Best motherboard configuration

PC Configurations, motherboards, etc, etc

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fidox
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Best motherboard configuration

Post by fidox »

Hey there !

My system is running fine, but I have one question, regarding, PCI, PCI-e and Sata3.
It's more matter for little improvements, if.
I have connected :
-nvme ssd onboard 500gb
-2 x ssd disks on sata 3 ports. (500gb and 128gb)
-3 x PCI creamware cards
-GPU PCI-e card.

I also have, not connected at the moment
-1 x PCI-e adapter card with nvme 128gb ssd.

I'm using one ssd on sata3 port 128gb for audio realtime recording from sequencer.
Will I benefit anything from removing that 128gb ssd from sata 3 port and inserting PCI-e adapter card with little faster nvme ssd 128gb for realtime recording.
Is it better to use less slots (pci, pci-e) on mobo and use sata 3 ports instead or ?

Thanks,
Matej
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valis
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Re: Best motherboard configuration

Post by valis »

Most consumer chipsets are burdened with slot sharing. So that you’re limited to PCIe slots sharing with onboard peripherals. Each is different enough that you will need to refer to documentation to know what the specific sharing implementation will be for your chosen add on cards.

Most boards with a PCI implementation that has 3 slots will likely use chipsets that allow for less sharing conflicts, which is why I eyeballed XEON chipsets for this purpose. The NVME drive imho is best suited to burst level activity.

For some, this might mean (say for sub-3ms responsiveness for live triggering of) many streams of data aka small block reads. Small block writes have a different challenge, which eventually fills on-drive caches and kicks in garbage collection to group those smaller blocks written just to optimal band-size pages. Until these limits are hit, the faster interface speed from the nvme (PCIe) interface and protocol tends to make the drive “more responsive”, especially at normal queue depths for a desktop user. For this reason typical usage for nvme is via onboard m.2 slot for applications and OS. 128GB might be a bit meager here and a PCIe card may or may not complicate OS install and booting (it shouldn’t, but some EFI/BIOSes complicate things).

Sustainable delivery of streaming data on the other hand has no problem with streaming sample libraries and the like, at least at even normal orchestral levels. Thousands of stream s for larger cinematic work might need some thought on drive arrangement, as would multiple types of string data (say 5-6 different intensive workloads that might stress a controller’s queue depth handling).

For data writes (recording) there is less need for NVMe unless you opt for pricier drives that use NAND & controller types that can sustain the data writes (Samsung Pro, WD Black 850, data enter oriented drives). This again is because once drive caches are exhausted and controllers saturated they can actually fall to normal spinning hard drive speeds (or lower in some cases).
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valis
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Re: Best motherboard configuration

Post by valis »

2 SSD drives and a larger m.2 boot drive that does not share with the PCI slots or any important slot or peripheral seems ideal here.
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garyb
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Re: Best motherboard configuration

Post by garyb »

sharing is rarely a problem anymore. exceptions are USB, network and Firewire, which are very busy devices. it's best to disable or move devices/cards when that type of sharing occurs. win10 is NOT win98.
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valis
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Re: Best motherboard configuration

Post by valis »

With modern sharing, typically using one thing just disables the other (for instance an m.2 slot falls back to sata only, or conversely uses some sata lanes shared with the mobo ports, or a pcie slot etc).

Bonus points for boards that give jumpers for this.
fidox
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Re: Best motherboard configuration

Post by fidox »

valis wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 1:29 pm 2 SSD drives and a larger m.2 boot drive that does not share with the PCI slots or any important slot or peripheral seems ideal here.
True !
That nvme 128gb ssd, which is now on adapter pci-e card and not connected, was my main system disk before i purchased bigger nvme 500gb ssd.
But yes, like you said, seems ideal like it is now.
fidox
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Re: Best motherboard configuration

Post by fidox »

garyb wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 2:52 pm sharing is rarely a problem anymore. exceptions are USB, network and Firewire, which are very busy devices. it's best to disable or move devices/cards when that type of sharing occurs. win10 is NOT win98.
Yes, true !
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Bud Weiser
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Re: Best motherboard configuration

Post by Bud Weiser »

garyb wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 2:52 pm sharing is rarely a problem anymore. exceptions are USB, network and Firewire, which are very busy devices. it's best to disable or move devices/cards when that type of sharing occurs. win10 is NOT win98.
Any experience w/ the following case (?),-

1.)
The one and only M.2 NVMe (32GB/sec) slot shares w/ PCIe X16 (1st graphic card) slot ...
2.)
because it does,- no graphics card in use,- iGPU is used instead ...
3.)
XITE-1 PCIe card sits in PCIe x4 slot not sharing w/ any other slot and getting it´s individual IRQ,- but shares the same memory adress(es) the Intel iGPU graphics use.

In my case,- it made data thruput from and to XITE-1 the fastest possible w/ that board,- but I also have the impression,- a very few, in some native VST hosts running, VST plugins show graphics issues while some of these produce clicks and pops when GUI is animated (movements of keys, PB- and Mod-Wheels p.ex.).
The graphics issue is tooltips won´t disappear completely until closing that plugin´s GUI and re-activate.

The combo causing clicks and pops w/ animated GUI open is Sonic Projects OP-X Pro II and Presonus Studio One Pro,- but doesn´t happen when changing host (Reaper 6.39, Reason 10.4 and 11.3.9., Tracktion 7).
The other device is Toontrack Superior Drummer 3,- which unfortunately doesn´t allow deactivation of tooltips.
And TT SD-3 shows that issue in almost any host.

Is it imaginable these issues are caused by memory adress sharing of XITE-1 PCIe card and iGPU while using a specific combo of VSTi, host and Scope v7 ASIO ?
Can someone confirm it is ?
Or does it seem to be more a problem of the 2 VST plugins mentioned above,- maybe memory leak or such ?

:)

Bud
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garyb
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Re: Best motherboard configuration

Post by garyb »

sounds like it could be. i wouldn't doubt it.
it all seems overcomplicated. nvme seems unnecessary. it's cool and everything...
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valis
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Re: Best motherboard configuration

Post by valis »

SATA protocol/command set is already slated to be removed in nand/SSD arena soon. There’s a lot of overhead in translation between logical file system blocks, physical data blocks (that SATA controllers expect and that were designed with compatibility with the needs of spinning disks) and then the translation to SSD controller internal command sets and routines like garbage collection, recycling of unused nand portions when blocks are written that are less than the logical nand page size and so on.

As for memory sharing, it seems more likely the problem here may be simply the Intel driver itself. It’s support for OpenGL has improved, but there are many apps I used in graphics that exhibit similar visual artifacts (bits of menus staying in the onscreen image buffer etc).

Intel has a new driver tool, I’ll post it here later when at the PC again. I find it useful even for normal chipset stuff etc, and it’s browser based which seems odd at first but makes sense for covering all skill levels—it works fine for experienced users.
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garyb
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Re: Best motherboard configuration

Post by garyb »

the overhead is not really a problem. i think we get overly worried about theoretical gains, when OLD 7200rpm pata drives used to do the exact same amount of work with no issues. it was only the very early pata drives that were too slow and necessitated SCSI and RAID. from what i've seen, newer computers with better specs have all the extra horsepower eaten by things that are not needed in an audio workstation. in the end, the projects are about the same.

yes, i know that it's now possible to have more Romplers running at the same time, but the need for that is mostly laziness. the music is no better for it. only live use of Romplers that have super inefficient code needs this. Gigastudio is a perfect example of how much a well written app could do with older, inferior, machines. the newest apps are just pigs. why? because the hardware is better. at the end of the day, the music is the same. awesome in the hands of a master, and sucky in the hands of a dilettante.

computers are really useful, but at the end of the day, it's not about the hardware. it's just my opinion(and i'm absolutely not against the newest technologies), but it's best to not overcomplicate things. as i always say, "is it about the love of music, or is it about the love of computers?".
fidox
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Re: Best motherboard configuration

Post by fidox »

Bud Weiser wrote: Fri Oct 29, 2021 5:23 pm VST plugins show graphics issues while some of these produce clicks and pops when GUI is animated.
I had clicks and pops while using onboard graphics, so, first thing was to disable onboard graphics.
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valis
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Re: Best motherboard configuration

Post by valis »

I’m speaking from the perspective of what changes are coming in the market by the way, not leveling any criticism towards SATA vs. NVME for our uses. The form factor and command set changes in the works aren’t intended primarily for consumer uses anyway, though certain options certainly do target things a consumer device needs and so the tech will trickle down.
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valis
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Re: Best motherboard configuration

Post by valis »

As example:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/16702/nv ... n-released
https://www.servethehome.com/e1-and-e3- ... ds-kioxia/

There was a command set release I saw at some point this year as well which is what I was really thinking of. If memory serves it is an electrical/command set spec that is more agnostic to the physical format than even nvme 2.0 (or it might be a forthcoming usage, can't quite recall). I did dig around the other day for that article so I could remember it well enough to speak about it further, but I recall also that most of these techniques are already in use in our mobile devices and in that case are even 'trickling up' to us and the datacenter.

That's because mobile makers have full control over their SOC's and other chipsets, which is why the new iPhone 13 can record in ProRes 8K. They can write to the nand as they see fit and the iOS 'filesystem' isn't anything we ever see on those devices. I'm ignoring the idiocy of owning nothing here and just focusing on the technical merits of the medium of course.

Am I impressed by this because I think it's cool? Not really, but having used ProRes with video content for almost 2 decades (and codecs like Cineon before that which Hero gobbled up for their cameras) it just seems that we finally have some gear that can actually use it for under $20k (not to mention the costs that Red debuted at). That's not so much cool as it's about time.

But what really caught my attention is that this will apply to everything from sd (sdhc etc) sizes up to the e-series formats above, and will also help things like my raspberry pi's and of course cameras and the like. I'm sure that will fold over into our arena through devices from Akai, NI and smaller makers because it will enable realtime sample streaming with very inexpensive nand based solutions.

Certainly sdhc is already quite fast, whether in an ARM mini-computer or 8k DSLR camera, but the latter will always be compressed to a much larger degree than the upscale pro models that just strap a full SSD onto the back. At least until the bottleneck is removed, and case in point the iPhone 13 example above. Is this necessary for us when spinning HD's work? Again no, but it's inevitable in the same way that the Xite USB discussion is dumb, and was also inevitable.
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Bud Weiser
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Re: Best motherboard configuration

Post by Bud Weiser »

fidox wrote: Sat Oct 30, 2021 1:06 pm I had clicks and pops while using onboard graphics, so, first thing was to disable onboard graphics.
As I said above, it doesn´t happen always w/ my system.
Just only w/ the 2 Sonic Projects and Toontrack plugins I mentioned above,- and when running in Studio One Pro 4 on WIn7 Pro SP1 DAW.
Ironically, when using Sonic Projects "Stringer 3.0", no issues,- but the older "OP-X Pro II" introduces clicks and pops.
Issue reduced when deactivating GUI-keyboard animation ...
Unfortunately, animation of GUI - Pitchbend- and Mod- levers not possible.

It´s hard to imagine it´s general iGPU or related driver issue because it doesn´t happen in the other hosts as also not on my Win10 laptop which also uses a 4th gen Intel i7 Haswell and iGPU,- just like my Win7 rackmount DAW machine (Intel i7 4790K).
I deactivated the NVidia graphics on that laptop for the time being.

That´s why I´m after that memory adress sharing of XITE PCIe and Intel graphics ...
And because we´re talking about specific VST plugins and a host, I can imagine it might also be code/library dependend.


:)

Bud
Berny Shoes
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Re: Best motherboard configuration

Post by Berny Shoes »

Bud Weiser wrote: Sun Oct 31, 2021 7:41 pm
fidox wrote: Sat Oct 30, 2021 1:06 pmI had clicks and pops while using onboard graphics, so, first thing was to disable onboard graphics.
Just a confusion, what’s more important in a modern audio pc?
Pcie graphics card addressing the cpu taking clocks cycles and also adding to the pcie traffic
Or
on board gpu addressing the cpu taking clock cycles

I guess it depends on what the pc is used for but for this scenario the query is for an audio pc only

Cheers!
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