PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

Well.. someone had to do it, am I right, I was the first here?

Just installed Gigabyte GA-K8NS Pro with AMD64 3200. I picked this mobo because it allows assign manually IRQs for PCI slots. I made a quick test just by installing new mobo driver over the old drivers left from my previous Asus nForce2. My 2 Pulsars seems to be working normally, along with UAD-1. Tested the max masterverb loading, and got them 16 units loaded. When I tried 17th, got a DSP overload error, they were totally maxed out. So the PCI bandwidth is not an issue with this board. nForce2 gave me less masterverbs due to PCI capacity. Tested my VDAT project and all seemed to be working fine as did cubase sx too.
Strange though, I didn't notice huge improvement in CPU power between XP2400+ and this A64 3200+.

Going to re-install windows now, I'll report more when the problems arises

i also have a AMD64-3200+, on a MSI K8N Neo Platinum board with a pulsar 2+ card. In short nvidia nforce3-250gb chipsets are simply awesome. In particular the gigabit lan, travels on a seperate dedicated bus (not pci). Everything works perfectly, no problems. The cool'n'quiet feature on the AMD64 is quite good too - auto speed throttling and fan/temperature control.

Good job, keep the info coming..

Hi,
thanks for the info, can you tell us which SFP you have? How is midi behaving? Can you tell us complete configurations? For how long are you using the system?
I am thinking of getting an AMD 64, machine.
Does anybody know what the difference is between Athlon and Opteron? Price tags?
Thank you for your answers, keep us posted please

On 2004-09-14 04:11, MikeRaphone wrote:
Hi,
thanks for the info, can you tell us which SFP you have? How is midi behaving? Can you tell us complete configurations? For how long are you using the system?
I am thinking of getting an AMD 64, machine.
Does anybody know what the difference is between Athlon and Opteron? Price tags?
Thank you for your answers, keep us posted please

My pc config is following:

GA-K8NS Pro
AMD64 3200 boxed (temp seems to stay very low)
512MB Kingston 400MHz
200GB Maxtor
60GB Hitachi
Radeon 9600
550W Antec truepower
Pulsar2 (slot5)
Pulsar2 (slot4)
UAD-1 (slot3)

Still not tested thoroughly, but no problems so far. Been running Prime95 torture test 6 hours now, still going on. I'm probably going to re-install my audio partition tonight (I've boot manager). I'm using SFP4. More to come..


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Stige on 2004-09-14 08:25 ]</font>

here's my config.

- amd64 3200+ (2200mhz newcastle core), mild overclock to (2310mhz), stable in prime95 & memtest (12hrs+)
- msi k8n neo platinum (nforce 250gb)
- corsair twinx XMS3200XL (1gig)
- 80gig seagate bara V (ATA100)
- 2x 160gig seagate 7200.7 SATA
- antec trupower 430watts (amg1080 case)
- nvidia geforce 6800gt
- pulsar 2 plus, sync plate, swissonic converters
- sfp4, slim windows xp (sp2) (created with nlite)
- cubase sx 2
- also run adobe after effects, premiere and lightwave for my multimedia work.

Hi Vien

Does newcastle core mean 512k or 1MB cache?
I've been looking for 1MB chips, but not found anywhere.

I'm very surprised how cool this cpu is. Only +30c idle (+42c under 100% stress) with default heatsink and I've turned 'cool&quiet' off. How are your readings, I guess even lower?

ps: I wish I could afford Lightwave.. been strugling with blender here.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Stige on 2004-09-17 04:53 ]</font>

yeah my cpu is the 512k cache version. couldnt get a clawhammer (1meg), it's been phased out.

my temps are like 34c idle, about 54c load. seems abit high, i probably didnt install my heatsink properly (i'm using a zalman heatsink). c'n'q is on.

im only using v7 of lightwave atm, got it off ebay fairly cheap.

The difference between temps could be related to different calibration of the sensors. Also I've got 3 case fans, one front, and two rear. There is plenty of extra cooling preventing pulsars sweat too much.

Hey guys, just checking, i guess no news is good news and everything is runnin smooth and stable?
Thanks for your replying

Steffan

bump!

Stige and Vien hello again,
well i need to admit that curiousity is killing me: could you possibly test your system on 96kHz. How many channels can you run, can you do rec and play. On my computer PCI simply chokes. Is it possible to work normally on 96kHz with your Athlon 64 machines?
Please please let us know
Thanks in advance,

Steff

This really would be nice to know.. I'm sure Creamware could sell a lot of cards if they could get a stable platform at 96kHz.. the synths sound pretty jaw dropping at this sample rate.. worth buying 3 scope cards for I think

And besides operating at 96kHz, i would also like to know if your mobos are 939 socket?

Thanks a lot guys

I'll test this 96k stuff when I have some time.
My motherboard is the older socet version. I'm using MSI neo platinum at the moment as gigabyte had noisy chipset cooler.

Later..

Just fyi:

http://www.planetz.com/forums/viewtopic ... forum=31&0

Ok ok, i admit, this post is just for numbers- to get me to pulsar geekdoom soon(and to put the thread on top, maybe Vien has overlooked it, Stige i know you're busy so don't sweat it)


Make good music and the rest will follow

Hello, I've made a simple test now.

opened up a SFP project with STM4896 mixer and ASIO2 driver to feed all 48 channels in the mixer. Then opened cubase SX 1.06 and created a project with 48 output busses. Imported 48 full lenght tracks.
Everything played back fine, 48 tracks / 24-bit / 96KHz
No sign of PCI limitations. But my Pulsars 12 DSP's were fairly maxed out, around 85% only running mixer with 48 active channels, no effects. Cubase CPU meter was at 6% load and disk meter around 40%.

96K usage would need a lot more DSP. Also it might be possible that STM mixers are not fully compatible for 96k, although I didn't notice any problems now without other FX running.

I hope this helps a bit

Thanx a lot Stige

i think this is very good news, that this athlon64 config. can run stable without PCI overflows.I guess it is due to improved architectures of hardware in general. Maybe CWA could look into it a little deeper and join the 96k hype. i really think it would boost their sales... maybe no need for firewire, maybe a (slowly)switch to PCIe would work just fine...
just a few thoughts, and thanks again

This is with Windows XP 32 bit? This is good news. I have 11 DSP chips. Of course it's a test and you wouldn't need 48 output buses as you could do a lot of the mixing in Cubase. I would like to hear how stable it is over time.