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PCI Overflow Solved

Posted: Sat Jan 12, 2019 8:34 pm
by dawman
It’s always ASIO related in case anyone didn’t notice.
PCI-e1X allows 250MBs Bi-Directional for 500MBs I believe.
But I’ve always got the message with sampled instruments, not synths.

My developer from Plogue suggested checking polyphony on all instruments.
I’ve never done this for Kontakt but reset all maximum voice allowed and it’s exactly what my PCI Overflow problems were.
If you don’t touch the settings they’re defaulted at 128 on most, so for horn sections I played safe and gave it 48, guitars 24, pianos in Pteq 48, Kontakt 48, voices 16, strings 32, Flute 16, etc.

Kontakt might not need the polyphony set but it takes up more bandwidth in a reserve sort of way in case you need them.
So I shaved off hundreds of voices of olyphony I didn’t need so no clogging up the pipes so to speak is what’s been hitting me with error messages.

Mostly because I layer PTeq with Keysacape and Kontakts Canterbury Rhodes.
My guitars are stack too.
I like ballsy power chords, and leads I use 2 x separate guitars, one with PBend at a half step, the 2nd instance of Shreddage 3 gets a whole step.
Gets me that Sabbath Lenard Skynard Freebird Double trackingnsound and the bends are really big that way.

So if you’re hitting those PCI Overflow messages go check your samplers and cut back on unnecessary polyphony.
It’s being use even if you’re just play a triad, so fix that shit ASAP.

Re: PCI Overflow Solved

Posted: Sat Jan 12, 2019 10:14 pm
by jksuperstar
This is a big deal to know about. I’d guess shared video can have the same effect (eating up RAM bandwidth along with anything else, starving xite’s Path to host ram, forcing a pci overflow to show....). I’ve had a similar issue when my laptop goes into a super low power mode, slowing processor and memory, and bringing issues like this to the surface.

Re: PCI Overflow Solved

Posted: Sat Jan 12, 2019 10:44 pm
by dawman
I’m re programming my Performances on my MIDI Controller so when I go between scenes, only channels in use have AUX Levels set.
It’s a special bank stored in a performance where you tap a single button and every MIDI CC Parameter gets zero’d out.

I’ve been wasting IPC and resources forever, never really started seeing these until Z97/i7 4790k builds, and they’re so rare that I figured maybe the XITE-1 is getting old, as I beat these up for hours everyday and on gig days twice as much.

9 years it took to finally think through this.
The Dragon from Native Instruments forum is s genius, we started by using seperate instances for each Kontakt Instrument.
Uses s little more RAM but spreads the heavy scripted instruments around.
Then he said have you set polyphony.....duh, no.
He asked me “how long you been using Kontakt”. ...oh well.

By the time I can’t climb up on stage or carry my gear anymore I might have learned my apps...

Re: PCI Overflow Solved

Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2019 2:35 am
by valis
He may have asked how long you've been using Kontakt because many years back limiting poly was how we would limit RAM & cpu footprint when using single or multiple instances...especially important in the p3/early p4 era when 1-2GB of ram was a luxury.

Re: PCI Overflow Solved

Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2019 3:17 am
by JoPo
Nice one, Jimmy ! :)

I get quite good result also by never forgetting to assign Scope asio module to DSP 2. But I'll definitively try the kontakt voice reduce trick the next time I get a pci overflow message.

Re: PCI Overflow Solved

Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2019 3:03 am
by dawman
Well I’m going to try ASIO to DSP 2 too.

Re: PCI Overflow Solved

Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2019 5:26 am
by dawman
This really does work.
At least for me with ASIO.
2 months full tilt boogie of 30 to 40 hours a week.

Re: PCI Overflow Solved

Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2019 2:18 pm
by valis
Duly noted, will have to give this a shot as well.

Re: PCI Overflow Solved

Posted: Sun Apr 28, 2019 7:04 pm
by dawman
Well months have passed and the optimizations really do work.
I’m beginning to think all of the troubles we’ve had are because ASIO Streams not being used can steal bandwidth.

Everytime I said hell no to a motherboard CPU Combo Scope always worked, it was when I added the VST Host or DAW did the overflow message appear.

Ever since I took a developers advice and trimmed the absurd amount of polyphony I never used it’s never appeared again.
Hours of non stop pre production, gigs, rehearsals, etc.

I won’t fear my next upgrade.

Re: PCI Overflow Solved

Posted: Sun Apr 28, 2019 9:20 pm
by valis
Thanks for the followup report :)

Re: PCI Overflow Solved

Posted: Mon Jan 13, 2020 3:41 pm
by dawman
One Year later, no such thing as PCI Overflow.