PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

well, together a Gearslutz user I'm tightening the circle of candidates
for a new Scope system to try.

Looking also to manuals of different brands Z77 and B75 motheboard models we have found interesting things to evaluate.

[edit]
MSI B75-G43 has in its BIOS the settings for PCI IRQs routing and the PCI Latency Timer as on older motherboards.
(and I didn't found a scheme which indicates that legacy PCI slots are shared with other busses or devices.)
Is it a good thing for you too?

Consider that that instead that in ASrock and Gigabytes B75 mobos manuals I didn't find at all these parameters in their bios!
The Gigabyte model I looked is the GA-P75-D3 (the same tried here by Strattosphere):
its block diagram shows legacy PCI slots are separated from all else, but anyway
he had problems with three Pulsar 2 and a Yamaha in the 4th slot.
[added]
I found only a mysterious parameter: PCI ROM Priority.
The manual says: "Allows you to determine which Option ROM to launch. Options are Legacy ROM and EFI Compatible
ROM. (Default: EFI Compatible ROM)"
But I don't know at all what this means or does.

[edit]
On ASUS P8B75-V the IRQ assignaments paragraph confirms that legacy PCI slots are shared with PCIexpress and audiocard (I guess it from the code)... while SATA controller are separated, not shared with them.
[edit]
On the ASUS P8Z77-V instead the SATA controllers (as chipset as Asmedia) are shared with one PCIe x1 slot not with legacy PCI slots,
but these ones are indeed shared with the other PCIexpress x16 slots!
The first PCI is sharing also with a USB2 and a USB3 controller.

Anyway what makes me wonder a bit is reading the manual of the MSI Z77A-G43 (the one tried here by Braincell), because it seems to be the same manual (same sign?) of the B75A-G43 with just the Z77 adds (that I list later).
So, even on the Z77A-G43 you can find the part with the PCI IRQs sharings and the PCI Latency Timer!!
How could it possible if Z77 hasn't native support for legacy PCI and use the Asmedia 1083 for the bridge to PCIe?
Could be the different "implementation" made by MSI that GaryB talked/conjectured
in the other thread?

MSI B75A-G43 and Z77A-G43 mobos: they seem to be the same base plates: almost identical design and number of PCI slots, with Z77 having added the Asmedia 1083, the improve of USB ports and having 2 SATA3 6gb ports instead of the one only present on B75 model.

The MSI B75-G43 is a good candidate for me to try at this point.
If it works fine I can eventually consider a SATA3 PCIe controller for more 6gb ports,
but I don't know if they can works fine or eat too much PCIe bandwith having a HD7850 graphics card.

any comment/consideration or suggestion?

for a PCI card?
none of the above.

there's nothing to be gained by buying the latest hardware, especially since the generation before it will do the same job and will definitely work.

it's your money, though.

I edited/fixedsome infos in the first post.

Ok thanks Gary
Well B75 isn't the latest hardware however...
I would go on with my actual Q6600 and P965 mobo if it wasn't giving me all these crash and BSOD problems with Win7...

I just did my first major project with no problems whatsoever. I first used an Echo Gina then mixed down with my Pulsar 2 + Luna 2 cards. I'm very happy with the performance I am getting. I did not tinker with the BIOS at all. I am using Windows 8 with 32 gigs RAM.

Z77s were made for PCI-3 and internal HD4000 GFX on die.
THis is why they can concentrate on better USB 3.0 implementation, and dual SATA III 6GB + 6.4GB QPI.
On another note I built 2 x Scope DAW 4Us to house a Xeon/C602 and the most recent was the dual 32bit PCI board from Asus, the P6X58D Premium w/ the same old 24GB and Raptors, 2 x Scope Project Cards.
These chassis have all new Mobo, RAM and PSU, and the Xeon CPU was older and cheap.
My old i7 980X OC'd to 4.2GHz w/o any heat, even though voltage was jumped a little and DRAM went from 1.5v to 1.65v.
THe 4U Xeon is my back up using Gigastudio for Biker gigs.
The i7 980X was for Jr with FL Studio and Scope.
Will try and get the Heil Talk Box and SE-1 working today as he inherited the spare synth.

I still think the X58/C602s are the only way to go with the Cards, and after they're gone Scope users will have a few years to save up for second hand XITE-1s or new PCI-e cards.
Hell maybe by then Native might be the way to go for realtime, but the trends don't reflect that.

In the end I pulled the trigger and today I got the new motherboard, cpu and ram.
I'll let you know how all will behave with Scope-Pulsar2 card.

How did you go?

I want to upgrade to the most recent, fastest bang for buck, ie not high outlay for small gain like the supermicro X9SRH-7F-B. But a board that has 3 native pci and the MSI Z77A-G43 w/i7 3770s seems to be the one. Would this be a mistake?



Background Info:

scope 2nd gen 15dsp + 2x pulsar2 2nd gen
windows 8 64bit scope 5.1
gap35cds3r, q6600 w/GO stepping, 8gb ram, all bios disables and tweaks from garyb, no oc, latest bios
*aero disabled, no firewall or defender, switched to background task priority, no page file (*after these tweaks perf was better, tried b4 and after)
gives me 10 masterverbs in the test

Another major issue is the clicks and pops from running VEPro server in 3 other pcs into reaper vsti during big music compositions.

Id like to give scope one last try as my main daw cards with a new pc since I like to have 64 ASIO piping into the STM4896 or 48S.

Medium to large surround mixes in reaper or PT10/11hdn and my current GA P35C DS3r/q6600 are giving me pops and clicks and running too close to cpu max even at highest latency settings. Thus the upgrade. Especially in reaper which tends to run twice as high cpu use as pt10.3.2.


Cheers

imho you don't get any farther with Scope than what you can do on an Intel 865 and Win XP
it's in the WinDoze
don't take my word from it, but the experience Merging Technollogies made when developing MassCore for their Pyramix system
it's a long story, just hop in at the middle of the page: MassCore (the yet another solution combining best of both worlds) what is it?
they basically isolated one CPU core for their mixing engine and hid it completely from the OS...
actually they couldn't believe just HOW that thing was flying once the crap from Redmont was out of the way

cheers, Tom

well, for studio music production, a supermicro 1366 with dual xeons is as fast as anyone needs. if it's not fast enough, you're lazy.
a socket 1156 motherboard with a fast i7 is also more than enough power.

both systems will have no problems running any audio software. they'll have limits, but the limits will be reasonable, they won't even be close to the reason someone might be unproductive. there is no such thing as a system without limits.

if you want more power, forget pci cards. i'm still doubting that any of this would affect usability, but there's nothing wrong with more. you'll just need to spend more time and money to get it.

the industry has already announced the end of the bus. don't expect anything more than basic legacy support from here out. on the other hand, hope springs eternal. it's always possible that a bios update may make all of the poor performing systems work wonderfully. it's possible that the next motherboard design rev will be the one...

bcslaam wrote:How did you go?

I want to upgrade to the most recent, fastest bang for buck, ie not high outlay for small gain like the supermicro X9SRH-7F-B. But a board that has 3 native pci and the MSI Z77A-G43 w/i7 3770s seems to be the one. Would this be a mistake?

Hi,
in this post I did http://forums.planetz.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=31897
you can read in details all my tests and results I did with the MSI B75A-G43 mobo.
It's almost identical to the Z77A-G43 but with a previous and different intel chipset.

Indeed it's doing fine for my needs: two weeks and not a BSOD till now.
And fixed the annoying issue of crackles-pops-dropouts with Cubase...
even keeping Avast antivirus active.
I migrated my working Windows7 OS hard disk without reinstalling anything for now.
It's quicker and more stable than my previous Q6600 system: that mobo gave me troubles with Windows7 64bit since day one.

I have just one Pulsar2 card now, and consider that if you have a big two slot wide PCIe 3.0 graphics card could be a problem to put a legacy PCI card into the PCI slot 1.
I have an ASUS HD7850... perhaps the Sapphire models are thinner.

cheers.

EDIT: I got my B75 mobo for 64 euros here on an italian store.
I think I made a good bargain, elsewhere (here) it was full priced or no less than 90 euros at least.
I know in US on famous store was more than 90 dollars.