pci master overflow 3 cards?

[the19thbear]

Hi.
I have 3 cards in my pc.
1x 3dsp
2x 6dsp.

I'm thinking of selling the 2xdsp cards, and getting a 15dsp instead, mainly because i get PCI master overflow errors.
I'm thinking that having 2 boards instead of 3 would lighten the load of the PCI buss... is that correct? or do 3 cards actually help in this situation by dividing the traffic into 3 ports?

thanks!

[fidox]

i have the same setup , 3 cards,

2 x Pulsat XTC and 1 x Luna II = 2 x 6 + 3

i didn't have any problems, i did fresh install yesterday, mainly cause i wanted to install scope 5 onto fresh system,
but worked fine before too, with scope 4.5, did a lot of projects so far, running computer whole day.



matej

[astroman]

Hi.
...I'm thinking that having 2 boards instead of 3 would lighten the load of the PCI buss... is that correct? or do 3 cards actually help in this situation by dividing the traffic into 3 ports? ...

as I understand it only one card is communicating over the PCI bus with the Scope app and the OS, while internal DSP traffic uses the the S/TDM connection. The card that's the 'master' is listed first in the DSP load window.
Do you see 3 or 6 DSPs in the first place ?

There may be differences depending on board revision, independent from ULLI capabilities.
I had a very good PCI performance with 1st generation cards (Pulsar One), but my Scope Pro (15 chip version) is just average.
Even on the famous Asus TUSL board it fails between 10-12 Masterverbs, while Alfonso yields 18 instances on the same mobo. On the other hand there's no difference with or without the Pulsar One, so it always performs as if a 1st generation card is present (which is supposed to lower PCI performance by about 30%).

In my specific case this leaves 3 possible clues:
the board revision has an influence (as mentioned)
driver installation is messed
my compact flash disk spoils the party for obscure reasons...

cheers, Tom

[the19thbear]

well...
its a fresh 5.0 install.
all cards are gen2.
i have a asus motherboard.. i guess thats the culprit.
next time i'll get an intelboard... or an xite ( i wish!)

[Shroomz~>]

Is it possible that being forced to create a twist in your STDM cable to make it fit between P2 & Luna has somehow damaged your STDM cable? You could test this if you have another cable (preferably new). Did you try cleaning the STDM contacts? Beyond that, you could do some trial & error card removal.

[garyb]

yes, and i'm sure you've checked for the dreaded shared irqs?

[dante]

Ive got 1x6DSP + 2x3DSP on a Gigabyte mobo - with only one STDM cable connecting the lot. It works, very stable as long as I dont max out the DSP's. Actually, I normally get STDM error before DSP overload, due to the single cable. But in general it works well - I can normally get to use 11 out of 12 DSP's before problems occur.

[dawman]

I remember that 2 x Scope Pro's and 1 x Scope Project was the best bang for a buck I had.
I had 3 x Scope Pro's and a certain project I used live was the max load I could achieve.
When I started using a Scope Project and 2 x Scope Pro's I noticed the same exact loads were working.
The DSP chips just seem to saturate the PCI 32bit bus after a certain load and that's it.
I had started using 3 x STDM cables and that didn't seem to change things either, but the Delays and Verbs were always a PITA even when I used external hardware.
The little PCI-e 1X is more than enough for future products.
Boy if someone could build an adapter and bypass the 32bit slots I think they could possibly get rich quick.