On 2004-05-19 04:56, geoffd99 wrote:
...but wonder why mixers should be allocated to boards (cards). ...
of course they are not - they are registered (licenced) for the board, which acts as a mega-dongle in that context
the actual DSP code is loaded dynamically on whatever is available - restrictions apply as GaryB wrote.
For the sake of completeness, in my PC rigmarole, I also installed the PCI Latency patch for VIA Chipsets by George E Breese, which made somedifference to the freezes etc. This is also mentioned elsewhere in this Forum. Get it online.
Hmm... perhaps I should replace the entire mobo, assuming it will fit the same case...
Any recommendations? Minimum disruption. Intel P4 3Ghz, 1 gig RAM, I think it has 5 slots or 6.
Before I bought it I checked the forums, it seemed to be not hated... could this also affect Sonar as that has been playing up (v 3.1)
Thanks for the tip btw!!
Later...
I have just looked at the Recommended chipset thread (doh!) which also mentioned VIA as bad...
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: geoffd99 on 2004-05-21 05:52 ]</font>
i have 3 cw cards, working fine, for each card different irq, i don't have any shared irq's since i have 24irq's avaliable,
but what happend when I installed pc standard mode was that HT-Hyper-Threading Technology was disabled by windows, but enabled in BIOS, so i change back to ACPI and since i don't have any problems with that, i'll leave this way and stop experimenting with system.
my setup:
mobo-intel 865PERL
processor: pentium4 2.8 HT
512-dual channel ram
g-force 2 64MB - irq16
network card - irq22
USB midi mini keyboard controller
2 x luna II - irq19&17
Pulsar XTC - irq18
Scope 4.0
WIN-XP sp1a
sequencer-Cubase 5.0
the intel mobos are very solid for me. 865perl is cheap and stable. infact, i have seen good results with a number of intel mobos. the main thin is to get an intel chipset with your p4. also, all atx mobos will fit your atx case.
a fresh reinstall is recommended after changing motherboards, but i have gotten away with just installing the new chipset drivers. try it and see. if things are unstable, you can always backup and reinstall everything. it's a pain, but it'll only take a day and it could save a lot of trouble. ask, if you need advice or assistance.
FIXED
I seem to have stopped the PCI Overload (etc) by simply setting video Hardware Accleration to None in Control Panel/Display/Advanced.
I figured this out as the dual head Radeon 7000 video card is also on the PCI bus... and that is where the Overload was happening.
Fingers crossed, that has solved it (just ran it hard, with net on, off, switch between Sonar and Scope every second by tabs, whilst running, etc... all seems stable now. No problems.
On same old motherboard, VIA chipset, ACPI mode... so TRY THIS FIRST not last.
Of course it might go wrong again... in which case I will let you know.
Last post - are you saying it's bad or good?
The Asus mobo does all the right things, how am I supposed to knopw that VIA is bad for audio (since it appears to be ok for everything else) - if you look at the posts there is a collection of people who seem to have stable setups with cheapo VIA mobos and cheapo Radeon video cards.
Seems a bit weird you can upgrade a PC to a spec that is 4 times better with a gig of fast RAM (!) and get *worse* performance. Surely the days of musicians using PCs having to be PC technicians are over? Is that why Creamware are seen as a bit old hat technically now?
Also, I fixed this - if I understand the last post - cheapo spec PC by changing a simple setting in Windows Control Panel (which I never saw anyone else recommend - perhaps too obvious).
So who needs to be a PC technician, after all?
Incidentally I have worked in computing for over 2 decades, not as a PC technician, and regard all this PC hacking about with loathing. This is why creatives usually use Macs, btw. I was on the verge of selling it all and going Pro Tools.
But now it all seems fine, I have started buying more CW synths!!
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: geoffd99 on 2004-05-26 05:26 ]</font>
cheapo cards are fine(i'm using a $55 dual vga nvidia card and it's great),it's just that an agp card makes more sense than a pci card as it's best to keep the pci bus free of non-audio traffic for BEST results. specs are not always real-world meaningful. macs are nice but they cost a lot and ultimately, they do the same job as any other pc(basically, a mac is analogous to a wintel pc with top-notch parts). via chipsets work fine, just not nearly as well as intel chipsets and the difference in price between crap and quality in motherbaords is about $30(sometimes $0), so i've never understood why someone would go cheap there.
bottom line if it works, it's good, so i'm not making fun of you. as i said, nice to know that even though it works fine, that it can give more performance still, if you need it, with a simple mobo & vid card change.
once again, glad you got it working!
p.s. if you think that protools if free of grief you may have bought into some hype although if you spend $40,000 on pthd you might be paying to have someone else be responsible for making sure that the system is truly turn-key....
I agree, the mobo was recommended by the supplier as high spec - and now it seems to be working OK. I have had a couple of Macs, the attraction of a Protools set up is it could come configured and just do that thing, unlike the PC route.
I have done 2 tracks in months of fiddling about - which does seem to be a common complaint with PC music systems. People are overjoyed and surprised - when it works!
Next thing is SFP 4 - might leave it for a while as it seems cosmetic.
Since this I continued to have problems, the 'PCI Overload' msg, got worse, led to major card swapping about, tweak mania, eventually I noticed I had 2 processors (3.0 Pentium) listed in Device Manager, discovered the joy of Windows XP hyperthreading, so I switched it off in BIOS, and hey presto, it all works perfectly.
I found the dual processor hint in the SFP Manual / Support, where a 'known bug' is 'PCI Overload' for dual processors... even the virtual hyperthreaded ones. I didn't think of this at first as I only have one actual processor, and had not sussed out Hyperthreading (there are posts on it herein).
Hope this helps anyone - if I had switched it off first I would have saved a lot of grief.
Fingers crossed it seems stable now using SFP 3.1c and Sonar 3... next big scary thing is SFP 4.0...
Imo, chances are that a VIA-based motherboard would have had problems with CW cards with or without HT enabled. Consider the Asus mobo insurance for the future.
