fact that the current Scope software for PCI cards is from a time when multicore CPUs were almost non-present on desktop systems.
I'm sure SC has something in the pipeline with the next software release, but that doesn't help right now.
(in case it didn't come over in the previous section: RME simply stopped support for card I have. bingo. period)

While Scope processes almost exclusively on DSPs, some very important control structures run on the CPU.
It's a reasonable guess that your problems may have their source right there - of course I don't know it, but your description reads much more troublesome than I would have expected.
So I'd slightly alter my statement from above that a solution may not even exist with quality gear in a 3 card setup.

I avoid Scope 5 since it's still not finished for PCI cards (imho) and I purchased those reverbs years ago, so there's few motivation for adventures on my side.

admittedly, that's a lot of reasoning and background bla bla, but imho it's better to face facts as they are.
Until now noone has posted a trusted board for your application.
If you need full power on the DAW side and full processing with DSPs a 2 part system is the most reliable and easy to setup option. Come on... it's not THAT big...

cheers, Tom

[Wollis]

As I'm still set on building an all-in-one machine, I did some extensive googling and actually found some server hardware that 'might' be more according to your guidelines....

Supermicro mobos actually turned out to be available in Finland - and reasonably affordable - but as you said, the amount of PCI-slots can be limited. With the LGA775 socket there are however a couple of alternatives:

http://www.supermicro.com/products/moth ... /PDSBA.cfm (240€)
http://www.supermicro.com/products/moth ... /PDSBE.cfm (230€)
http://www.supermicro.com/products/moth ... /X7SBA.cfm (300€)

But that would mean going back to LGA775.... I've gotten too used to the speed of my current setup...
Intel sadly don't have any acceptable mobos, but Asus seems to have a simple server-board that might cut it:

http://www.asus.fi/product.aspx?P_ID=IfqVazfJxzVeDUPf (190€)

My brother needs a server, so I think I'll build a system on the Asus P7F-X board with a Xeon, test it with Scope, and if it's better than my present setup, I'll build his server round my present board (which should meet his needs more than adequately) and keep the new one

Also gonna try reverting to Scope 4.5 on my current machine, and see if there is any noticeable change in performance. It would be a pity not to have the new plugins of Scope 5 available, but on the other hand that's no significant change to my current situation.

I'll post any results as I get them.

[astroman]

yeah, the ASUS looks like a good find, very plain board, no gimmicks...

cheers, Tom

[LCS AUDIO]

Greetings All

I was looking to upgrade my former system from May 2009, i7 920, Gigabyte X58UD4P (only 2 PCI slots) Win7 32bits, beta at first...

The system had 2 x 14DSP Scope and I was looking to upgrade it to 3x 15DSP + 1x 6DSP (if a 4th card is possible, i really like the i/o's)

A few weeks back while reading this thread I have noted the suggestion of using the ASUS P7F-xxx board.

I located an ASUS P7F-C/4L which hosts 4 PCI slots, added 4x4GB, i7 880, Seasonics x850, 1 system SSD and a 2x SSD RAID 0, backed up by a 1TB drive. Using Win7 64bits
I used the Fractal design R4 which is a very nice and affordable case. Although you have to remove the lower HDD bay as it gets in the way of the long PCI cards.

Last night I was able to load 9 MasterVerb and 1 Minimax with 16 voices. (windows and BIOS not tweaked yet but this board is so bare and I disabled almost everything except USB, 1 network port and RAID

Before loading the Minimax, a 10th MasterVerb resulted in DSP overflow message and the system could not recover. Restarting Scope and the 9 MasterVerb in stable state, I could still load a 16 voices Minimax, but not a 10th verbs.

In any case this is a better performance than my previous X58 UD4P board and I am quite happy with this.

All in all I have 5 STM cables but using only 3,

1) should I use more or less?
2) I will try using a fourth card but with staggered STM cables, would this be ok?

In any case many thanks to the community for all the insight and good advices.

Eric

[LCS AUDIO]

Just an FYI

The Asus P7f C4L works well with 4 cards

Total of 51 Dsp, 72i/o's

I can load multiple synth with 16 voices...