Getting Scope to work on a Intel dualcore system

Marc de Ruiter · Post by **Marc de Ruiter** » Thu Jul 13, 2006 2:24 am

I recently build a PC with Intel D930, Asus P5WD2 Premium, 2GB Twinmos DDR2 667 memory,2 Luna II's and 1 Pulsar I. When trying to instal XP I noticed that intallation freezed after the copy phase if I choose the standard (Multiprocessor) PC after pressing F5. So I had to go for a ACPI APIC instal. This results in al lot of IRQ sharing, PCI overflow messages and freezes.
After install changing ACPI Multiprocessor drivers to Multiprocessor Standard PC caused a blue screen after reboot. So this was no option either.
Finally I found out that when you enable the PnP OS option in the BIOS and disable as much as possible that's sharing IRQ's with Scope cards in the XP Device Manager the system get's stable. I had to disable SATA, and one USB driver. My Pulsar I card still shares IRQ 10 with the Nvidia 6200 GE graphic card, but this doesn't seem to have any effect on performance.
Now I can work in XTC mode @4ms 44.1K without any clicks or plops running projects with 22 ASIO32 sent and return channels, Kontakt2 eight instruments to 16 outputs including convolution reverb, Intakt 8 channels out, PSP Mixpressor, Pristine Space convolution, a lot of Scope plugins.(XTC mode)
CPU usage in SX3 is a stable 35%. Hopes this helps anyone with dualcore installation problems.
Regards,
Marc

_________________
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[ This Message was edited by: Marc de Ruiter on 2006-07-13 03:25 ]

H-Rave · Post by **H-Rave** » Fri Jul 14, 2006 1:58 am

Mmmmm,yes fascinating.

Marc de Ruiter · Post by **Marc de Ruiter** » Fri Jul 14, 2006 12:31 pm

Strange fascinations...

[ This Message was edited by: Marc de Ruiter on 2006-07-14 13:32 ]

Shroomz~> · Post by **Shroomz~>** » Fri Jul 14, 2006 1:01 pm

Thanks for the info Marc.

Cutting back on mobo hardware enabled certainly does make a difference to PCI bus performance, that much, I'm quite sure of.

It's good to hear ligitimate success stories as opposed to fabricated ones, so thanks for giving us insight into your experiences

dawman · Post by **dawman** » Fri Jul 14, 2006 3:29 pm

I am inspired even more as I am gathering up my parts for a Core 2 Duo DAW w/ SFP and Energy XT. Don't know of anyone using a similar set up but I will make a posting of failure/sucsess. I also have read that I can go w/o ASIO. I was hopiong that is the case as I will have 3 x 15 DSP cards, and EnergyXT, with a possible addition of Bidule. This world of modular has me all juiced up. It is nice to hear that Intel still is stable as usual.

Post by **garyb** » Fri Jul 14, 2006 4:40 pm

you'll probably want to use asio if you're using vsts....
asio works great! very low latency...

dawman · Post by **dawman** » Fri Jul 14, 2006 4:44 pm

Hey your'e going to build it. So your wish is my command. I hope to visit with you when I arrive. The Long Beach Jazz Festival near the ghetto by the sea. It has a nice ring to it. I shall return to LV with a Conroe/SFP/EnergyXT DAW. Dawsome 'eh! 45 DSP's,.....Fuckin' A.

Post by **garyb** » Fri Jul 14, 2006 4:47 pm

Shroomz~> · Post by **Shroomz~>** » Fri Jul 14, 2006 5:43 pm

my master, my master, we are at your command. lead us upon a better path, one which doesn't involve the US & UK military..

Shayne White · Post by **Shayne White** » Sat Jul 15, 2006 4:13 pm

Let's leave politics to the Off-topic discussion forum, please? Not everyone here subscribes to the same views (except that we love CreamWare, I hope!).

Shayne

bronYaur · Post by **bronYaur** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 8:56 am

my next upgrade is single core 3.6 HT P4 no dualcore,I have see that hyperthreading run up 20 30 % of power of the normal no HT P4

dawman · Post by **dawman** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 4:27 pm

Marc di Ruiter,
How is the PCI-e graphics card on the new standard working 4 you? I just recieved my sample CPU, and am building a second SFP DAW w/ VST host. I always used the good old 2D Matrox cards, but I feel the Matrox P650 is a little overkill. My DAWMAN tells me a good 100 USD NVidia card will work fine, what say you. I was thinking of the eVGA GeForce 7300GT 16x PCI-e.

_________________
Jimmy V.

[ This Message was edited by: scope4live on 2006-07-16 17:28 ]

dawman · Post by **dawman** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 4:36 pm

Marc di Ruiter,
I love the upright bass shot. I think bass that acoustic bass is awesome. Do you run it through SFP? Wonder what Pattitucci, and Ron Carter would think.

Tau · Post by **Tau** » Thu Jul 20, 2006 2:45 pm

Hello all Zs,

I'm also using a P5WD2 Dual core, with 6DSP+15DSP Scopes. I believe it's impossible to install windows in standard pc mode in multi-processor setups (at least it never worked here), and I also had to disable the modem, Network card, onboard audio, etc. to get a nice stable scope performance, which I did, proving that dualcores can work well with scope.

BUT, I could never get more than 12MVs @ 44.1 KHz (21DSPs), and it never worked with samplerates above 48KHz (but my laptop does 96KHz easily with a Mamga PCMCIA expansion). I believe that this is because of the PCI-E bus, where the graphics board is... Maybe old-style AGP works better for old-style PCI?

Shayne White · Post by **Shayne White** » Thu Jul 20, 2006 10:33 pm

Hi Tau,

What latency are you running at? Did you get good audio performance with high CPU loads at, say, 2.9ms? What about when Scope devices -- reverbs, delays, and STS -- are loaded as well? It was when all this was put together that my AMD dualcore system sank more than singlecore.

Shayne

Tau · Post by **Tau** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 8:58 am

Hi Shayne,

I usually use sfp alongside Ableton Live, and so latency has to be a liitle high to process audio and fx in realtime, when using Scope drivers for both apps. On the Dual Core, I usually use 6-12ms latency @48Khz, but sometimes have to bring it up a little, when VST load i higher... My laptop also does 6-12 ms, but I haven't experimented with that for a while...

But when I use my RME soundcard for Ableton, leaving sfp running on its own (and routing audio into the RME), I can use lower latencies, without any problems.

The project I'm working on right now, as an example:
-Ableton CPU load (on RME): 30-70%
-SFP: ModIII with 3 voices, STS 5000 using 23MB of memory, STM1632 with one DelayS and an Masterverb Pro on the AUX channels, another DelayS on an insert, then some compressors, filters, modulators, (and my new spEQtrum) It's not a big project, but it's running very well with 3ms latency @48Khz.

Not really sure if this is what you're asking, though...

Cheers,

T

[ This Message was edited by: Tau on 2006-07-21 09:59 ]

[ This Message was edited by: Tau on 2006-07-21 10:01 ]

Marc de Ruiter · Post by **Marc de Ruiter** » Tue Aug 08, 2006 1:30 pm

Q:How is the PCI-e graphics card on the new standard working 4 you? I just recieved my sample CPU, and am building a second SFP DAW w/ VST host. I always used the good old 2D Matrox cards, but I feel the Matrox P650 is a little overkill. My DAWMAN tells me a good 100 USD NVidia card will work fine, what say you. I was thinking of the eVGA GeForce 7300GT 16x PCI-e.

A: Hi Jimmy,
Yes, your dawman is right. A simple 50 euro Nvidia card is fine and this way you don't need an oversized powersupply. My setup runs with a 330watts Anatek Truepower PSU.

Nice to hear you like the picture. My 8 year old son made it. I will tell him. Did you listen to the music as well?
Regards,
Marc

[ This Message was edited by: marc de Ruiter on 2006-08-14 05:38 ]

[ This Message was edited by: Marc de Ruiter on 2006-08-14 05:39 ]

dawman · Post by **dawman** » Tue Aug 08, 2006 2:49 pm

MDR,
My cards are always maxed out, but will definately give it a listen, as Upright Bass is such an awesome instrument. I've had the pleasure to listen to many jazz artists where I grew up. Always loved a well mic'd Upright played by a musician with great intonation.
I found a brand new eVGA GeForce 6800 w/ 256 MB RAM on board 4 close to price you mentioned. I will be posting on sucsess/failures of a Core 2 Duo DAW 2nd week of September.

_________________
Jimmy V.

[ This Message was edited by: scope4live on 2006-08-08 15:50 ]

okantah · Post by **okantah** » Fri Aug 18, 2006 3:20 pm

Marc de Ruiter& Tau
It's nice to hear that after many tweaks the p5wd2-e premium mobo works.
I like to know if you have working with the STS samplers ?
cheers

Marc de Ruiter · Post by **Marc de Ruiter** » Thu Aug 24, 2006 2:42 am

Hi Okantah,
I don't use STS. I'm working in XTC mode and use Kontakt2 and Intakt. I managed to make an attracktive crossgrade from STS3000 to Kontakt. IMHO it makes more sense to have a sampler as a real VST instrument, because in that way it puts less strain on the PCI bus, which is still an issue when the DSP chips are almost filled to the max. (STS is loaded in DSP and manages RAM on the mobo via PCI).
Hi Shayne White
-like I said earlier in this thread, I'm working @4ms 44.1K which is OK for XTC. I guess in normal Scope mode you could go to smaller latencies. But 4ms is fine to me. Even when playing Edrums, playback feels natural to me. When I was @7ms with my former setup (P4b533-2.4GHz) it wasn't. I had to wait for the sound to be produced.
-Reverbs and delays are working fine here, but beware if you are almost at the limit of the DSP usage performance drops dramaticly. I guess there is some more DSP needed to synchronize to the faster internal clock.
Regards,
Marc

[ This Message was edited by: Marc de Ruiter on 2006-08-24 03:44 ]

[ This Message was edited by: marc de Ruiter on 2006-08-24 06:40 ]