i7 setup for creamware PCI cards

[sodiumcycle]

Does anyone have a working i7 setup they can recommend? I'm building a second PC for live use and want to use a faster i7 chip. I'd like to run at 96k 2ms latency for drum triggers going to Kontakt.

Any suggestions on what motherboard to buy? Thanks

[dawman]

http://www.musician-planet.com/

[sodiumcycle]

http://www.musician-planet.com/

I looked around the site but didn't see any i7 motherboards for PCI scope, only for x-ite. For PCI I could only find one Core 2 board and one Pentium 4 board.

Is anyone successfully running a multi-card PCI system on i7? I'm looking at the Gigabyte UD5 + intel 920.

[sodiumcycle]

http://www.musician-planet.com/

Nevermind. I saw your recommendation for the asrock x58 in the other forum. I'll go with that.

[firubbi]

http://forums.planetz.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=28329

[Polarity]

can I suggest this one with an i7 i860 cpu ?
ASUS - Motherboard P7P55D (socket 1156) chipset Intel P55
it has 3 PCI slots!
I find it here (in Italy) at 125-130 €uros.

The P7P55D-LE model is identical but without Firewire, if you don't need it, and costs a little less.

All the other models in the series have 2 PCI slots only (and cost more) so I didn't considered.

Here a review I found:
http://www.elitebastards.com/index.php? ... &Itemid=27

[spacef]

The real question about mobs and windows 7 and 64 bits on the 1156 and 1366 chipsets is to know whether the motherboard really supports the ram it says it will support.... For example, you may have 4 or 6 ram slots, but only a handful will work with all slots occupied... If you intend to go over 6GB of ram (3 slots) then you will have to read reviews and tests and buy your mobo in a place where you can exchange it specifically for this reason if it doesn't work passed 6 or 8 GB of ram... The best to do is to ask the shop/seller to choose a couple mobo+ram that will be guaranteed to pass this limit. So it is also a "ram choice" nightmare... As a tip, don't go under CAS 5 if you look for a stable setup (ask you seller about this and also make sure the ram latency is high enough - or the ram of sufficient quality - to stand the pressure).... The most expensive ram i found recently, is a CAS7 (quite high latency), it is slower by a few cycle, but probably very stable... the latency is a number of cycle, nothing to do with asio latency or anything like that. The real problem is that most shop will not know anything about stability with all the apps in the world. Customers are gamers, internet surfers, etc. etc... there are very few tests with audio. Audio specialized computers companies, i think they are overpriced and one can do better by building it himself after serious web searches....Asus board (unfortunately they are one of the few brand of choice for Scope users) are pretty sensitive to ram issues, and recent build quality has gone quite low.... If you go for asus, you MUST make sure the shop support is good and that you can exchange it easily (some asus series are like gambling; they can work, they may not work, so you must be able to exchange the board if it has the slightest problem... like not being able to install window, which is a very common problem on some ASUS series (and contrary to what you read on forums, this is not caused by uncompatible ram, but more probably by bad SATA plugs/chipsets, according to specialists.

The other important thing is to make sure the FSB frequency supported by the mob is at least equal or higher than the CPU's own frequency, otherwise, you will never use the CPU at the frequency it is made for (lower mob FSB simply creates a bottleneck between CPU and Motherboard).

[spacef]

and if you look at using PCI cards, just avoid Gigabyte like the plague..... Those boards have much better build quality than the rest, have much better accessories and option (FW is often 800 and not stupid FW400, and also FW is the Texas Instrument chipset instead of cheap ill-working VIA or other obscur chipset), and those boards are in fact close to perfection. The sex-appeal is huge saved the fact that a Scope pci card will cause such a high number of pci-overflow that it is equivalent to a non working mobo. eventhough, I have met 1 guy who doesn't have problem with his Gygabite, which - and that's luck - has a pci latency timer. Most recent motherboard of any brand don't have any pci timer anymore (pci latency) because this was seen for pci and AGP graphic boards, not for anything else. Too bad because Gigabyte is clearly superior to any other brand in terms of build quality and overall performances.

[sonicstrav]

and if you look at using PCI cards, just avoid Gigabyte like the plague..... Those boards have much better build quality than the rest, have much better accessories and option (FW is often 800 and not stupid FW400, and also FW is the Texas Instrument chipset instead of cheap ill-working VIA or other obscur chipset), and those boards are in fact close to perfection, saved the fact that a pci card will cause such a high number of pci-overflow that it is equivalent to a non working mobo. eventhough, I have met 1 guy who doesn't have problem with his Gygabite, which - and that's luck - has a pci latency timer. Most recent motherboard of any brand don't have any pci timer anymore (pci latency) because this was seen for pci and AGP graphic boards, not for anything else.

?? confused ?? I have had no problems with Gigabyte boards

Those boards have much better build quality than the rest, have much better accessories and option (FW is often 800 and not stupid FW400, and also FW is the Texas Instrument chipset instead of cheap ill-working VIA or other obscur chipset), and those boards are in fact close to perfection

Do you mean Gigabyte boards are perfect ?? - I'm totally lost ????

[spacef]

If you don't use Scope PCI, Gigabyte is the brand of choice... they are perfect indeed... just not for old scope pci (and may be xite, unless you are ready to wait x monthes for bios updates...).
If your GB works, you are part of the lucky guys in 98% of the cases, it will just not work as good as an asus in trems of PCI overflows (which are medium quality, have a lot of Quality Control problems, but work flawlessly with Scope PCI). You may never experience a single pci overflow on a GB, it depends on the device(s) you are loading and the number of pci channels opened at once when you load a device. If you save and reload a project full of devices that gave you pci-overflow when you loaded them, then saving/reloading the project causes no pci overflow and you can work normally like that. You do not need to do this on an Asus, the gain in stress and time is unvaluable for some.... Also, ASUS works much better for resynching after PCI overflow, whereas on a Gigabyte, you most often need to save/reload the project because resynching won't work.

[sonicstrav]

If you save and reload a project full of devices that gave you pci-overflow when you loaded them, then saving/reloading the project causes no pci overflow and you can work normally like that.

I do get this from time to time - I thought it was the Scope board not the Gigabyte mobo. Thanks for clearing that up - that problem doesn't bother me - perhaps I will consider an ASUS board next time with a new PC build, just that Gigabyte mobos were recommended on this forum and maybe I prefer a solid mobo than a flaky ASUS one
BTW I haven't updated the drivers for the mobo in 20 months........
Or I wait for MacOSX drivers and go Mac + Xite (but be broke afterwards..... )

[dawman]

I have my XITE-1 installed on a few DAW's so if I need to record I take the XITE-1 and the connector card w/ a USB stick to the studios I frequent.
The i7 mobos w/ Triple Channel RAM are still too finnicky to run 6GB/12GB at CAS 7.
The best running i7 for RAM I have seen is the Intel Dual Channel mobo w/ 4 x 2GB sticks @ CAS 7 / 1600MHz.
It uses the RME and 64bit so I can't run my XITE-1 on there but we have great success w/ Sample streamers like Kontakt 4.0.
Surprisingly the AMD w/ Dual Channel DDR3 @ CAS 6 / 1800MHz smokes, but unfortunately the 790/785G chipsets and CPU's smoke as well, literally speaking. They are way too hot for the 1U build I wanted to do but with a big HSF on the Northbridge and CPU it's a fast little tower and streams better than the i7 Triple Channel DAW.
The i7 CPU's are so fast and well designed that I have to wait and see the H57 and the new i5 w/ on die GPU. I want to shrink my rig but not until I see a stable 1U build first.
There's just no QCont in Taiwan compared to what we use to have here w/ Intel boards.
All of the i7's were released even when they finally caught on to the 6GB Marvell chip being a POS/defective solution. That's proof these boards are shipped and dealt with later.
Fine for most users, but I can't take chances even w/ Intel boards now as even Taiwan outsources to China ...

[spacef]

If you save and reload a project full of devices that gave you pci-overflow when you loaded them, then saving/reloading the project causes no pci overflow and you can work normally like that.

maybe I prefer a solid mobo than a flaky ASUS one

Asus is not flaky, when it works, it works well.
For Scope, I had both a GA and an ASUS with the exact same peripherals/components (CPU, RAM, Gfx card..),
the ASUS performs much better with Scope.
I like GB for the FW800 on Texas Instrument chipsets, sata cables with a plug, stuff like that, which are quality extras... ASUS as a cool plug too for additional usb and firewire...

With Scope PCI, working on the asus P5Q-E is night and day compared to a GA-EP45-DS4. On the asus, i don't need to restart scope/cubase to get asio... it is when you load big devices that you have a risk of pci overflow, and now i can load them "live" and don't encounter an asio crash anymore, sometime a pci overflow from which i can get out in 5 seconds on the P5Q-E compared to never on the GA...
To conclude,
-if my audio system was based on Firewire, I would go gygabite,
-if my audio system is Scope, I would go for Intel or Asus...
Just to make it clear.

[Polarity]

good thing to know.
I use Scope mainly as a mixer (with some fx) and signal routing.
I rarely use its synths nowadays.

I could try an ASUS with 8 or 16 gb of RAM, and if it creates problems with Scope PCI cards,
get them back on the actual PC and use the new i7 system just as a slave (with Vienna Ensemble PRO filled of orchestral VST instruments) linked through LAN to the DAW with Cubase.

[24bitMusic]

Hi! I am running a new built i860 i7 32bit in Windows 7 , with 2 TC-powercore PCI MK2 and 1 UAD-1 card, DAW is NUENDO 4.
I use the GIGABYTE GA P55-UDR3 motherboard and it runs just fine. Lots of power...
I am moving my SCOPE 6 DSP to this machine.
The motherboard has 4 "old" PCI for the old cards, just check it out..

//Lasse