Elitegroup K7S5A works!

Eurocide · Post by **Eurocide** » Thu Jan 24, 2002 10:29 pm

Hi Pulsarians,

I just finished my new hardware setup:

- Mainboard Elitegroup K7S5A with SiS 735 chipset
- Athlon 1700+ XP
- 512 DDR
- ATI Rage 128 AGP
- Standard IDE HDD
- Pulsar I + SRB with 3.01 and
- Cubase VST 32 5.1 R1

And it works rock solid!
Sorry, but I didn't make the "Masterverb-Benchmark-Test" yet.
Reports will follow.

Eurocide-HQ

subhuman · Post by **subhuman** » Fri Jan 25, 2002 9:44 am

Well VIA 'works' too, no hardware 'doesnt work' really, it's just a matter of how good.

So give the bench a try and see what you get, it would be really helpful because I have no plans to buy an ECS board ever, but will consider the SiS745 products coming shortly (motherboards will be made by a wide variety of mfgs including ASUS

).

Since SiS745 differs from SiS735 mostly just by a different memory interface, this would give a great sneak peak at the SiS745 performance and if it's worth testing out.

BTW - nForce is coming! Should be about a week until I have some numbers for that one! If it performs well, then nForce 415D will be the board to get - no onboard sound/video

But we'll see how well it performs for our tasks.

masiotgrey · Post by **masiotgrey** » Mon Jan 28, 2002 2:54 am

hi eurocide,

could u tell what exactly u disabled or enabled of the mobo-features like onboard-sound, the usb ports, e.g. ?

thanks!
masio t. grey

Eurocide · Post by **Eurocide** » Mon Jan 28, 2002 4:20 am

Here are my settings and testings:

Onboard sound, midi, gameport, COM2: OFF!
Onboard LAN: ON (for a p2p network with my internet machince)
USB: ON for Midex8
MDA for HDD: ON.

Test 1:
Playback of 24 32bit TT Tracks trough 24 ASIO Channels routed trough Pulsar Mixer. Flawlessly!
Switching between both programs and alter parameters while playback causes no problems.

Test 2:
Only 5 Masterverbs loadable before "PCI-Overflow" pops up.

Summary (so far):
For my way of mixing everything works very fine. If you'd like to ask for more info, do it.

Eurocide-HQ

Eurocide · Post by **Eurocide** » Mon Jan 28, 2002 4:23 am

Ahhh, I forgot one strange behaviour in Win98 SE.
USB installs itself TWO times and uses two IRQs. When removing them in devicemanager they come again both after reboot.
Any ideas how to kill this 2nd entry permanently?

subhuman · Post by **subhuman** » Mon Jan 28, 2002 9:54 am

Disable one of the USB ports in the BIOS usually...

Eurocide · Post by **Eurocide** » Mon Jan 28, 2002 10:49 pm

Sorry subhuman, of course I disabled all unnecessary features in the BIOS.
There is no 2nd USB device in the BIOS to choose from or a setting that defines two USBs...

Using AMI BIOS with latest update.

dbmac · Post by **dbmac** » Tue Jan 29, 2002 6:19 am

Try:
System Properties/Device Manager/USB Controllers/Properties - check "disable in this hardware profile".
That should release the IRQ it was using.
/db

subhuman · Post by **subhuman** » Tue Jan 29, 2002 9:41 am

So SiS735 is nearly identical to the PCI performance of the AMD761 chipset... which leads me to conclude that the SiS745 boards made by bigger brands will definitely be something to try out in the future. My main problem with the ECS is the lack of flexible IRQ handling in the BIOS. Leadtek's SiS735 board is even worse, very unstable (Leadtek usually makes video cards and that was their first motherboard...) I did recently notice that Shuttle is also making an SiS735 board. I still think I'll wait for ASUS's SiS745 to come out before I buy & test, but this is great news for AMD fans! (And it's difficult not to love AMD with their excellent CPU prices!)

masiotgrey · Post by **masiotgrey** » Tue Feb 05, 2002 8:28 am

Hi every1, a BIG THANK U 2 U ALL !!

It was a great help for me, because i have no idea what mobo with what chipset i should buy for my pulsar !

Best Regards, Masio T

Chrisp · Post by **Chrisp** » Sun Feb 24, 2002 1:42 pm

Hmmm!

AMD XP 1600+
Elitegroup K7S5A
256 DDR Brand Ram
IDE IBM 60 GB
Matrox 450
21" Monitor
TEAC 524 burner
Pulsar 1 & 3.01
VST/32 5.1
Win 98 SE clean install
Internet Eradicator (from Win 98 lite)
C Partition for Win
D Partition for Progs
E partition for Audio
Pulsar IRQ 10
Matrox IRQ 11, Busmaster disabled
Dedicated audio machine: USB, Onboard sound, onboard
network and so forth is disabled in bios.

Test 1:
Playback of 24 32bit TT Tracks trough 24 ASIO Channels routed trough Pulsar Mixer.
Switching between both programs and alter parameters while playback causes no problems.

Works only until I add one Masterverb then PCI overflows, even though Dsps are not quite full.
In the same project with 2 Masterverbs I can load only 10 32bit float sources before it happens.

Test 2:
Only 2 Masterverbs loadable before "PCI-Overflow" pops up, with retries I can manage 4.

I am not convinced of this board. It is ok and fast and cheap and stable otherwise but I have to work in fear so if I don´t get it to work better I´ll ditch this board again.
If it were working like yours obviously does I´d be content as well.

Chrisp

Immanuel · Post by **Immanuel** » Sun Feb 24, 2002 6:27 pm

Chrisp

If your Pulsar is on IRQ10, and you have a NIC version of k7s5a, then Pulsar and the onboard ethernet card shares an IRQ. I used to only get to MVs before getting the PCI message, but a BIOS update helped some. And here is a diagram of the PCI slots on your motherboard http://www.808.dk/pics/k7s5a_resource.gif.

Immanuel

Chrisp · Post by **Chrisp** » Mon Feb 25, 2002 6:42 am

Hi, Immanuel!

Thanks.
The diagram is helpful and I switched slots right away.
Still I can´t get any IRQ other than 10 for Pulsar. The network is disabled in BIOS so it shouldn´t matter. And guess what: now I´m only getting one MV, with the second one overflows start. My bios version is the second latest, don´t know about my IDE drivers though.
How many MVs did/do you get now (there wasn´t a figure in your post)?

Immanuel · Post by **Immanuel** » Mon Feb 25, 2002 4:49 pm

IRQ 10, hmm, you must be running w2k or winXP. I run XP too, but I have disable ASPI in the BIOS. I get 4 MVs with a retry. My Pulsar is in the last PCI-slot on IRQ5.

Immanuel

Chrisp · Post by **Chrisp** » Mon Feb 25, 2002 5:53 pm

Win98SE. Have tried all slots except 1 and 5, gonna try 5 tomorrow. ACPI is disabled. Off to bed now, lights out.......good night, 3 AM now, bah.

[ This Message was edited by: chrisp on 2002-02-25 17:56 ]