Which HP XW6*** computer to buy for 3 cards + Scope 5.1

[Analog_Minded]

Tha's not an option for me

I looked at the xw8400/690 dell, and saw that there was 1 pci and 3 pci-x slots... not good for the dsp cards.
Back to zero. The xw6xxx have 4pci an 1pci-e, or 2 pci and 4 pcie.. Not good enough for me.
maybe go with 4 pci slots xw'4xxx but those are so old...

maybe it would be best to see at a 1366/1150 z87 system alike.. but i am concerned about the pci bandwith/pcie bridge problem.
Can't find a complete thread about best build's for scope/daw systems

[Analog_Minded]

Also with my current system i had 11 masterverb loaded before i had pci overload with nr 12.
Dont know if that is good for 2 pulsar II an 1 luna 2 card's (15dsp)
ga p35 ds3
q6600
hd9650 (will be replaced with older fanless card)
2x1gb of ddr2 800hrz ram
win xp

[garyb]

just use a socket 1150 board if you need more cpu power!
get a used socket 1156 system with an i7 if you need more power.
get the supermicro Xd8ai and run the Dual Xeons.

a Core2 Quad or Duo is enough for most uses, but for heay CPU use, you'll want faster, of course. just spend the money.

[Analog_Minded]

The less i have to spend, the better.. thinking in the direction of a i7 920.. 1366...
these are in abundance on the 2nd hands market here. Thanks in advance, now only to find a good mobo for me.

[Krabat]

I've now updated my system to a HP XW6600 and win7 32bit. Installation worked so far, BUT I get 'PCI capacity reached '-message with opening the second master verb. On my old pentium4 I could open 4 mv's (which is DSP-max for Pulsar1).

Can someone help me find information about tweaking the system (I looked up a bunch of threads, but was'n able to find information for my needs). What I did already: Trying to avoid IRQ-sharing (disableing usb and changing the PCI-Slot). That did not work (maybe I did'n see all shares IRQ's (looked in the device-Manager piece by piece; where exactly is the link to the overview of the IRQ's?).

Any tweaks in the BIOS needed?

Thanks for help, kind regards, Gunnar

[jhulk]

you need to turn off hyperthreading

as it slows down the cpu for real time use and the scope cards are real time

[Krabat]

It's a quad-core Xeon. It doesn't use HT, or am I wrong?

[jhulk]

they use ht as well

so its seen as 8 cores

i had to turn mine off

[Krabat]

mine only showes 4 cores in the win systemsettings...

btw: Thanks for the adviece regarding the sound/noise. The XW6600 is heareble but ok.

Regards, Gunnar

[jhulk]

double check

as they do use hyperthreading

[Krabat]

I will, when I'm at home again.

[auntybiotic]

dont know if this has been said by anyone else, but i had to also play with the pci slot position per card when i set up my hp xw66xx with 2 lunas and a pulsar 2.
it was a bit of an annoying process but once i got my machine stable i have found it has run trouble free ever since.

i found whatever you use as the master pci card has to be on the lowest numbered pci slot and on its OWN pci bus / irq.
i also had to reassign / disable devices in the bios AND then do it in W7.....dont assume doing in the bios only is ok - i found w7 still deteced devices which i had bios disabled and then assigned another conflicting irq number to them.
i ran a check to see if any irq sharing issues and had to then disable most of the onboard usb (as it was sharing an irq and could not be reassigned to another).
i got around this by running a usb hub off one usb port.
last major thing is make sure your biggest card is seen by scope as the primary card.
a quick read of the manual will show you how to change this in scopes CSET file.
other than that disable your ethernet card, virus scanner etc and anything else which is not essential when you are being musical...you can always turn back on again when you finish etc.
also make sure scope's .exe is assigned to run as administrator.
process of elimination normally leads you to find whatever it is causing the scope performance issues.

i also had an issue once where my STDM cable was not making good enough connection. i solved this by cleaning the cab;e AND the card connectors with a 99% alcohol solution and a cotton bud. Gave me same pci erros you get until i did that.


Heres the list of standard tweaks for the bios etc from sonic core in case you did not see this yet....and DEFINETLY turn off HT..

Your audio PC:

For an audio PC (with little ASIO latency) you have to do some adjustments,
because Core i7, i5, i3 PCs can have ASIO clicks even with little CPU usage
and 25ms latency. At least you should deactivate the following settings
in your PC BIOS :

Intel EIST
Intel C State
C1E Support
Overspeed Protection
Hyperthreading
Execute Bit Support
Set Limit CPUID MaxVal to 3 (maybe not so important)
Intel Virtual Tech
Intel VT-d Tech

In addition the energy save settings of your operating system should be set to maximum,
never deactivate USB, PCI always on ...

[Krabat]

phew, lots of stuff to test out, thank you!

I found out (on the microsoft-site) that it's not easy to reassign the IRQ's (best is to disable the modules an reactivate them one by one). Seems, like I need a long time testing

[garyb]

http://forums.planetz.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=31345

[auntybiotic]

shouldnt take too long to test hw conflicts etc though as long as you stay logical and make notes of what you disabled etc- just keep your pc on the desk whilst you do it in case you need to swap the order of the cards around:-) rebooting w7 every few minutes tis tha part that takes the longest

[Krabat]

Thank you Gary, this was one of the threads I read earlier, but didn't bookmark...

[Krabat]

still testing...
I upgraded BIOS and drivers (which I forgot, shame on me), tested the 2 PCI-Ports, deactivated shared IRQ's, put the system to max performance / no powersaving, fiddeld around with PCI Latency timer (64 seems to work better, no further improvement with 96). Does anyone know what 'Option ROM Download' is for?
The xeon e5450 does not support HyperThreading, as far as I could find out.

Max is 2 Masterverbs. I must miss something importend. I'll keep you informed, if I find it. Thanks for all help so far.

Regards, Gunnar

[vascomusic]

The xeon e5450 does not support HyperThreading, as far as I could find out.

True, this model has only 4 real cores.

Does anyone know what 'Option ROM Download' is for?

When you turn on a computer (with a standard IBM PC compatible BIOS), the main BIOS will do a scan during the POST (Power On Self Test) boot phase to see what devices are present in the system.
If a device is found, it will be registered (but might be disabled in the BIOS setup).
This is why you have to wait, if you enter the BIOS setup, until all hardware has been registered.

Some devices like SCSI/SATA/RAID controllers, network adapters and video cards have their own Option ROM (with BIOS extensions) which provides additional functionality. The main BIOS will also scan for Option ROM's during POST.
There's allocated, but a limited amount of memory intended for all found BIOS extensions, called the 'Option ROM Space'.
When 'Option ROM Download' is enabled (e.g. for PCI slots), the BIOS extensions from the Option ROM PCI device will be copied (download) to the Option ROM Space.
For example: to boot from a device with an Option ROM or to enter a RAID setup utility, 'Option ROM Download' must be enabled.

64 seems to work better

PCI Latency timer 64 cycles is best timing on XW4600 (Sorry, not tested on XW6600)
12 MasterVerbs with Pulsar 2 @ XW4600 (X38 chipset)

[Krabat]

Thank you for exlanation!

I still haven't found out what reduces my PCI-capacity, BUT: I did the first test with a blank system and did only the masterverb-test to tune my blank system as good as possible. In the meantime I did some test with a typical audio-session and did not recognize any clicks, pops or other. So I will now leave the system as it is and turn back to making music. If I reache the limits, I might do a new search or some bouncing.

Thanks to all, who did help!

Kind regards, Gunnar

[Hypersonix]

So after many months since my original post I have purchased a HP XW4600. It has a E8400 CPU and is running Windows 8 32bit as I couldn't get XP to install.
Scope 5.1 is running and everything seems ok. Just need to download and install the Zarg collection I bought in the NSA deal next.
But it looks solid so far. We'll see over the coming weeks.

The comp cost me £58 from eBay. Bargain!

Cheers