Definitive Scope PCI card host PC?

[petal]

OK - I'll give it a go then. Thank you very much!

[petal]

OK - I have now build a new system with an I7-4790k on an ASUS H81-PLUS motherboard.

I have 3 PCI cards in there and my XITE and they all seem to work.

I got 10 Masterwerbs Pros without any problems on the PCI-cards, and got a PCI-Limit error on the 11th.

[garyb]

looking good...

[t_tangent]

Thanks for the update petal. Useful info for when I need to upgrade.

[petal]

I bought everything second hand and reused a few things from my old system, so it was a pretty cheap upgrade.

[pdistefano]

Since my original post I had a funny five minutes and dug our my original old PC, pre my HP Xeon (recommended here). It’s super quiet based on an Asus A8n sli socket 939 Nvidia chipset. 1gb of memory, 128mb GeForce 6600 pciex graphics card, and a small 60gb SSD. Instead of reinstalling Windows (my normal preference), I cleaned the existing install of Win 7 Pro 32bit (daughter had taken it over), fully updated it, and turned off some of the things...

I’ve got 1 scope card, 1 pulsar card and a pulsar srb. I could only fit the scope into my case by removing an hd bay and sacrificing the SRB; so only two cards went in: 19 DSP will do . It’s worth bearing in mind that I’m looking to use this as a mixer for my synths and then feed into a Mac for recording. (Any midi fader recommendations?)

So, I fired it all up, installed 5.1, imported my key file. And shit me, it all worked first time. Even at 1080p moving the windows is silky smooth; ulli at 3ms at 48khz, all good. I randomly dropped in some devices; minimax, STM16, Timeworks reverb, prodissey, and a masterberb pro. Not even a murmur. So, I started piling in the stereo masterverb pros. Every time I added one I was waiting for the bad news. It topped out at 12 with no problems at all and all the other stuff. Holy shit balls.

Now I’ve got ADAT linking it to a Focusrite 18i20 and an Octopre, giving 16 ins in total which I mix down to 8, back into the Mac via the 18i20 for recording in Ableton. This is so ace; literally overnight I have a well specced mega desk for live sequencing and mixing, creative fx, and no sacrifice of control.

Anyway, I’ve just saved myself 800 quid. Still more real world tests to do. Happy to share any setup info if helpful (bios tweaks, windows tweaks, ADAT and midi routing, etc).

AMD, who’d have thunk it?

Thanks all. Cheers. Mark.

He he! Yep I've been using an (now ancient) AMD Asus A8V as a main machine since around early 2000's & it's stood the test of time. I did the same thing few years back with a single core AMD that was sitting around half pulled apart, got a $20 hard drive and with a few hours work had a 3rd additional processing with 3x scope cards on XP home. Isolated, scope pci has proven rock solid on the older machines that were built for pci cards (I think my old one has 6x pci slots) and I doubt upgrading provides significant performance improvement to the scope environment as a stand-alone situation. That said when you bring the DAW/native/ASIO aspects into it that changes it and it depends on personal workflow etc. Personally I'd rather draw the line, accept certain resource limitations and get on with making music, rather than making computers......

[Secret Test Kitchen]

I have 3 PCI cards in there and my XITE and they all seem to work.

Just curious......

Does having an XITE knock down the performance of the PCI cards? Would you get more out of the PCI cards if they were in a separate PC as essentially an old school sound module on steroids?

[petal]

That is not my experience.

To me it is simply like having two scope systems in the same machine

[asiofixer]

Hello
for pci scope card the better is to take this chipset:
LGA775 or better LGA 771 with dual quad xeon 8 or 16 go SSD sata 2
OS WIN7x64 if it works
it works on DELLT 7400 (but only one pci 33 mhz)
hp proliant had many xeon board with more pci slot
supermicro had wonder full motherboard but win7 no compatible
fujitsu also made lga771 with more pci slot
a difficult choice making work scope pci with nowdays os and plugins but with a lga 771 dual xeon quad 16 go ram ssd sata 2
it should rock hard

[IsacVries]

Hi....as far as I can tell with my X230 and an Expresscard eGPU, the most recent Lenovo X230 BIOS has no TOLUD issues. My HD7950 worked with it with no DSDT supersedes or any Setup1.3x remapping of the eGPU. Apparently, however, the X220 never got such a BIOS update.

pcb turnkey assembly

[PlanetZaxxon]

Totally new to SCOPE, but to chime in here I recently put together a PC with the following specs:

Intel db875pbz board
Intel P4 2.8 GHZ
400 watt psu
ATI Radeon 128mb AGP gpu
4GB RAM
120 GB SSD
WIN XP

I only have a Pulsar 1 card in it for now but it runs v4.5 great and sounds good as far as I could tell. I am currently waiting on a temp key so I can try this setup out with v7

I really dont want to have to buy any more computer parts, my house is full of them everywhere haha. So I built this computer just with stuff I had laying around.

[dawman]

I also used the DP875 Intel board, great motherboard for Scope, should last for years too.
No built in audio, no extra gunk.
Only problem was USB was still in its infancy so a powered Hub made everything click.
I remember using all USB ports and having issues, so after getting the Hub, and disabling unused ports in the Device Manager, everything worked great.

Plus even though a port is disabled, it’s still enough juice to power devices, just not power and MIDI.

[PlanetZaxxon]

What are you plugging into the USB ports ?

I’m currently not using any at all.

[PlanetZaxxon]

Just built another XP machine to run scope and it's been amazing.

BCMCOM Motherboard, Socket 478
P4 3.0
500 watt PSU
4 GB ram
GeForce FX6200
240 GB SSD

Been running great for past week, and I just added another Pulsar card. 8 DSP's of fun, no complaints.

Also, those motherboards are available still, NEW, motherboard/CPU combo. I found a seller on ebay and it was $120.

It has:

1 AGP
6 PCI
1 ISA

The ISA and 6th PCI are shared.

s-l1600.jpg (118.5 KiB) Viewed 34647 times

[valis]

Nice looking board.

[astroman]

absolutely - didn‘t know there were P4 boards with ISA slots... so thank you @PlanetZaxxon .
Just browsed the manual and it seems a better alternative than the old Asus P2/P3 boards on my target list to eventually get the HardSID Quattro (ISA) up and running. It’s been sleeping for ages in it‘s box on the shelf.

[PlanetZaxxon]

Yes, me either! this was the first I have come across I believe, P4 with ISA slots. I love ISA slots, for some Sound Blaster 16 action, heh.

[PlanetZaxxon]

and oh dang you have a HardSID Quattro?!?! NICE!

[Bud Weiser]

BCMCOM Motherboard, Socket 478
...
Also, those motherboards are available still, NEW, motherboard/CPU combo. I found a seller on ebay and it was $120.

Link ?

Which RAM does it support ? RAMbus ?



Bud

[PlanetZaxxon]

It is the standard SDRAM, DDR400. 1GB max per slot.

Just shoot an offer for $120 and he will accept.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Intel-Sock ... 2749.l2649

Link ?

Which RAM does it support ? RAMbus ?



Bud