Haswell1150 industrial motherboards with 4 or more PCI slots

[scokljat]

Hello!

First, let me introduce myself as this is my first post on Planet-Z. I'm a music producer/engineer from Croatia. I've been in the music business for more than 20 years, all from cutting analogue tape, Atari era, ADAT era to early and latest hardware and native DAW's. I also must apologize because I'm actually not a SCOPE user but a very good friend of mine is probably one of the most advanced SCOPE gurus (several SCOPE cards + Pulsar2 cards across several computers...) and I've been listening to his stories and struggles with SCOPE from the beginning of it's era.

Now to the point,

As I'm in the middle of computer upgrade (2 computers) for my studio and have same high demands for native 33MHz 32bit PCI slots as SCOPE users, I've taken Planet-Z as a reference for my research because of the fact how PCI hungry SCOPE cards are and lot of user experience posted here, not to mention guidelines and advices from some quite experienced moderators.

For now, actually, I found more chaos here than help, considering how much different versions of SCOPE/Pulsar/luna cards exist, various operating systems from XP to Win7 32/64bit, and even Win8.1 64 bit. For now I've read few mainboard/chipset related threads including your famous 23 page masterverb thread.

The greatest paradox of all is claim that new Haswell 1150 motherboards work OK with SCOPE, but 1155 Ivy Bridge motherboards based on same PCIe-PCI bridge chips do not. Also, putting all 1155 motherboards to same consideration is not correct as some 1155 Sandy/Ivy Bridge chipsets have native legacy PCI support within PCH (Q67, Q65, B65, Q77, Q75, B75) and do not require PCIe-PCI bridging. However, I've found only two users here who actually tested motherboards based on these native PCI chipsets and their results were worst of all! One was running some cheap MSI B75 board with 6 masterverbs and other some microATX Q77 board with only 3 masterverbs running on Win8.1 64bit (btw, in my opinion worst OS for realtime audio platform). Although 1155 native PCI fiasco is based on few not so convincible cases, I've put on hold my Q77 DFI motherboard purchases and decided to focus and investigate PCIe-PCI bridge solutions in detail and perhaps go with 1150 Haswell industrial mainboard equipped with best PCIe-PCI bridge.

There are few different PCIe-PCI bridge chips used on most 1155 and 1150 motherboards. Asmedia ASM1083 and ITE IT8892E are most common. Asmedia ASM1083 can be found on Asus Haswell mainboards and it supports maximum of 3 PCI bus masters. There is also Asmedia ASM1085 with 5 PCI bus masters support. I've recently discovered Pericom PI7C9X PCIe-to-PCI Reversible Bridge and found it on some industrial motherboards of my interest. ITE IT8892E featuring 4 PCI bus masters is most common on various 1155 motherboards, some 1150 as well on some industrial motherboards.

It would be of great interest to SCOPE community if someone is able and willing to test several PCIe-PCI bridges with same SCOPE configuration and same OS. It would be even better to test same PCIe-PCI bridges on 1150 and 1155 and native PCI 1155 motherboards, but also all with same SCOPE configuration and same OS As for now, I remember someone had 9 masterverbs on ITE IT8892E and 11 masterverbs on Asmedia ASM1083, both on Haswell chipsets but different SCOPE configurations and parhaps different OS. It's very time consuming and practically and financially unfeasible, but it's the only way to get consistent and valid results testing and cross referencing mainboards and chipsets all in same configuration with same SCOPE cards, same OS and probably by one proficient person or team...

About the mainboards,

I found lot of users here buy and use various colorful consumer gamming motherboards. They also claim some 1150 motherboard is the only one with 3 PCI slots. Other put their cards on expensive and overblown server boards with 4 gigabit LAN's and some completely irrelevant and not needed integrated peripherals for DAW usage. But, what about industrial motherboards?! Industrial motherboards are exactly what we need! They're made for 24/7 operation, high quality design and components, production lifespan of usually 5 years and best of all they offer great legacy compatibility especially when PCI slots are in question, all with a moderate price tag. There are Haswell and Ivy Bridge motherboards with 6 and even 7 legacy PCI slots available! There are also few Haswell motherboards featuring ISA slots along with PCI and PCIe


Here is my selection of industrial motherboards:


Fujitsu 1150 Haswell (Pericom PI7C9X PCIe-to-PCI bridge):

http://www.fujitsu.com/fts/products/com ... 3236s.html
http://www.fujitsu.com/fts/products/com ... 3235s.html

DFI 1150 Haswell (ITE IT8892E and Asmedia ASM1085 PCIe-to-PCI bridge):

http://www.dfi.com.tw/products/ProductD ... Page=false
http://www.dfi.com.tw/products/ProductD ... Page=false
http://www.dfi.com.tw/products/ProductD ... Page=false
http://www.dfi.com.tw/products/ProductD ... Page=false


Fujitsu 1155 Ivy Bridge (native PCI - Q67 chipset):

http://www.fujitsu.com/fts/products/com ... 16018.html

DFI 1155 Ivy Bridge (native PCI - Q77, Q67, B65, C216 chipsets)

http://www.dfi.com.tw/products/ProductD ... Page=false
http://www.dfi.com.tw/products/ProductD ... Page=false
http://www.dfi.com.tw/products/ProductD ... Page=false
http://www.dfi.com.tw/products/ProductD ... Page=false
http://www.dfi.com.tw/products/ProductD ... Page=false#


Fujitsu motherboards cost cca. 150-200EUR. DFI cost cca. 250-300EUR.

There are several other industrial motherboards manufacturers like JetWay.

Supermicro X10SLA-F (mentioned on Planet-Z) looks quite fine and features 5 PCI bus masters based on Asmedia ASM1085 PCIe-to-PCI bridge. Supermicro is first class motherboard manufacturer.

http://www.supermicro.com/products/moth ... 0SLA-F.cfm


That's all from me for now

Best regards,

Suad

[garyb]

i'd be happy to do the testing if the parts are free and my time is compensated. otherwise, we only have other users' reports.

1150s seem to work. i haven't had any problems, although we have one user here who had an 1150 moitherboard that didn't work. every other i-series compatible motherboard that didn't have decent PCI performance that i have seen, both here and in support, has been 1155 based. make what you will of that. fujitsu, supermicro, i doubt if you can go wrong.

take comfort in the fact that most combinations work and little adjustment to the operating system is needed for XP sp3, Vista, win7 or win8, unlike when i started with a Pulsar1 back in v1.1

i don't think the problem is with the controller chip. i think it's the implementation, but that's just my suspicion.

[Immanuel]

I think you put way too much emphasis on the PCI bridge chip vs native PCI support. I purchased a q77 motherboard, and that is now the base of my internet PC. The PCI performance is utter crap. I got the error on masterverb 2, and I've got plenty of experience optimising PCs for Scope. Native PCI-performance just means native PCI compatibility. It does not mean that the PCI cards are given any real time priority. That is how I see it anyway.

If you need really great real time PCI performance, you might consider if a dual PC set-up is a possible solution. Also, it really matters to shut other stuff off in the BIOS. For instance, I got more masterverbs with one harddrive than with two - on my older motherboards anyway. And shutting off all USB and firewire ports and installing a PCI-card for that stuff also helped.

[scokljat]

I think you put way too much emphasis on the PCI bridge chip vs native PCI support. I purchased a q77 motherboard, and that is now the base of my internet PC. The PCI performance is utter crap. I got the error on masterverb 2, and I've got plenty of experience optimising PCs for Scope. Native PCI-performance just means native PCI compatibility. It does not mean that the PCI cards are given any real time priority. That is how I see it anyway.

If you need really great real time PCI performance, you might consider if a dual PC set-up is a possible solution. Also, it really matters to shut other stuff off in the BIOS. For instance, I got more masterverbs with one harddrive than with two - on my older motherboards anyway. And shutting off all USB and firewire ports and installing a PCI-card for that stuff also helped.

Immanuel, that's actually my point after all. "Native PCI" does not guarantee it's actually - good. After your experience it's doubtful how Intel implemented legacy PCI compatibility within PCH. As I know all Ivy/Sandy bridge chipsets are native express chipsets and to use legacy PCI cards PCIe-PCI translation have to be done inside or outside PCH. Looks like Intel did some lousy work with their translation method or level of priority on witch it happens within PCH. I downloaded some technical info on these chipsets, it's nearly 1000 pages, I'll take a look when grab some free time.

Btw, did you check on that Q77 mainboard how your SCOPE card is connected in device manager when you switch it to "view devices by connection"? It should be clear if SCOPE card is connected directly to PCI bus or to PCI express through some bridge. It won't make things any better, but may help understand it better...

Anyways, looks like external PCIe-PCI bridging is our best option and that's why I put so much importance of which bridge chip is used. For now Asmedia looks fine and have both 3 PCI and 5 PCI masters version. All PCIe-PCI bridge chips are connected to one of PCIe x1 slots and I'm sure it's important that this particular PCIe slot is not shared with anything else. To disable all integrated peripherals in BIOS and device manager other than ones in use is always great idea.

I'll study tech specs to all three PCIe-PCI bridge chips...

Best regards,

Suad

[scokljat]

i'd be happy to do the testing if the parts are free and my time is compensated. otherwise, we only have other users' reports.

1150s seem to work. i haven't had any problems, although we have one user here who had an 1150 moitherboard that didn't work. every other i-series compatible motherboard that didn't have decent PCI performance that i have seen, both here and in support, has been 1155 based. make what you will of that. fujitsu, supermicro, i doubt if you can go wrong.

take comfort in the fact that most combinations work and little adjustment to the operating system is needed for XP sp3, Vista, win7 or win8, unlike when i started with a Pulsar1 back in v1.1

i don't think the problem is with the controller chip. i think it's the implementation, but that's just my suspicion.

Gary, I concur with you, 1150 is our best choice. Looking back at 1155 sounds illogical and unreasonable. However, motherboard manufacturer, level and quality of integrated peripherals, implementation of bridge chip and most of all type and model of bridge chip could be very important to squeeze every bit of PCI bandwidth.

Btw, I'm owner of service center for tablet PC's and POS equipment and have enough specialized hands at my disposal. I'll be glad to do some comprehensive testing but only if someone put all mainboards and required equipment to our table for free

Best regards,

Suad