B75 Motherboard arriving next week

[Strattosphere]

Hi everyone

I just thought I'd post to say that I've taken a bit of a gamble and ordered a Gigabyte GA-P75-D3 motherboard. It's a B75 chipset with four native PCI sockets, into which I'm going to try my three Pulsar 2 cards and my Yamaha SW1000XG. I'll be taking my i5-2500 processor and 4GB ram from my current PA65-UD3-B3 based Internet PC and my Pulsar cards from my Asus P5K Wolfdale based DAW to hopefully create an uber DAW.

I'll post to let everyone know the results of a Masterverb test (BSODs permitting - eek!)

Stratt

[t_tangent]

Look forward to your report. Good luck and hope it works well

[Strattosphere]

Right, I've rebuilt my DAW with a Gigabyte GA-P75-D3/I5 Sandybridge and done a quick in place XP install so the drivers were all still on the original hard drive. I installed Scope 5.1 and copied my original Scope folder over the new install (I usually do this if I reinstall so it keeps my settings etc).

Inital results were better than I could have hoped for. I managed 16 Masterverbs with a PCI bandwidth error at the 17th. I even connected the 16 Masterverbs in a chain and got sound going through. This is better than I used to get with a CUSL2-C and a P3-800.

DPC latency is 15-16 uS with Scope running.

I hit a snag when I tried loading an old project; the PC spontaneously rebooted. I narrowed this down to Masterverb Pro, putting one into a project causes a reboot. Mixers and SC reverbs are fine. I suspect that I need to do a proper format and reinstall.

So far so excellent.

Stratt

[next to nothing]

This is good news!

I am currently thinking of upgrading my PC, so this motherboard sounds like a good candidate!
Thanks for the heads up.

[garyb]

that is really good news!

i'm looking forward to a good result in actual use...

[next to nothing]

Oh, and i think its a P75, not B75

[dante]

I'm going to try my three Pulsar 2 cards and my Yamaha SW1000XG.

I used to have SW1000XG - how do you use it in conjunction with Scope ?

[fokas]

Sounds good ! If you can Id like to know the motherboard's revision because I have discovered that there is a 1.0 and 1.1 .
Regards to all !

[Strattosphere]

Oh, and i think its a P75, not B75

The chipset is a B75 but the motherboard is the GA-P75-D3.

[Strattosphere]

I'm going to try my three Pulsar 2 cards and my Yamaha SW1000XG.

I used to have SW1000XG - how do you use it in conjunction with Scope ?

Well, I route from one of the Pulsar analogue outputs to the input of the SW1000XG and from the outs on the SW1000xg back to the Pulsar analogue inputs. I can then use Scope to route through the SW for the effects. I particularly like a stereo chorused amp sim for electric guitar and the multi delay/reverb is pretty much a Rev 7. I use XGEdit or Achim Stulgies' XG Wizard to control the SW1000XG.

I also use the XG tone generator in the SW for quick arrangements of drums and the odd harpsichord or mallet sounds. I've been using it in a separate PC with midi cables and a couple of instances of midi-ox so I can get to both XG synths on different interfaces but I would rather be running a single DAW with internal midi devices.

Stratt

[Strattosphere]

that is really good news!

i'm looking forward to a good result in actual use...

Hmm, it may not turn out to be quite as good as first results suggested. Now that I've done a new install of Scope 5.1 I'm getting around 6 instances of Masterverb before the PCI bandwidth capacity error. I can add a few more, one at a time, and the system works well with no spontaneous reboots, but it's not as good as the P5K board with Wolfdale processor. At least it's much better than boards with the PCI to PCI-E bridge.

Real world tests to follow.

Stratt

[Strattosphere]

Sounds good ! If you can Id like to know the motherboard's revision because I have discovered that there is a 1.0 and 1.1 .
Regards to all !

This is a 1.0. It's all I could find on Ebay.

[next to nothing]

Oh, and i think its a P75, not B75

The chipset is a B75 but the motherboard is the GA-P75-D3.

My mistake, i misread some specs, You are correct!

[garyb]

if it's a v1.0, there may be a bios update soon that will improve performance.

[Polarity]

I'm very interested too!
Let us know if it's good for Scope cards.
Thinking about upgrading my DAW to a i7 system in january maybe.

I'm starting to have enough of the unresolved issue of of crack/glitch in the sound with Cubase.
Also have some issues with the new video card (Asus HD7850),
and system have never been rock stable (often has BSOD).
Just thinking that my mainboard was not born for using Windows7.
infact it is older even than the announce of that OS and got problems since installing (had to update BIOS just to make Win7 install for example).

Thanks in advance for your infos.

[Strattosphere]

Let us know if it's good for Scope cards.

It appears to be OK for Scope cards, not brilliant. The Masterverb test generates an error on the 7th Masterverb, which is half that of older boards like the Asus P5K or the even older Asus P4C800. It does seem stable though.

Thinking about upgrading my DAW to a i7 system in january maybe.

An i7 seems overkill for a DAW, especially when you have a Scope based system. I'd go for an i5.

I'm starting to have enough of the unresolved issue of of crack/glitch in the sound with Cubase.

This could be an IRQ problem. How many Scope cards do you have? Can you move cards around? Perhaps disable unused devices/usb in the bios or disable network cards in Windows.

Also have some issues with the new video card (Asus HD7850)

An HD7850 is massively overkill for a DAW.Is your PSU powerful enough? It could explain the BSODs you've experienced. I use a fanless HD5450 with 512Mb to feed twin widescreen 22" monitors.

Just thinking that my mainboard was not born for using Windows7.
infact it is older even than the announce of that OS and got problems since installing (had to update BIOS just to make Win7 install for example).

I use XP and have no plans to change to Windows 7/8. XP is less resource hungry than Windows 7 and for some reason some of my larger Scope projects are fine in XP but are too big for my DSP in Windows 7.

I'm going back to using my Asus P5K with Wolfdale E8400 for the moment. Some of my big projects generate PCI bandwidth errors with the GA-P75-D3, and the benefit of having four PCI sockets does not outweigh a wider PCI bandwidth.

Stratt

[Polarity]

I have tried all solutions suggested or thinkable to fix the glitch-crack sound issue.

It's since Win7 installing (two years) that I have random BSOD,
sometimes for stupid things... not complex or heavy programs...
sometimes it gives BSOD just during Win7 start.

I got the HD7850 just 3 weeks ago, before I had an old HD3850.
No, it isn't fault of the HD7850...
it's just the mainboard... (DFI Infinity Dark P965-S) or something else.
In the beginning with Firewire port activated I had also more BSOD in past...
(in Win7, not in XP)

I have a good 580W PSU, and good room of energy reserves....
Only a Pulsar2 card now (the other Pulsar1 stopped working in link a few months ago.

Windows7 is so much quicker than XP in so many things that I won't get back.
Everytime I launch XP now I can't stand to how it's slower.

Perhaps an AMD CPU system is better for Scope cards at the moment?
I read here someone is happy with AMD.
Also my Q6600 QuadCore system is worse than my previous ASUS P4P800 motherboard in the Masterverb test.
I wonder why initially yours gave a so good result, and then stopped at seven.

[Polarity]

An i7 seems overkill for a DAW, especially when you have a Scope based system. I'd go for an i5.

An i5 CPU would be ok.
it's anyway better than my 2.4 Ghz old generation quadcore.

[Polarity]

I'm going back to using my Asus P5K with Wolfdale E8400 for the moment. Some of my big projects generate PCI bandwidth errors with the GA-P75-D3, and the benefit of having four PCI sockets does not outweigh a wider PCI bandwidth.

Stratt

Are you still on the ASUS P5K, or you retried the new GA P75 D3 with B75 chipset?

[Strattosphere]

Hi. I've just noticed this post from over a week ago. Bit busy with the day job!

I am still working on the P5K. The B75 board proved to be problematic; one of the four PCI slots appeared to have a problem recognising devices plugged into it so I'm using it elsewhere for non music stuff. I don't know if this is a design flaw or if there's a fault with the board. I'm still interested in trying to find a new board that can do three Scope cards with good PCI bandwidth plus my SW1000XG, but it's not a huge priority.

Stratt