Magma - Mobo - PCI - Systemperformance Problem

[mk1000]

Hi folks!

I really hope you can help me with my problem!
Everything started with the upgrade of my system to 4 uad cards- I still had free pci slots!
Suddenly problems in the audioperformance started (crackles)- I found out that it had somethin to do with the 4th card. The system run stable with only 3 card on.
I told UA about my problem, and their answer was as follows:
“ This is strange. It seems like the slot is bad to me or that the motherboard can't handle this much draw on the PCI bus.”

I bought a magma 7 slot chassis, to improve the audioperformance which is really stable until the pc shuts himself down for no reason...Sometimes several hours lie between the crashes, but sometimes it happens one time after another... Uad meter shows at 55% , CPU/Asio-Meter at 40 – 60%. Sometimes it happens when I'm having a breake- no music is played, no performance is used. I come back from the toilet and the picture is frozen, or sometimes during the audiofile editing everything freezes.

Three times a row I disabled and enabled the Uad FX at the Uad meter with the result that the computer shuts himself down and starts automaticaly.
I changed the order of the pci cards, tryed all possiblilities (different cards, different pci slots).
I even put the RME with the UADs into the Magma...

What I noticed is that there are no troubles if UAD performance is low- less traffic at the pci bus (?),
exactly the opposite happens at a high performance of the song- SX is obviously busy with evening out latency during high uad performance. So if I turn on one uad plugin too much, the uad meter might show 100% performance, then suddenly the HD access gets up as well (this can happen at 70% of the uad meter!) the graphic and the audio performance slows down until I switch of again the plug in (I switched on before)- the whole performance becomes normal again!
Furthermore I observed, that when I switch off the uad effects at the meter and keep on working, the pc stays apparently stable- coincidence or not?

Multiface is pluged in the PCI Slot 3 (unshared) and the Magma at 4 (unshared). There is no IRQ Sharing, exceped the 4 Uad cards which share 2IRQ’s.
I thought I would solve all my problems with the purchase of a Magma, not getting new ones!!!!
So my question is: is it possible that the MoBo cant cope withe the datastream at the pci bus and therefore it makes no difference, if a Magma is pluged or not???

What possibilities do I have to get rid of the current problem? What might be the reason?
I’m really confused!!! ](*,)

Thanks
Michael

P4-2,533ghz , Asus p4g8x deluxe-Intel E7205 Chipsatz FSB 533/400Mhz, rme multiface, cubase sx3.1, 1gig ram Dual-Channel DDR (infineon), matrox g550, XPhome,4 Uad / Magma Chassis, 2IDE Hd , 1Sata Hd
Asio Buffer 1024 (mostly)
PCI Latency: RME 248, Uad Cards 64, Lan 48, Matrox G550 32, Sata Raidcontroller 32

AMD Athlon XP2600 FSB333, 2GiG Ram, <> Lan 1GigBIT FX Teleport

 

[.mr chris]

Hi there.

some thoughts:
- up main RAM to 2GB
- is your PSU BIG enough?
- do you use \"pagefile\" virtual memory?

PCI bus \"overload\" could be...

I would try to disable all you can, for testing, like Lan onboard sound, firewire, usb, sata raid... see what happens.

the bottleneck can be if your mobo has only 1-2 \"shared\" PCI busses, check your PCI latency tools, on which bus the devices are...

Which Syncrosoft version do you run?
And try setting the UADs to 240 PCI latency for testing...

HTH,
.c

 

[Animix]

Hi folks!

I really hope you can help me with my problem!
Everything started with the upgrade of my system to 4 uad cards- I still had free pci slots!
Suddenly problems in the audioperformance started (crackles)- I found out that it had somethin to do with the 4th card. The system run stable with only 3 card on.
I told UA about my problem, and their answer was as follows:
“ This is strange. It seems like the slot is bad to me or that the motherboard can't handle this much draw on the PCI bus.”

I bought a magma 7 slot chassis, to improve the audioperformance which is really stable until the pc shuts himself down for no reason...Sometimes several hours lie between the crashes, but sometimes it happens one time after another... Uad meter shows at 55% , CPU/Asio-Meter at 40 – 60%. Sometimes it happens when I'm having a breake- no music is played, no performance is used. I come back from the toilet and the picture is frozen, or sometimes during the audiofile editing everything freezes.

Three times a row I disabled and enabled the Uad FX at the Uad meter with the result that the computer shuts himself down and starts automaticaly.
I changed the order of the pci cards, tryed all possiblilities (different cards, different pci slots).
I even put the RME with the UADs into the Magma...

What I noticed is that there are no troubles if UAD performance is low- less traffic at the pci bus (?),
exactly the opposite happens at a high performance of the song- SX is obviously busy with evening out latency during high uad performance. So if I turn on one uad plugin too much, the uad meter might show 100% performance, then suddenly the HD access gets up as well (this can happen at 70% of the uad meter!) the graphic and the audio performance slows down until I switch of again the plug in (I switched on before)- the whole performance becomes normal again!
Furthermore I observed, that when I switch off the uad effects at the meter and keep on working, the pc stays apparently stable- coincidence or not?

Multiface is pluged in the PCI Slot 3 (unshared) and the Magma at 4 (unshared). There is no IRQ Sharing, exceped the 4 Uad cards which share 2IRQ’s.
I thought I would solve all my problems with the purchase of a Magma, not getting new ones!!!!
So my question is: is it possible that the MoBo cant cope withe the datastream at the pci bus and therefore it makes no difference, if a Magma is pluged or not???

What possibilities do I have to get rid of the current problem? What might be the reason?
I’m really confused!!! ](*,)

Thanks
Michael

P4-2,533ghz , Asus p4g8x deluxe-Intel E7205 Chipsatz FSB 533/400Mhz, rme multiface, cubase sx3.1, 1gig ram Dual-Channel DDR (infineon), matrox g550, XPhome,4 Uad / Magma Chassis, 2IDE Hd , 1Sata Hd
Asio Buffer 1024 (mostly)
PCI Latency: RME 248, Uad Cards 64, Lan 48, Matrox G550 32, Sata Raidcontroller 32

AMD Athlon XP2600 FSB333, 2GiG Ram, <> Lan 1GigBIT FX Teleport

I posted about a configuration success with 4 x UAD-1 cards on this thread:

http://www.chrismilne.com/uadforums/vie ... php?t=4697

check your IRQ assignments in your mobo manual and put the host card of your Magma in the one that doesn't share with anything else (if possible). Put *all* of you UAD-1 cards in the Magma and make sure your UAD-1 cards are spaced in the chassis to where they only share IRQ's with each other......never with any other device if possible, and *never, never, never* with the AGP. Put the Multiface card directly in a mobo slot that is not sharing IRQ with the PCI slot that the Magma is using and make sure it doesn't share IRQ with the UAD-1 cards or the AGP bus. Also........I have heard from numerous sources that the Matrox G550 is a real problem. I've never used on personally so I can't speak from experience there. I have seen many references here and elsewhere that IRQ sharing/PCI card placement is no longer a factor in modern DAWs running Win XP. I think this is a bunch of hooey personally......and believe me, I tried everything before I had success with the configuration that you will see in the thread at that link.
Best of lucÜ

 

[mk1000]

Hi Chris,

I’ve run bouth tests you’ve suggested. In bouth cases the pc didn’t crash. I ran the system at maximum performance (Uad Meter ca. 90 % + Asio Meter ca. 50/75 %) and then again my problem occured- monitor frozen, sound stuttering!
One time the system blocked totally, so I had to reset.
I didn’t have so much time to monitor, but this time the system didn’t crash for no reason.

I switched off all the stuff I don’t use, however LAN, SATA and one USB controller I do need! But I switched them off once in combination with the pci latency of the uad card at 240.

To your questions: PSU total Power 353W
Virtual Memory: YES min 1536 MB
max 3072 MB

Syncrosoft Install Version 4.9.7.0

To your recommendations: should I upgrade my ram to 2gig; what has this to do with my problem???

May I use in pairs different manufacturer of ram, because Infineon doesn’t exist any longer. According to the manual it is, but I’ve heard as well that it’s not that good for the performance.
May I combine Eec with no-Eec ram?

What’s the deal with the psu? What relevance has the power supply (adapter)- all uads are in the magma!

Here is a list of the PCI Busses and their setting:

Slot 1 (free) shared with Sata BUS F
Slot 2 (free) unshared BUS G
Slot 3 RME shared with USB 2.0 (switched off) BUS H
Slot 4 Magma unshared BUS E
Slot 5 (free) geteilt mit USB HC2 Contr.& Lan BUS C
Slot AGP (G550) shared with USB HCO Contr. BUS A
USB HC 1 Contr. unshared BUS D
Firewire unshared BUS B

(if I’ve understood you correctly)


Thanx Michael

Dj Animix,

- to the IRQ assignments - Magma is unshared
- Uad's shares 2IRQ's with each other
there is no somthing else
- AGP shares with USB Controller
- Multiface is unshared

- Matrox G550: Are You shure that the G550 can make this
problems

- in your last sentence you be contrary to the first part of your words :-k

- your post \"4 XUAD-1 cards at 98% load-no crackling-here's how\"
it's not coherent to me??? stable or not ?? :-k :-k

Greets Michael

 

[RichR]

I currently have this problem with my Dual Zeon NCCH-DL motherboard from Asus. I'm using a 7-slot Magma with 4-UADs and a powercore MKII (plus another MKII in the mobo).

However, it's only when I'm pushing it hard with an 88.2kHz project. At 44kHz, it seems to be ok even at high loads. So I think the crashing problem may be due to the fact that it cannot handle the PCI bandwidth.

 

[Animix]

Hi Chris,

Dj Animix,

- to the IRQ assignments - Magma is unshared
- Uad's shares 2IRQ's with each other
there is no somthing else
- AGP shares with USB Controller
- Multiface is unshared

- Matrox G550: Are You shure that the G550 can make this
problems

- in your last sentence you be contrary to the first part of your words :-k

- your post "4 XUAD-1 cards at 98% load-no crackling-here's how"
it's not coherent to me??? stable or not ?? :-k :-k

Greets Michael

Hi Michael,

I don't see anything with your PCI busses/IRQ assignments that would indicate any problems......and I'm sorry I wasn't clear on the stability issue. Yes, my system is very stable at this point.

Regards,

 

[.mr chris]

PSU total Power 353W
> well, IMO you should have some 450W approx. (at least) You have to calculate some \"headroom\" for the PSU, so it does not work \"on top\" all the time. Weird crashes sometimes lead back to a weak PSU...

I am running 2GB on System1, 3GB on System2, on both DAWs Virtual memory is set to 0MB. I had weird crashes with Virtual memory above a certain RAM usage...

Syncrosoft Install Version 4.9.7.0
> try the 5.0.0.2 version and see if it works better, with the >v5 you have to PLUG IN the dongle while installing...

RAM: get as \"close as\" possible to your original RAM, DDR, etc... reg, non reg...ecc... you know...

What’s the deal with the psu? What relevance has the power supply (adapter)- all uads are in the magma!
> see above. We (and other ppl) also had weird crashes during HOT summer days due to overheaten PSU/ CPUs etc... UADs crashed coz the overall system temp was too hot, maybe you need to add some chassis fans...

Here is a list of the PCI Busses and their setting:
--
(if I’ve understood you correctly)
> well, not quite: the Tyan S2885 e.g. has 3 different, INDEPENDANT PCI busses. I checked the manual of your board, well (sorry) consumer stuff no drawing of the PCI buss structure... well...

HTH,
.c

 

[PaulB]

We (and other ppl) also had weird crashes during HOT summer days due to overheaten PSU/ CPUs etc... UADs crashed coz the overall system temp was too hot

I was one of them ! Remember Chris
I've mounted those little graphicscard fans on the UAD's.
Has this cured the freezing? Maybe...
All I know is that I had not a single crash since then.

Greets