PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

Hi,

Just for the ones that might be interested in alternatives to the Asus CUSL2 type motherboards I can tell you the MSI 815EP Pro is doing a great job!

Interesting feature for the people who use the P3BX4 with all dimm slots filled, is the fact this board has 4 dimm slots aswell, instead of the 3 on the Asus boards.

Be sure to install your Creamware card in pci slot 3, since this slot is shared with absolutely nothing!

I found it to be very stable, even when switching between big mixer, aps controll panel, cubase AND to my surprise, the scrolling through a (busy) cubase song is no problem at all. It even seems like cubase runs smoother?

Add the fact that (in my case) I'm able to run my memory at 133mhz (which wasn't possible with the p3b4x?) which gave me a little more overall performance (= plugins). All I can say is I'm glad I made the "815" switch.

Oh yeah and I almost forgot. A project (20 x asio, sp/dif in, 32 tracks in cubase with quite a few plugins) which didn't run on the asus board runs without problems now.....

Best regards,

MG

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: MarcelG on 2001-04-04 15:16 ]</font>

Dang -- I just bought an ASUS CUSL2 -- and I was a bit concerned about the RAM limitations. Oh well. I wonder if I can send it back?

The CUSL2 is actually the better board. It only has 3 RAM slots, but ASUS somehow got around the limitation of only allowing Single Sided RAM (like all other 815 boards, INCLUDING the MSI board). This means you can easily have 3 slots full, as long as it's 512megs or less.

The MSI board is less forgiving with dual-sided ram, and it still has the 512meg limitation that all 815 boards have.

I'd suggest you keep your ASUS.

Hi,

Here's something I also posted on the Creamware newsgroup. And you're very wrong about the Sdram configuration. |SS/DS-SS/DS-DS-X| |SS/DS-SS/DS-SS-SS| |SS/DS-SS/DS-X-DS| |SS/DS-SS/DS-SS-X| is allowed.

From Creamware NG.

-----begin
I'm amazed with the power and excellent sound of the Pulsar2, beeing able to use it's asio busses to full extend. All I can say I'm really amazed about the difference a motherboard can make.

Seems that a lot of the crackling problems (in my case Asio drivers in cubase5) are pci related too because it's gone now. I always had random clicks playing samples from the f-sample player and I had some strange problems (and some clicking) when using the eds8i, which all seems to be disappeared too.

AMAZED...... This is the difference between a cripple, non working, "scared to start making music and see what's wrong now" type of system to a Pro sounding, Performance delivering, virtual studio, "I feel creative, fire it up and play" type of system. Even the overall performance and feel is much, much better.

As you can see as someone on these forums said before. I'm happy again And yes, IT IS A GREAT PRODUCT!

For your info. I did it the dirty way. Replaced the board, installed the Intel inf driver, ata drivers, etc. Manually cleaned the via stuff from harddisk and registry. Set back some tweaks (write behind cache, check dma, etc.) and applied a memory bus throughput increase patch. (WPCREDIT.EXE) and I was up and running within an hour or so ) Did the same thing for my ME Internet partition/installation.

All I can say is that in the end I'm even glad I had to make the switch, so to speak.

MG
---End

P.S. That's about the MSI 815EP Pro V3.0b

P.S.2 The board to change it for was a P3BX4 (which also has 4 dimm slots, which can be filled in the same config as the MSI board) Since most people bought it for this reason and filled it with 4xSS dimms which means if they go with CUSL-2 they can only use 3 out of 4. For me it was no option going back from 512MB to 384MB.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: MarcelG on 2001-04-05 15:54 ]</font>

Well my roomie got this MSI board to try it out in an attempt to get a bunch of DSP cards working in one box, and we found it had BAD DOCUMENTATION that doesn't explain which slots share which IRQs, and this isn't easy accessible in the BIOS, either.

In contrast, the ASUS board has a diagram in the manual that explains which PCI slots force-share IRQs, and a nice section in the BIOS to change which IRQs the PCI slots use. This is really valuable if you care and/or need complete control of such things.

The CUSL2 also has like 1mhz increments or near that, for overclocking (in the BIOS, AND using jumpers, either way, its up to you), whereas the MSI only has 100/133 on a single jumper on the board.

Overall, I'm not that impressed :] 4 DIMM slots is nice though, if you like to keep your old 128meg sticks of RAM around.

If you go to the pci section in the bios, you can get a detailed list on what devices (identified by their numbers) share the same interrupt. It's simply a case of putting in your cards, one card at a time. So you'll start with AGP card only. Next card, and so on.... I'm working with it for a little while now. I even recorded something I can invite people to do vocals, load the project and have a go at it.

In most instances it is a fact Asus has some of the best documentation around. Though I found out in a lot of cases the diagram of the pci routing is not right. At least the manuals of P3B(-F), P2B, P3V4X, had a wrong table printed. Keep in mind when installing...