ASUS P5K and Q6600 with 4GB memory causes droputs

ensoniqeps · Post by **ensoniqeps** » Wed Aug 29, 2007 2:12 pm

Dear fellow Creamware-owners!

I own a cherised Scope Professional card.

I've been installing my new computer (see my signature for specs) but I think I have more dropouts now than with my older PC (ASUS P4P800 Deluxe and 2.4 GHz CPU with and AGP card)

I thought it would be great idea to spend my vacation building the new monster. I have now been awake nearly 7 days AND 7 nights to get the perfect DAW but I have dropouts, crackling and pops here and there.
I run 2 20" wide sceens in 1680x1050 resolution, tried both dual screens and one "big" one including both sceens at 3360x1050.

I have done all the tweakings in XP as I one can do
Disabled everything in BIOS as I possibly can
Put SFP in LOW and Cubase in HIGH in Activity Manager
No antivirusprograms etc
Lowered graphicsslider to the lowest settings etc
Running x1 on the BIOS settiings for the PCIe.
Tweaked with Double Dawg to get right latency for Scope (96 is standard and I tried 64 and 32 as well)

I have tested with SX3 and Cubase 4 and when I run the demosongs in Cubase 4 it sometimes works flawlessy down to 3 ms, let's say 4 ms. But if I run an old Cubase projects involving Direct X plugs and lots of VST instruments it's another case. When I click on things with the mouse, fiddling with SFP synths or something there is HEAVY crackling. My older PC seem now to have been working better.

I DONT WANT TO RUN 25 ms LATENCY IN ULLI! =)

All in machine is internal PCI express as well as my Soft RAID Sil 3132 card. Just Scope is PCI. I have tried slots 2 and 3 ( slot 1 is covered by coolers from Leadtek GeForce 8600 GT card)

I've tested to run ny songs from both RAID partition and from the second SATA2 drive which is installed in SATA port 2 on the motherboard.

I have disabled things so Scope is alone on IRQ 18 APIC mode.

I run XP Pro 32 bits with SP2 and all fixes from Microsoft.

I can't really believe that I don't get a decent musicmachine with this parts.
Im used to computers and Scope since many many years back, even professionaly (selling PCs and Cubase and worked with DAWs since the beginning of time).

All I can get it down to is GUI problems. But PCI express cards have their own "busses" and don't hog the PCI bus, ey?

Can it be my Scope card (bought it Dec 2001, manufactured Sept 2001) has gotten sick? I mean.... then it shouldn't work at all or not being able to run 3 ms in Cuase 4 demosongs?!?!?

I have also tried all in Cubase setups and with the SFP-drivers, changing latencys and ULLIs and disabled Multi CPUs etc etc etc

Can Garyb or someone else in this forum, running same motherboard etc, come up with a solution for me?

I have read nearly all the threads here and on Steinberg forums as well.

I'm now out of ideas.

Is P35 chipset wrong choice?
Can't disable all USB cause there is no PS/2 port for mouse and I must run backups to an external USB harddrive (especially if I choose to edit audio on RAID 0 in the machine)

I record vocaltakings and external synths as audio, I use many synths in SFP and the big 2448 mixer and many plugins synths and effects in Cubase.

I run Scope 4.0 and will upgrade to 4.5 soon but Ralph at CW told me there is no new drivers or applications in 4.5 (just want the new devices)

I really hope you want to and can help me in this matter. Having a new record coming out this autumn!

Feel fre to add me on MSN ( see profile)

Greetings from Sweden (on a destroyed holiday

)

Remarks:
I've totally disabled swapfile on C:
I run the /3GB switch in XP and it seems to be OK
I run an Evolution MK-249C on Pcs USB buss (not through SFP MIDI cable)

Post by **garyb** » Wed Aug 29, 2007 3:02 pm

don't disable the swapfile!

too many tweeks is worse than none.

no ps2? bad choice imho, but a usb mouse should still work just fine. it's very hard to set up or diagnose a machine that you can't see, especially when lots of changes may have been made to the os. in my experience, simple is better.

any of those vsts or dxs could be the source of all your trouble. plugins can denormal and do other bad things....what is your cpu load when crackling starts?

how about a screenshot of your irq assignments, or better, go to "system information" in programs/accessories/system tools, and check "conflicts/sharing" in "hardware resources". is the card listed there? if so, what is it sharing with?

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Wed Aug 29, 2007 3:15 pm

you mention a 'software raid' - that means regardless where the card is plugged in, the CPU has to take care of the drive.
It doesn't really make sense to me that there's a PCIe card controlled by a that program, but possibly I just messed something - anyway software raid means CPU cycles are stolen.

Andre mentions a 'bad' PCI performance with just old = generation one Pulsars, but yours is definetely the modern type, as you wouldn't get the low latency you currently have.
Maybe the PCI bus on these system is more sensible than before, as it's no longer considered the main communication channel of the machine.
Can you disable the raid ?

cheers, Tom

Post by **garyb** » Wed Aug 29, 2007 3:28 pm

yes, no RAID needed!!!

ensoniqeps · Post by **ensoniqeps** » Wed Aug 29, 2007 3:50 pm

garyb wrote:don't disable the swapfile!

too many tweeks is worse than none.

no ps2? bad choice imho, but a usb mouse should still work just fine. it's very hard to set up or diagnose a machine that you can't see, especially when lots of changes may have been made to the os. in my experience, simple is better.

any of those vsts or dxs could be the source of all your trouble. plugins can denormal and do other bad things....what is your cpu load when crackling starts?

how about a screenshot of your irq assignments, or better, go to "system information" in programs/accessories/system tools, and check "conflicts/sharing" in "hardware resources". is the card listed there? if so, what is it sharing with?

Thanks for your swift answer!

Firstly, I did not do all the tweaks before I was getting desperate hehe
The system was crackling from the first moment, THEN I started fiddling like hell!!!

OK, I'll put the swapfile back on. What size should it be for /3GB? Around 4.5 GB, I suppose.

Yes, no PS/2!! And in BIOS you can set USB to OFF but that kills my mouse and Cubase dongle. Is it ON then USB2.0 pops up and can be set to ON or OFF. If ON, then you could choose HiSpeed or FullSpeed. Ive tried to disable just USB2.0

Further on this boards got one IDE port and is managed by Jmicron RAID controller (for my DVD and DVD-RW). Sounds pretty bad, ey?

I can fix you the IRQ screenshot but I can proclaim Scope is alone at IRQ 18 after disabling USB 2.0

My SIL 3132 SoftRaid PCIe card has been disabled in Windows and songs run from ordiary SATA2 disc with no luck.

It "feels" GUI related, if I have lots of things going on on the screen graphicwise then the crackling turns to machinegun fire =)
And that is also in Cubase 4 demo songs with NO Direct X and plugins, just waves as you probably know.

CPU meter is around 8-10% in my own song and Cubase 4 demo songs. Lots of headroom, isn't it? But when I push SFP objects around then one of the four cores goes up around, lets say 80-90%. SFP is set to low and I show 16 bit colours and tried all diminishing accelrations on the "slider".

The mouse is a cordless desktop Logitech and it has worked well on former PCs with Cubase and SFP.

Any new thoughts?

Post by **garyb** » Wed Aug 29, 2007 3:54 pm

yes, don't disable graphics accelleration. that's why you get cpu spikes when moving gui objects. you're doing graphics with the cpu instead of the gpu.

there's no need to set a fixed swapfile. let windows manage it.

as to usb 2.0, likely you don't need to disable it. if moving the card to another slot doesn't give you a free irq, disabling just the one or two usb controllers in the device manager will fix things.(you have at least two usb2.0 and four to six usb1.0 controllers) looking in system information will tell you the name of the controller to disable(they usually have names like 1ED7 or similar).

ensoniqeps · Post by **ensoniqeps** » Wed Aug 29, 2007 4:04 pm

astroman wrote:you mention a 'software raid' - that means regardless where the card is plugged in, the CPU has to take care of the drive.
It doesn't really make sense to me that there's a PCIe card controlled by a that program, but possibly I just messed something - anyway software raid means CPU cycles are stolen.

Andre mentions a 'bad' PCI performance with just old = generation one Pulsars, but yours is definetely the modern type, as you wouldn't get the low latency you currently have.
Maybe the PCI bus on these system is more sensible than before, as it's no longer considered the main communication channel of the machine.
Can you disable the raid ?

cheers, Tom

Hi Astroman!
You were swift to answer me too =)

I thought I'd give the RAID a go cause I thougt my 2.4 GHz quad core could handle it, cause its a PCIe card. I know it takes CPU cycles but this much???

I will disable the RAID after I copied all the gigabytes to another location then wipe the discs clean.... and make them ordinary SATA2 discs
BUT I have disabled the card in Windows Task Managger and run the songs from my ordinary SATA drive, the slave that is, with system on Master.

Yes, maybe PCI is more vulnerable on this new generation of MBOS but they can't sack the bandwidth and call it a working MBO??

As I mentioned in my first post and in the answer to Garyb it feels VERY GUI-related, this problem, but maybe I'm getting crazy in my head due to missing sleep this week haha

Can the Jmicron RAID/IDE controller cause problems too? I can skip my internal IDE drives and try my USB one.

Cheers / Marcus

Nestor · Post by **Nestor** » Wed Aug 29, 2007 4:24 pm

I have read quite a few bad reviews about the Jmicron RAID controller, I would definitely not use it. Do you absolutely need Raid in your configuration? Isn't it enough with a good SATA 16MB, one of those great new drives out there? I don't think you'll get a substantial increase in performance because of Raid, unless it is a "server" machine. for DAW use, I would simply not use Raid, it is more trouble than help, particularly using the Jmicron. You should give the Raid configuration some thought, it could be the problem.

Post by **garyb** » Wed Aug 29, 2007 4:33 pm

yes, the RAID array is a bad idea. just go with a couple of sata drives(7200rpm 8 or 16mb buffer). they're cheap and will work perfectly.

ensoniqeps · Post by **ensoniqeps** » Wed Aug 29, 2007 5:10 pm

Nestor wrote:I have read quite a few bad reviews about the Jmicron RAID controller, I would definitely not use it. Do you absolutely need Raid in your configuration? Isn't it enough with a good SATA 16MB, one of those great new drives out there? I don't think you'll get a substantial increase in performance because of Raid, unless it is a "server" machine. for DAW use, I would simply not use Raid, it is more trouble than help, particularly using the Jmicron. You should give the Raid configuration some thought, it could be the problem.

Hi!

Thanks for your input!

Jmicron controller is built-in and it only get my 2 DVD-plyers to run!
I tested with LAN and Jmicron on BUT disabled the SIL 3132 RAID and guess what? A tremendous difference! I run the SCOPE at 3 ms and 4 ms and in Cubase 4 demo songs it works good even with the Audiowarp examples!
My only worry now is that when I moce SFP open mixers around it crackles and hindres music a bit, but if I don't touch them and just watch them everyting is quite to my satisfaction.

Now I must "de-RAID", and move many Gb's to other drives, wipe them, and transfer it all back again... hehe

I will run XP on C:\ Seagate Barracuda Barracuda 7200.10 500 Gb with 16 Mb cache (D: and E: is for Vista and for backups)

Cubase install at F:\ Seagate Barracuda Barracuda 7200.10 500 Gb with 16 Mb cache

Songs and Cubase projects an waves at G:\ Seagate Barracuda Barracuda 7200.10 320 Gb with 16 Mb cache

I have installed heavy VST plugins and samples on H:\ Seagate Barracuda Barracuda 7200.10 500 Gb with 16 Mb cache

How could I let myself be talked into the STUPID idea with RAID in my DAW *DOH* !!!!!!!!!

Cheers / Marcus

ensoniqeps · Post by **ensoniqeps** » Wed Aug 29, 2007 5:12 pm

garyb wrote:yes, the RAID array is a bad idea. just go with a couple of sata drives(7200rpm 8 or 16mb buffer). they're cheap and will work perfectly.

Hi again Gary!

I have four of those 16 MB caches drives! =)

Thanks a lot for your efforts in helping me tonight!
When you come to Sweden the beers are on me!

Marcus

ensoniqeps · Post by **ensoniqeps** » Wed Aug 29, 2007 5:17 pm

Just to specify what I did more besides taking RAID out of the equation:

I enabled the swapfile on C: again. 1,5 time my memory (3 GB RAM in XP = approx. 4.5 GB swapfile)

I now run on full resolution and speed on my GeForce 8600GT with two dual monitors in 1680x1050

I put on Jmicron controller for the IDE drives and even internal LAN.... just to test and it was GREAT difference to when I accessed my RAID.

RAID stands for Royal Ass In DAWS =)

Have a good nights sleep =)

Marcus

Post by **garyb** » Wed Aug 29, 2007 5:20 pm

Nestor · Post by **Nestor** » Thu Aug 30, 2007 11:03 am

I'm glad to hear this...

Now... is the ticket fly included with the beer?

dawman · Post by **dawman** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 7:54 pm

I have a tip for new PC builders.

Intel will release it's no frills, absolute stable P35 mobo by years end.

Their R & D budget is extreme, and I bet that they have been testing these new boards for over a year.

As much as I am drooling for an upgrade, DDRIII is an uneeded luxury.

There is now available DDRII w/ ultra low latency that beats the stuffin's out of DDRIII. The benchmarks w/ the fastest DDRIII will surely increase next year, but I prefer an all Intel solution w/ shorter board connects, and no frills.

I have used similar DAW's for 3 years now live. The only troubles I ever encounter is when I try to get better performance, or create basic human errors.

Just The Meat & Potatoes Please,

dawman · Post by **dawman** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 7:54 pm

I have a tip for new PC builders.

Intel will release it's no frills, absolute stable P35 mobo by years end.

Their R & D budget is extreme, and I bet that they have been testing these new boards for over a year.

As much as I am drooling for an upgrade, DDRIII is an uneeded luxury.

There is now available DDRII w/ ultra low latency that beats the stuffin's out of DDRIII. The benchmarks w/ the fastest DDRIII will surely increase next year, but I prefer an all Intel solution w/ shorter board connects, and no frills.

I have used similar DAW's for 3 years now live. The only troubles I ever encounter is when I try to get better performance, or create basic human errors.

Just The Meat & Potatoes Please,