To switch or not? P965 For P35

maky325 · Post by **maky325** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 5:09 pm

So after enjoying few week or so in scope platform (i am very very satisfied new user) it seems that now is time for switch. My one year rock solid system is....well not rock solid anymore. After installing Scope Pro 14 DSP and Pulsar II (type 2 card) here and there i have few blue screens, few locks and resets but nothing major. I can work with that and enjoy scope as is, but i am planing to stay on scope for loooong time (it seems so) and i want solid system.

That blue screens would not be problem but i am planing to install another SRB and i believe i will have even more problems regarding PCI overflow. I mean i have 21 DSP system and i cant reach (or can but in very rare moments) more then 9 Masterverb. I see that some people can reach 15 or even 16 with just one Scope pro. And there are some nice numbers with ecatly same scope system as mine but with different mobos. I am not weekend computer user and i know my system very well. So i tested all this with various setup. ACPI, not Acpi, overclocked PCI, not overclocked PCI, dbldwg tool, IRQ tricks etc. Moving cards in different positions etc. Every time same result. And sometimes same errors. i se that some people speaking about recommendations to P965. Well here this is not case. I mean dont get me wrong. Again this system has been rock solid with ZERO problems EVER! Until i jumped to scope. So now i am looking for some smooth solution.

Now it seems that it MOBO does not like scope (Asus P5B-E - http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3& ... odelmenu=1

By reading this board i can see that people talk about P35 chipset and ntel or Gigabyte boards as good choices. But is this proven. I mean i saw same for P965 but it is not nice at all compared to Masterverb thread results. So i know some people which would be very happy to "order" board from me but is it worth to change system to get same as before? Ok with P35 i have better "upgradeability" but i dont care for this or some fancy add ons. I just search for stable and well PCI balanced system. I have option to order intel DP35DP Or Supermicro with P35 (this board should be fine with dedicated Pci buss).

So does anyone have some experience regarding PCI performance with those boards?

Also cananyone explain me how i am supposed to connec third card via STDM when third PCI is pretty out of reach for original creamware cable....(cable on that photo can trick someone since photo of mobo is small. In reality it can not reach that far down to third PCI).

Thanks for any tips...

Post by **garyb** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 5:23 pm

i have built very stable systems with the 815, 865,875, 925, 945, 965 and g33 chipsets, among others. i'm building a p35 machine at the end of the month.

PCI performance is a function of the motherboard's design and the chipset, as well as the cards on it. if you are getting bluescreens and have no shared irqs with scope card, then i'd say you have a hardware problem and i'd guess it's the motherboard. 965s made by intel, asus and gigabyte have been shown to be stable with scope, and the model you have should work well. i'm concerned that you aren't getting 12 or more masterverbs. not being there, i can't say anything for certain.

if the s/tdm cable doesn't reach, you can always buy the parts and make your own....
http://www.planetz.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=662

maky325 · Post by **maky325** » Sat Dec 15, 2007 1:34 am

Yeah i know. I believe that this s because asus focused on brutal vga performance and overall system performance. Not PCI. Thanks anyway. How long STDM can be?

maky325 · Post by **maky325** » Sat Dec 15, 2007 3:18 am

Copy paste from supermicro manual-BIOS section:

Enable Master
This setting allows you to enable the selected device as the PCI bus master.
The options are Enabled and Disabled.
Latency Timer
This setting allows you to set the clock rate for the bus master. A high-priority,
high-throughout device may benefi t from a greater clock rate. The options are
Default, 0020h, 0040h, 0060h, 0080h, 00A0h, 00C0h, and 00E0h.

-

This could be useful. Maybe someone here does have supermicro board?

Post by **garyb** » Sat Dec 15, 2007 3:37 am

the cable can be pretty long. i've made one over a foot long and it worked(the system was basically a router for Paris), but i would expect better performance from the shortest possible length.

maky325 · Post by **maky325** » Sat Dec 15, 2007 3:49 am

Thanks. Well one feet would not be needed but thanks. It is good to know that...I just found in intel manual:

PCI IDE Bus Master Advanced > Drive
Configuration
• Disabled
• Enabled
Allows a PCI device to initiate a transaction as a master.

Could be useful too. If disabled IDE channel will be behind PCI device regarding priority...Oh damn....there is so much option to know.

edit: from intel manual:

Note the following considerations for the PCI Conventional bus connectors:
• All of the PCI Conventional bus connectors are bus master capable.
-

Yep i am going to order intel board probably. Since it does have firewire (supermicro does not) and it does not sport old floppy and ps/2 connector which can hog some resources too.

MD69 · Post by **MD69** » Sat Dec 15, 2007 1:51 pm

Hi,

I have a supermicro main board.
The PCI latency timer did the tric. Set it up to 128 for 15 MV.

cheers

Michel

maky325 · Post by **maky325** » Sat Dec 15, 2007 3:08 pm

MD69 wrote:Hi,

I have a supermicro main board.
The PCI latency timer did the tric. Set it up to 128 for 15 MV.

cheers

Michel

Thanks for answering...Dou you have ACPI or Standard PC type installation? Well now i am again at start. Intel or Supermicro dilemma. Intel does have firewire. Supermicro is rock solid they say...now i only need someone with intel board to give me some response-result. I have one week to choose. I am not using firewire but then i believe that i will need it in future and i dont want to install firewire card into another PCI slot.

Again thanks for answering. I appreciate your help

MD69 · Post by **MD69** » Sat Dec 15, 2007 4:31 pm

Hi

ACPI here

Cheers

Michel

dawman · Post by **dawman** » Sat Dec 15, 2007 4:40 pm

You'll be fine either way you go.

I have the DP35DP, and the only tweakable tricks in the BIOS are for the memory latency which I will definately try to use.

I only got 11 MV's on my 965, but I ran 36 Sharcs w/ heavy polyphony counts, and also used several bandwidth eaters in my project.

MCCY Spring
Celmo Spring Reverb
Celmo Pro Vintage Delay
Celmo Stereo EchoReq
Celmo Tape Sim
SpaceF Synth FX
SpaceF AUX Delay
Wolf's Matrix Delay.

These remain active and all have their own CC's to control rates and depth.

I have a song ending where all 6 delays have their feedback rates maxxed out and controlled by a single CC for the feedback / regeneration length, and the speeds are all controlled by a single CC for rate, so I can do the old Lexicon Prime Time freaky shit.

I will post the MV's on the 27th for this board, even though I suspect they will be the usual 11 to 12 total.

maky325 · Post by **maky325** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 1:16 am

scope4live wrote:You'll be fine either way you go.

I have the DP35DP, and the only tweakable tricks in the BIOS are for the memory latency which I will definately try to use.

I only got 11 MV's on my 965, but I ran 36 Sharcs w/ heavy polyphony counts, and also used several bandwidth eaters in my project.

MCCY Spring
Celmo Spring Reverb
Celmo Pro Vintage Delay
Celmo Stereo EchoReq
Celmo Tape Sim
SpaceF Synth FX
SpaceF AUX Delay
Wolf's Matrix Delay.

These remain active and all have their own CC's to control rates and depth.

I have a song ending where all 6 delays have their feedback rates maxxed out and controlled by a single CC for the feedback / regeneration length, and the speeds are all controlled by a single CC for rate, so I can do the old Lexicon Prime Time freaky shit.

I will post the MV's on the 27th for this board, even though I suspect they will be the usual 11 to 12 total.

I am having 9 or 10 on my 965 but as you can read i want only best for my setup. So probably supermicro. Without firewire. I can only hope that in future soniccore new products will be PCIe based not firewire....

If you find some time it would be nice to have intel result here. Tweak that board and post results here. Cmon! You dont need to clean your outboard gear whole day

If you need some advice regarding bios tweaks just say it . I am totally mad because of my results

maky325 · Post by **maky325** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 3:43 am

Well i am reading masterverb thread again and again and i cant see where is person with intel board-P35 chipset and 15 masterverb count?

I just tested my Scope pro 14 DSP. For that test i removed additional Pulsar 2 with 6dsp. So one scope pro and i can not get more then two P-100. Yep. Only two. Then PCI overflow and not enough memory appear.

Now that is some major bad PCI performance

Interesting is that i can for example without a doubt play few minimax, vectrons etc,STS 5000 all the way until i reach DSP limit. But with reverbs i am no lucky...PCI bus seems to be problem here. I have no idea how some guys from masterverb thread managed to run 15 masterverbs with intel chipset. Only difference i see is that i have GF7800 and most of those guys does have Matrox card. Then again i saw few with 7800 and 14 masterverbs...

maky325 · Post by **maky325** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 6:21 am

stardust wrote:About your observation regarding reverbs.

It has been discussed already.

The memory on scope cards is very limited to the sharc onboard memory.
Reverbs and delays need memory for the inherent delay lines.
So an algorithm has to allocate system memory via the PCI bus.

That is the reason why there is such a thing like a 'MV test', because it brings the PCI bandwidth to a limit.

So wondering about that you are unlucky with reverbs is wondering why the cat has holes in the fur where the eyes are allocated.

Really? Well thank you for your observation and clever analogy

So what if i have project with one P-100 and one A-100 on aux. I can only dream about using I-100 on group or if they release H-100. I like Timewroks reverb because of sound. I can only run twoof them on scope pro card. AFAIK user are reporting to run 5 without any problem on single card. Three would be enough to me. My point is not to be able to use 10 masterverbs. As you can see i have some problems etc. So i believe i should worry about my PCI bus performance yes thank you very much. And as you can read at start of this thread i will be on scope for long time and i want stable system for future so yes i will worry about PCI as is right now.

Btw i have 7. cats here

dawman · Post by **dawman** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 7:11 am

Just buy the PCM91 and use the real thing w/ warp69's stuff.

In this way you could run a dual w/ the 91, and add the other 2 to the AUX's or MB4 Buss's.

Shroomz had the record w/ 60 MV's I believe.

maky325 · Post by **maky325** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 7:16 am

stardust wrote:What could help:

Using 2 cards connected with STDM to free PCI bus by balancing access to memory

Using 2nd generation cards only since they are known to be more effivient in PCI resource usage.

Being awyre that A100 P100 are high end algorithms. There are reverbs there that use less resources

Optimizing your Mobo performance by avoiding any concurring southbridge usage

BTW H100 will very likely never be released. At least the developer told us so here in the forum

BTW do yourcats have eyes at the right place

Ditto all that allready with no success !!! I have 2nd generation cards, connected via STDM or not always same results. Been there done that. I know everything about P-100 and i dont want something else. I am using what i like not what i am forced to use. Again i am not weekend user or something. But thank you for your input. And yes cats does have eyes at right place. Nature is perfect. It is not like human made chipset ;9

I am going to buy supermicro MB...Thanks again

katano · Post by **katano** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 4:31 am

mpodrug wrote:
stardust wrote:About your observation regarding reverbs.

It has been discussed already.

The memory on scope cards is very limited to the sharc onboard memory.
Reverbs and delays need memory for the inherent delay lines.
So an algorithm has to allocate system memory via the PCI bus.

That is the reason why there is such a thing like a 'MV test', because it brings the PCI bandwidth to a limit.

So wondering about that you are unlucky with reverbs is wondering why the cat has holes in the fur where the eyes are allocated.
Really? Well thank you for your observation and clever analogy So what if i have project with one P-100 and one A-100 on aux. I can only dream about using I-100 on group or if they release H-100. I like Timewroks reverb because of sound. I can only run twoof them on scope pro card. AFAIK user are reporting to run 5 without any problem on single card. Three would be enough to me. My point is not to be able to use 10 masterverbs. As you can see i have some problems etc. So i believe i should worry about my PCI bus performance yes thank you very much. And as you can read at start of this thread i will be on scope for long time and i want stable system for future so yes i will worry about PCI as is right now.

Btw i have 7. cats here

it's not only the reverbs using lots of pci ressources, i run into pci problems from time to time when using alot ASIO2 24bit connections from cubase (24 to be precise). and in combination with reverbs and delays on aux it definitely becomes unstable sometimes. i'm using 3 scope pros btw with 5 stdm cables...

i.e. i'm not able to mix 24 asio2-24bit channels with a100 AND p100, i always have to choose only one of them... of course lots of other plugins are used in the same project, too.

so if someone can use both of the most fantastic sounding reverbs in such a large mixing environment, LET ME KNOW what system you use

just my 2 swiss cents

maky325 · Post by **maky325** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 7:37 am

Hi. Just small report. today i have a chance and i did some quick test on intel 975xbx2 mainboard.

Clean install. Everything disabled onboard etc.14DSP Again 10 masterverbs !!!

Adding one Pulsar II so 21(20 real) and i can run 12 Masterverb. This is some slight improvement since on Asus P5BE i cant run more then 10 masterverb even with 20DSP. So it seems that intel board does have better PCI resourcing but results are under expected so i am going for Supermicro Mb that is sure.

Btw on that intel MB i can run three P-100 without a problem along with STS5000, minimax,vectron etc....On Asus P5BE i cant run more then two P-100 without PCI overflow and DSP error...

maky325 · Post by **maky325** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 12:48 pm

Yep. That is the board i am looking for. But i wont have it for two or three weeks.

Post by **garyb** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 2:10 pm

no problem with supermicro in my mind....

dawman · Post by **dawman** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 5:16 pm

That is the Bad Axe.

There is a hardware tweak that rocks from what I have read. It's a small copper wire that goes from one jumper to the other via a small solder job.

I always wanted to get that board.

Enjoy.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/sho ... ight=975bx