New Motherboard (ASUS PK5-E) for Pulsar+Luna+Luna

[dante]

I need a new computer (WinXP32) for my Pulsar2+Luna2+Luna2 and purchased an ASUS P5K-E due to it having 3 x PCI slots. Next month I will purchase the rest of the pieces and get the system built.

Meanwhile I would like to know if anyone has had experience with this motherboard working with the Soniccore PCI cards. If its a bad mobo better to find another before the build

Here is the blurb on the mobo from the ASUS site.

Super Memspeed Technology Enhances Memory Speed up to 75%
- Support Intel® next generation 45nm Multi-core CPU
- Intel LGA775 Platform
- Intel® P35 chipset
- Intel® Core™2 Quad / Core™2 Extreme / Core™2 Duo / Pentium® Extreme / Pentium® D / Pentium® 4 Processors
- Dual-channel DDR2 1066/800/667 MHz
- Stack Cool 2
- 6*SATA/2*SATA on the Go/ 1394
- Gigabit LAN
- All High-quality Conductive Polymer Capacitors

Any input appreciated, even what memory or CPU's that I can put on this mobo that will go well with the Sonicore stuff.

[garyb]

i haven't tried that one, but the p35 chipset has been very, very good. i'm sure there'll be a number of onboard devices to disable in order to get 3 cards on their own irqs, but that shouldn't affect usability...

[dante]

Thanks GaryB. I will inform the techs to disable anything not needed during build so as to get the 3 cards on own IRQ.

[dante]

I can now report success with this motherboard (ASUS PK5-E) for a 3 PCI card ( Pulsar + Luna + Luna ). The 3 cards installed on the 3 available slots without hickup & succesfully running now for a week on intel quadcore CPU under WinXP ( 32 bit ) and SCOPE 4.0.

The only hickup was the system build initially included a video card that obscured one of the PCI slots with cooling fins - easily rectified by replacing with a more downmarket ( 256K ) video card.

[garyb]

[dante]

materverb tests ? Havent done any before - how do I do that ? Just load up Creamware reverbs till I run out of DSP, or do you mean Cubase VST reverbs ?

[dante]

MASTERVERB TEST RESULTS :

I managed to load 12 stereo MASTERVERBS in an otherwise blank Scope 4.0 project before getting a PCI Bus overload error on the 13th.

Other factors :
1) At this stage I still had about 25% of my 12 DSP's to go.
2) I was running Scope at 44khz sample rate.
3) The 3 cards are joined by just one STDM cable but I didnt get an STDM overflow error.

I found the masterverb test thread, seems 12 is an OK result.
http://forums.planetz.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=17078&s

[garyb]

yes, it looks just fine.

[garyb]

12 is plenty of bandwidth. i suspect the highest numbers are from pretty tweaky machines. 12mv and stable is everything you need.

[dante]

Thanks guys. I don't think the PCI bus will bottleneck me ( this Multiverb test was the first time I'd seen the PCI overflow error ), since I max out the STDM connection or DSP's before maxing out the PCI bus.

The 'reason' for my upgrade initially was obviously fear of outdated hardware but also host CPU as I use Reason extensively ( mainly the samplers ) and load times were slowing me down and/or not leaving enough CPU for Cubase on occasion.

Now all is good ! Cubase CPU meter shows 10-20% where was 70% before.......

[garyb]

[bLiNd]

I have a scope pro board in the same mobo and I am about to do a windows 7 scope 5 upgrade. Last time i tried scope 5 in xp I was getting major overflow errors and I think it is because of IRQ conflicts. But my case wont allow me to switch to another slot cuz the board is massive :/

Can you tell me how you isolated the creamware boards to their own IRQ?

its a curse I tell you

my scope board is sharing like 7 other irq addresses including the chipset, pci express slot, the graphics card, a powercore, pci2usb controller etc

it really is a nightmare
I need major help getting it stable but I know it will be worth it.

Any tips or suggestions?

[garyb]

modify the case, get a different case, or get a different motherboard.

you could probably get by with the pci-e port, chipset and maybe even graphics card sharing an irq, maybe...but the powercore and usb controller sharing an irq with the Scope card will make the system unstable. the Scope card is for REAL-TIME processing. it MUST have access to the system when the time comes...

sorry.

[bLiNd]

well even if i can manage it on another slot (which it has 3 pci slots) that wouldn't guarantee isolation would it?

[garyb]

modern motherboards have all kinds of things you won't or don't need to use.

you WILL have to disable a usb controller or two in the device manager, which won't cripple you. you should also disable the parallel port, serial port and any built-in audio in the bios, if you're not going to use them.