So... time for another upgrade :)

[King of Snake]

It's time again to upgrade my PC, and here's what I'm gonna do:
I currently have 3 cards (Pulsar 1, Pulsar 2 and Powersampler) running on a Core 2 Duo system which I'm planning to upgrade to a quad core i5.
socket 1156 motherboards have been rapidly going out of stores here but I've managed to find a ASUS P7P55D-E for a good price that I hope will do the trick and also supports USB 3 and SATA600. I will upgrade my HD to a 128 GB Crucial M4 SSD as a OS/programs disk, and keep my old regular HD for data. The mobo only has 2 pci slots but I will be retiring the Pulsar 1 as I've shifted towards more VSTi's now but still would like to keep Scope for the occasional synth, mixing or fx and of course the routing
CPU will be an Intel i5 760 with 8 gigs of DDR3 RAM. I'm also planning on upgrading to 64 bits Windows 7 this time.
I still need to order a couple of the parts but will let you guys know how it runs once it's assembled
What do you think?

[garyb]

should work well.

unless you REALLY need the extra ram to run 64bits(only romplers/samplers can use the extra ram, as far as audio apps go), i'd stay with 32bit. you'll have fewer headaches that way(this is not related to Scope, just audio apps and plugins in general).

[King of Snake]

Hmm yeah I don't really need the 64 bits for music, but the plan is to have system doubling as graphics workstation as well and some of the latest Adobe apps need 64 bits to run. And with Scope now supporting 64 bits as well I thought it might be the right time to take the plunge.

[garyb]

sure, it's a matter of need and priorities, not a moral issue.

i was just putting my uncalled for two cents in. there are a few things that won't work in 64bit, both in Scope and the vst world. it shouldn't be anything that is showstopping, though.

[King of Snake]

Hey man, your 2 cents are always welcome here In any case it's good to be aware of any potential 64 bit pitfalls before I upgrade.

[dawman]

FWIW the Snaf Force Controllers on SSDs hjave a bad habit and 50/50 chance of getting one that gets BSOD's.
Intel 520 Sand Force Controllers are the only ones that seem to have added firmware that fixes that issue.
Indilinx Controllers by OCZ seemed to have now fixed that with their Everest 2.0 controllers.
I bought a KIngston it was a coupld years back and since it sucked with samples I turned it into an OS + Apps Drive, it was a little snappier for apps, but was a PITA as I had old Raptors that never failed except one 360 WD after 6 years of 6 nights a week.
Im testing a pair of Vertex 4 Everest 2.0 SSD's that are the fastest random readers out there, and so far so good, I will puit them in my stage rig by summertime.

[next to nothing]

As you probably know allready, the main problems you might bump into scope-wise with going 64bit is sampler devices like the STS series and a buggy wave driver (atleast on win7 with v5.1). Most other devs should work.

[King of Snake]

thanks for the info. I don't use the scope samplers so that shouldn't be a problem.

I've heard about problems with sandforce controllers, but the Crucial uses a Marvell controller and seems to be the recommended choice right now in terms of price/GB and reliability.

[King of Snake]

Ok, system is up and running with Scope 5.1 64bit.
Seems to be doing fine so far. I could get up to 9 masterverbs with some dsp reloading, but it wouldn't go to 10. It actually crashed with a blue screen of death "irq not less or equal blablabla" several seconds after trying that
Perhaps not the most impressive performance, but I think it's still better than anything else I've got with Scope before. Perhaps it also helps that I retired my old Pulsar 1 card so now it's just the two generation 2 cards.

Also, I can definitely recommend everyone to go with an SSD at least as a boot/programs disk. Great to have Windows load so quickly!

[fokas]

I had an ASUS P7P55D-E with 2 boards ,P1 and P2 ,with a 875k.
The P1 limits the PCI bandwidth but other than that its a beautiful board.
For absolute satisfaction I think that you should trade the P1 for an extra P2
(thats what I did).
The Video needs (AfterFXS Premiere 3DSmax etc) will benefit to your satisfaction .

Regards to all
Daniel

[fokas]

Ooops I had not seen your latest post ....Maybe Gary has some tips on how you may squeeze some more performance out of the PCI .

[King of Snake]

Possibly there might be tweaks to squeeze (even) better performance out of it, but really the Masterverb test is just a stresstest and I don't see myself using that many verbs in one project in practice, so performance should be more than enough for my needs as it is.
I would like to see whether this setup can run the Warp/Soniccore Plate or Ambience verbs, because that was pretty much impossible on my old setup.