What's the best Pulsar-dedicated System?

liulai · Post by **liulai** » Fri Apr 26, 2002 8:28 am

Hi Pulsar People,
Supposing Creamware are not going to make the Pulsar line compatible with Dual CPU system any time soon, a simple question:

What's the simplest, most cost-effective and modern single-CPU system one can buy and dedicate as a "Pulsar shell" (what a scary term!)?

I may even be enticed to spend about £300 for the a PIII motherboard (possibly with Intel 815 chipset), a FC-PGA PIII, some RAM and a desktop case (I have already got spare HDs and GFX card) but the problem is that I would be forced to buy into an already obsolete system. Then if, say, in 6 months Creamware fix the problem, I will find myself with an almost useless...shell.

Your thoughts please.
Vanni

subhuman · Post by **subhuman** » Fri Apr 26, 2002 8:36 am

Creamware does work on duals, but <a href=http://service.steinberg.net/knowledge. ... mance>ACPI Kills Audio Performance</a> and this is the kernel you need to install on most modern dual processor machines for them to run properly.

Some dual motherboards also have no settings for disabling Plug N Play, which also can cause problems.

You will get very little benefit from duals with audio for the price difference your money is much better spent on other areas of your studio (outboard gear, nicer cables, etc)... This is my opinion.

If you insist on duals, the only board I'd go with would be the Tyan Tiger V1.03 MP Athlon board since it has very little onboard features, gives usable PCI performance, and you get a tweakable BIOS. The only problem I have run into with the board is the occasional Copy Protection Violation error, but it's not often and it doesn't really bother us. Other people have a lot more problems, so unless your experienced and enjoy working through tech problems (ie: your more of a musician), I'd just get a single processor Northwood P4 system running on an Intel chipset. Pretty much everyone who has one doesn't have any major problems to report, nice low latency, very little tweaking to get a rock solid setup.

Suggested motherboards:
ASUS P4B266 (i845 DDR)
ASUS P4TE (i850 RDRAM)
..Variations thereof..

I'm sure there will be lots of other, different opinions, I've used pretty much everything with Creamware setups and this is my advice.

liulai · Post by **liulai** » Sat Apr 27, 2002 9:43 am

Thanks for the reply, subhuman. I had my Thunder K7 because that was the first system to support Ahtlon MP. I thought that would help with VST in Advanced MP mode and I was right. What I didn't know was that Pulsar becomes a donkey when used on the same system.

Frankly, I don't see all those negative sides in using SCSI, whether onboard (cheaper - that Dual 29160 is worth a little fortune!) or separate. EIDE HD can be quick but they clog the CPU bus incredibly.

I still think Pulsar should be able to coexist with a fast SCSI system, not fight against it for the greates share of PCI time.

I will try to contact the CW technical support once more this coming Monday. I they will fail to give me a clear answer as to whether the compatibility issues are sofwtare-related (and can be solved with the final 3.1) or hardware-related, in which case I have either of the two options:
- spend another £400/£500 on a simple P4 system to be used as "shell" (and i don't have money for that now!)
- sell the card (i dont want to do it, considering that I was lucky enough to have the Propack free)

What do you guys think?

Thanks,
Vanni

subhuman · Post by **subhuman** » Sat Apr 27, 2002 11:02 am

I still think Pulsar should be able to coexist with a fast SCSI system, not fight against it for the greates share of PCI time

liulai · Post by **liulai** » Sat Apr 27, 2002 3:32 pm

Is this because you liked the statement so much or so little?

On 2002-04-27 12:02, subhuman wrote:
I still think Pulsar should be able to coexist with a fast SCSI system, not fight against it for the greates share of PCI time

Post by **garyb** » Sat Apr 27, 2002 7:47 pm

better than fight against your pulsar card just to keep a computer that'll be obsolete in 5 minutes anyway,would be to use what you have regardless of it's limits,and then upgrade your computer asap.you won't find anything that will do what the pulsar will,so make it happy.................
just my opinion.

liulai · Post by **liulai** » Sun Apr 28, 2002 3:04 am

What you're saying is: keep the Pulsar in the box (in my Thunder K7 rig, it's totally useless) and save for a computer which could make her "happier"...

Am I really left with no other option?

Vanni

On 2002-04-27 20:47, garyb wrote:
better than fight against your pulsar card just to keep a computer that'll be obsolete in 5 minutes anyway,would be to use what you have regardless of it's limits,and then upgrade your computer asap.you won't find anything that will do what the pulsar will,so make it happy.................
just my opinion.

liulai · Post by **liulai** » Sun Apr 28, 2002 3:08 am

On 2002-04-26 09:36, subhuman wrote:
Suggested motherboards:
ASUS P4B266 (i845 DDR)
ASUS P4TE (i850 RDRAM)
..Variations thereof..

What about Ahtlon XP mobos with AMD (not VIA) chipset? Any good?

Thanks,
Vanni

Post by **garyb** » Sun Apr 28, 2002 11:01 pm

the reports say the amd chipset is pretty usable,just a little less pci performance than intel.really tho, amd solutions are not really any cheaper than intel p4 solutions.(well i guess you have the athlon cpu and memory,so might as well use it.)