Pulsar one or Pulsar two dilemma

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Joey
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Pulsar one or Pulsar two dilemma

Post by Joey »

hi Scope friends,

I have a little dilemma which is sort of a luxury problem, and only the fact that I can have this dilemma does make me happy as a !@#$%.

The thing is, I have two large scope cards (a thing I thought would never happen), and a Pulsar 2 and a Pulsar one (which is my original card, I purchased this I think 25 years ago). And a Luna, too, btw, but that's just for bragging, I'm not using it. I have a system with 3 PCI slots.
So the system consists of the Pulsar one, and two Scope cards. The Pulsar 2 is unused.

Now here's the dilemma. My keys are (mostly) on the Pulsar one card, but I believe to remember that card is slower in performance than the more modern ones.
Is that true? Should I move my keys to the Pulsar 2 and install that one instead? Or will the system run fine with the Pulsar one installed?

Thanks for your insights, Joey
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garyb
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Re: Pulsar one or Pulsar two dilemma

Post by garyb »

always use the Pulsar2 over the Pulsar1, if possible.
Joey
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Re: Pulsar one or Pulsar two dilemma

Post by Joey »

I was afraid yoú'd say that :)
Can you explain a bit?
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garyb
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Re: Pulsar one or Pulsar two dilemma

Post by garyb »

2 more dsps, better PCI handling, better latency.
nebelfuerst
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Re: Pulsar one or Pulsar two dilemma

Post by nebelfuerst »

Is there a difference, depending on which card is the "leader" ?
If so, the pulsar could be uses as additional card, but providing licenses..
\\\ *** l 0 v e | X I T E *** ///
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astroman
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Re: Pulsar one or Pulsar two dilemma

Post by astroman »

I don‘t think so. Have had a similar setup with most licenses on a 4 DSP card set as the last one in the list.
Code seems to get evenly distributed to all cards immediately.
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garyb
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Re: Pulsar one or Pulsar two dilemma

Post by garyb »

the p1 will always degrade performance, but that might not matter at all.
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valis
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Re: Pulsar one or Pulsar two dilemma

Post by valis »

And it WILL degrade latency and PCI performance specifically. For DSP performance, I would defer to GaryB and presume that's likely the case as well. However PCi performance is what we all care about when coming here to learn to tune our rigs, and latency is something that's been made clear to all computer musicians, so those two reasons alone should be obvious and enough to warrant following Gary's advice.

What card holds the KEYS doesn't matter as much, as far as I'm aware. As long as the card is seen during a key request, everything works fine.
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astroman
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Re: Pulsar one or Pulsar two dilemma

Post by astroman »

Yes, that‘s correct up to a certain point when „some processing“ is gonna access the 4-DSP card.
The original question might be in the direction to have a method to exclude the card from any activities but license check.
For (plain fiction) example set it to have zero DSPs (in cset.ini) to block code distribution.
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garyb
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Re: Pulsar one or Pulsar two dilemma

Post by garyb »

not worth it.
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astroman
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Re: Pulsar one or Pulsar two dilemma

Post by astroman »

agreed, I over-interpreted a post that reminded me on my own trouble a year ago... :oops:
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garyb
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Re: Pulsar one or Pulsar two dilemma

Post by garyb »

:D
Joey
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Re: Pulsar one or Pulsar two dilemma

Post by Joey »

To me, the original question was: now that I have the choice, would it be wise to invest in an extra licence, so I can leave the Pulsar1 out, and increase performance.
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garyb
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Re: Pulsar one or Pulsar two dilemma

Post by garyb »

he question is if the p1 is a pronlem right now.
if you get PCI overflow messages earlier than you should, then you should definitely use the p2 instead. if everything works fine the way you are using Scope, then the p1 can probably stay. if those 2 extra dsps would make the difference in the projects that you make, then again, replace the p1. otherwise, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
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valis
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Re: Pulsar one or Pulsar two dilemma

Post by valis »

I had a Pulsar1 as my primary key card but NOT my primary Scope card, as I was able to get all the low ULLI settings and PCI performance with this allowed 12+ masterverbs even on a 2001 era (dual Xeon) XP machine.

So, if it's not primary I think GaryB is right, the only real loss is the 2 dsps. There might be some minor architectural differences that you could discover, but in practice I DO notice extra 2 DSPs (after replacing it with a 6dsp card), but not much else.
Joey
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Re: Pulsar one or Pulsar two dilemma

Post by Joey »

I did exactly that. Now the difference is between 34 or 36 DSP's, so I think I should not complain too much.
I'll leave it as it is for now.
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