Asus P4P800 Deluxe with 3 CW-cards, bad idea?

Stripa · Post by **Stripa** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 4:29 pm

Hi!
I always tought that sticking to Asus mobo's with Intel chipset would keep you're CW-cards out off trouble.
I'm now about to replace my old Asus Cusl2 with a Asus P4P800 Deluxe. To see if there was any problem with this card I did some searching here and what I found got me a bit worried.
Seems that there were some problems with this setup. There seemed to be even more problems with P4C800 Deluxe. Whats the difference between these two mobo's? Can I expect as much trouble with P4P800? Is the P4P800 even a stupid choice when using cw-cards? If so, what's the alternative?
I'm using three cw-cards (Pulsar2, PS2 and a Luna2) linked together, and a 2496-box. SX 2,2. WinXP Pro. Processor not decided yet, but probably a Pentium around 2-3 GHz. (HT??) SFP 3.1 (I think), soon 4.0
And a Matrox G450.
I would very much appreciate some comments on my mobo choice before it's too late!

Thanks, Stefan

Edit: Forgot to say but as you can see I'm a "first time writer" here, but I've been reading here fore some years.
So I'm kind of hoping for some beginners luck!

[ This Message was edited by: Stripa on 2005-02-09 16:34 ]

[ This Message was edited by: Stripa on 2005-02-10 07:06 ]

Kymeia · Post by **Kymeia** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 11:26 am

I'm a bit annoyed with ASUS myself as I've just found out that I can't use all 3 of my PCI slots as the PCI express 16 slot (which is taken up by an ASUS graphics card) is so close to PCI 1 that it's physically impossible to put a card in it. Talk about bad design

That's on an ASUS P5AD2 deluxe - one of their top range mobo's (I thought)

[ This Message was edited by: Kymeia on 2005-02-10 11:27 ]

Post by **garyb** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 12:54 pm

it should work if you set it up properly, disabling ALL onbaird devices that are not essential to your daw. i like intel boards. they are not great for overclocking, but they are very stable. i still think the d865perl is a great choice, stable and cheap.

siriusbliss · Post by **siriusbliss** » Fri Feb 11, 2005 12:35 am

http://techrepublic.com.com/1200-22-530 ... ag=nl.e064

siriusbliss · Post by **siriusbliss** » Fri Feb 11, 2005 12:37 am

oops, ignore the above post - hit the send key too quickly.

I meant to say that I am running 3 CW cards successfully on this motherboard for a long time now. Just be careful with having too many resources running. Keep it simple.

Have fun.

devKid · Post by **devKid** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 1:14 pm

I have an ASUS A7N8X-X with 3 pulsars running and doing a perfect job. I also have an ASUS A7N8X deluxe rev 2.0 with no pulsar and being a complete mistery to me...

gregor · Post by **gregor** » Sun Feb 13, 2005 9:27 am

I have an Asus p4p8x. This is in fact exactly the same layout as the p4p800, only the 865P chipset is exchanged for a 865PE chipset on a p4p800 (865PE can clock cpu and ram independently). I have a Scope 15 dsp-card, a Matrox g400, a g450, an ati7000 and a tvcard. With a p4-3.2 it runs rockstable! (but with overclocking it crashes all the time)

virtualstudio · Post by **virtualstudio** » Sun Feb 13, 2005 9:48 am

I have the p4p800 (not the luxe) with three boards,after a while of tweaking and PCIslot changing it seems to be stable now, I only disabled the onboard audio.

good luck.

elektrolurch · Post by **elektrolurch** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 5:38 am

@ virtualstudio:
I've P4P800 too and one Pulsar II in slot 1 and another in slot 5 (same IRQs). I'm planing to buy a Scope FX. Which slot do you recommend?

[ This Message was edited by: elektrolurch on 2005-02-15 10:14 ]

virtualstudio · Post by **virtualstudio** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 3:42 pm

at the moment I'm not at my system, I have changed it aroud so much I don't remember anymore wich slots I used.
I'll have a look tomorrow and let you know.

virtualstudio · Post by **virtualstudio** » Thu Feb 17, 2005 6:37 am

HI.

I have it now in slot 1, 3 and 5

elektrolurch · Post by **elektrolurch** » Thu Feb 17, 2005 5:05 pm

Thanks virtualstudio.
see "Announements"
My three PulsarII work in slot 1-2-AUDIGY-free-5 with SFP 4.02 drivers! Slot 2 is shared with Gigabit LAN. No problems so far.

frokka · Post by **frokka** » Wed Mar 02, 2005 12:08 pm

Stefan, I have a setup very similar to yours: 2 x Pulsar2 and 1 Luna1, and a P4C800-E deluxe. My problem is that the system does not function properly when I use more than one CW MIDI-out port at once. It then has terrible timing problems and sometimes crashes. I've tried everything suggested here at PZ without luck. My old machine, a P3 on a motherboard from 1998 running win98, had no such problems whatsoever!

If you do buy the P4P and use several out-ports like I do, I would be very interested to hear from you. (even though it's not the exact same MB).

Regards,
Knut ~ Oslo

frokka · Post by **frokka** » Wed Mar 02, 2005 2:35 pm

On 2005-03-02 14:08, stardust wrote:
The midi and timing probs are not related to the MoBo in my experience.

Then what..?

frokka · Post by **frokka** » Wed Mar 02, 2005 2:51 pm

On 2005-03-02 14:41, stardust wrote:
Did you use s-tdm correctly for example.

What do you mean?

But I think its very unlikely that the chipset has influence on midi timing between scope boards.

I think the problem might occur before the data reaches the boards. Or..?

[ This Message was edited by: frokka on 2005-03-02 14:52 ]

frokka · Post by **frokka** » Wed Mar 02, 2005 3:11 pm

On 2005-03-02 14:57, stardust wrote:
oh sorry, with s-tdm I mean the cable that connects 2 or more scope boards in order to allow board to board communication without PCI, chipset involved.

As far as I know it doesn't matter what direction the cable has, as opposed to an IDE cable for instance. Am I wrong?

frokka · Post by **frokka** » Wed Mar 02, 2005 4:50 pm

On 2005-03-02 16:09, stardust wrote:
right direction is irrelevant.
But one should always use the connection closest to the pluging panel.

My problem can't be related to this.
I'm wondering if any of you reading this also still use several MIDI-out ports at once in your music making(?). Perhaps most people almost exclusively use VSTs these days, and record what little external sources they might have immediately to disc. That way, perhaps everyone on XP has the same problem, but no one really notices because the number of live external MIDI sources is kept to a minimum.

Any comments..?

[ This Message was edited by: frokka on 2005-03-02 16:51 ]

frokka · Post by **frokka** » Wed Mar 02, 2005 5:35 pm

On 2005-03-02 17:09, stardust wrote:
what i found is, that the midi out of the board where I also use the audio I/O brings proper midi signals.

In other words, you use only one board for MIDI and audio in and out? Sounds like you have the same problem as me, MIDI-wise.

Post by **garyb** » Wed Mar 02, 2005 6:59 pm

i can use mutiple ports here. i DO have to put another midi source/dest module(from the other card) to do it though......

roland u-20 in one port.
akai mpd-16 on the other.

[ This Message was edited by: garyb on 2005-03-02 19:00 ]

8-Bit · Post by **8-Bit** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 6:57 am

Well, i'm rockin a P4C800 deluxe, with 2 Scope-Project boards and a bunch of unimportant hardware that has no bearing.

You have to disable HT and use STANDARD MODE, not ACPI, and there are a FEW other things... Then it should work fine. Do a search on PlanetZ or somethin, i know there is a forum topic that CW referred me to when I was setting up my system.
(before i set it up right, my computer would lock up after like 10 seconds of midi/audio work in cubase)

It seems your topic went on a tangent about midi madness...

refocus!
aight... rockout