6031 Issues and Observations

[Ghengis]

Hi All,

Just going to post a quick synopsis of some issues that I had over the last few days.

Just for fun, I decided to install win7 to have a look at it with PT. Love windows 7 - loads fast, looks great. Anyway, I tried both the x86 (32bit) and x64 (64bit versions)

Just a bit of background here. My system was a Quad Core 6600 on a Gigabyte P35-DS3R mothboard with 4gig of 800mhz Geil memory. I had some initial 6031 errors until I shifted my cards across one slot. After I did that, I didn't have a single issue with those errors.

Also, some of you may have seen a previous post in one of the error threads where I posted the latency of my system. This system gave a latency of 0us. It was kind of freaky, and wasn't sure it was working alright, but again, no problems in PT 8.01.

When I installed 8.01 on both the win 7 x86 and x64 I my latency rose, and I also started getting 6031 errors - extremely frequently - and not allowing me to play for more than 5 secs without stopping.

Here are a quick link to the graphs:

XP x86 SP3, PT 8.01, HD-2 PCI: http://mcgahan.com.au/images/Win_XP_...T8.01_Idle.png

Windows 7 x86, PT8.0, HD-2 PCI: http://mcgahan.com.au/images/Win%207...%20running.PNG

Windows 7 x86, PT8.01, HD-2 PCI: http://mcgahan.com.au/images/Win%207...20happened.PNG

So being able to recreate 6031's consistantly, I tried tuning things up, disabling process etc in win 7. But to no avail. Just for fun (there I go again) I pulled down my home theatre PC, which has a dual core Asus P5k pro and 4gig of mixed 667 and 1066 memory. I put my HD cards into there, installed win7 (both x86 and x64) along with PT 8.01 and there where no more 6031 errors. Everything was fantastically quick. I would have stopped except I my wife and kids would have killed me as there was no computer upstairs. So I thought I'd change the motherboard over. Pulled everything off and did an exact swap with the Gigabyte board. So all that was different was the motherboard. Loaded up Win7 and the errors were back. Now there was only a few components different between the two systems - and IDE DVD (as opposed to my current SATA), the memory, PSU, CPU and Video Card. The most obvious one here is the Video Card. My regular Gigabyte had an Nvidia 8600GT video card that worked quite well. The other computer has an ATI x1600. So I decided to swap the two - that's when everything became cured in windows 7 both x86 and x64.

So to summarise - my system is currently Intel 6600 CPU on Asus P5k Pro with 4gig 800mhz memory with an ATI x1600 PCIe video card.

Now there could still be something different between the motherboards, but don't really feel like pulling both systems apart again to change the cpus.

If anyone is having issues still with 6031 it MAY be worth a try - ditch the nvidia - might be good for games, but I'm starting to have my doubts in a PT system. While I was going through this, I also found a couple of links threads at Toms Hardware and Anandtech to people having latency issues with gigabyte motherboards - these may be bios related.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/24...y-problem-ds3r
http://forums.anandtech.com/messagev...readid=2182171

Now back to my XP boot. The new setup works completely flawlessly in XP and 8.01 as well. The interesting thing here is that the DPA latency checker shows the new system latency being quite alot higher than what my gigabyte MB was - especially trying to match the 0us. This is in both XP and Win 7 (both flavours). Consequently, I believe that is doesn't actually prove that the system will run with or without errors. It may show issues if you are having huge spikes, but if it is consitant, and around the 50-150us mark, it should be fine. Unfortunately I don't have a screen shot at the moment.

So far I'm blaming the NVidia. But if you can't change your video card, try updating the bios to the latest for your Motherboard. Also, if it is an Intel board (most are I think) P35, make sure you are using the latest Chipset drivers as well.

Download them here:
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Sear...lation+Utility

Make sure you reboot.

All of this could be going in the wrong direction as I am basing this all on an unsupported operating system, but it may hold the clues as to what is going on.

cya
Ghengis

[Third Eye Studios]

Thanks for posting all this. Hopefully this will help some of us out. I'll be sure to keep this all in mind if I decide to try 8.0.1 again sometime.

[Stickmanly]

Hey Third Eye,
Great post! I will save this thread for reference - just in case my 6031's return!
Thanks again,

[batcavenet]

Interesting - I am having similar issues as you with Windows Vista - with an NVidia card and board. My latency checker shows below 1000 but definately around half of that sometimes with spikes to 1000

In your windows XP SP3 post is that the same hardware?? but latency is zero?? I am debating if I need to get rid of Vista and go back to XP if that is your latency on XP vs windows 7 on the nvidia hardware.

[sunburst79]

Originally Posted by batcavenet

Interesting - I am having similar issues as you with Windows Vista - with an NVidia card and board. My latency checker shows below 1000 but definately around half of that sometimes with spikes to 1000

In your windows XP SP3 post is that the same hardware?? but latency is zero?? I am debating if I need to get rid of Vista and go back to XP if that is your latency on XP vs windows 7 on the nvidia hardware.

Any spikes are too much. Make sure you have the latest drivers for the card and it that doesnt help try rolling the driver back to the standard MS video drive to see if it fixes the issue.

[batcavenet]

I rolled back the driver- didn't seem to work for me.

I tried disabling some devices to see which ones caused a lot of the latency

Seems like the wireless USB network adapter causes quite a bit, and also the 1394 also causes a lot even though I don't have any firewire devices in the system.

Going to give it another try but I think this 780i evga board - while a very awesome gaming board is not going to handle protools.

[Ghengis]

Originally Posted by batcavenet

Interesting - I am having similar issues as you with Windows Vista - with an NVidia card and board. My latency checker shows below 1000 but definately around half of that sometimes with spikes to 1000

In your windows XP SP3 post is that the same hardware?? but latency is zero?? I am debating if I need to get rid of Vista and go back to XP if that is your latency on XP vs windows 7 on the nvidia hardware.

The spikes are definately a problem. Are you getting errors? I wasn't getting any spikes, it was quite consistant. But I got 6031 errors with good latency in Win 7 on the Gigabyte MB. It's latency graph is in my original post. The new Asus P5k Pro motherboard's latency is HIGHER in both XP and Win 7, but there are no errors once I switched video cards.

One other thing to note is that on X9Blade's system he had to update his NI Kore driver to fix his problem. So in his case, it looks like it was a USB issue. Kore uses USB 2, so maybe a flaky driver or more demanding driver there also is a PITA. I think he is using Nvidia, but a slightly older 7600 card (Chime in Tim!) - again, they may not be quite as demanding on the system resources.

I say this again - I don't necessarily believe that DPC Latency checker will show if you are going to have 6031 errors. If it is consistant like the graphs I posted, you probably have a conflict with either the video card and or associated drivers (Nvidia) or a USB conflict. Look at the 2 things that share interupts with Protools cards - Intel ICH9 Usb ports, and usually the Graphics cards.

Any other theories?
Ghengis

[Ghengis]

Originally Posted by batcavenet

I rolled back the driver- didn't seem to work for me.

I tried disabling some devices to see which ones caused a lot of the latency

Seems like the wireless USB network adapter causes quite a bit, and also the 1394 also causes a lot even though I don't have any firewire devices in the system.

Going to give it another try but I think this 780i evga board - while a very awesome gaming board is not going to handle protools.

Try disabling Firewire in the bios. What chipset is the firewire? Do you have an Nvidia card? Can you get hold of an ATI card to try? Even if it is a basic one I don't think it will matter. I would love someone else to confirm this.

[batcavenet]

The Firewire says "Texas Instruments OHCI compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller" - I will try disabling it.

[sunburst79]

Originally Posted by batcavenet

I rolled back the driver- didn't seem to work for me.

I tried disabling some devices to see which ones caused a lot of the latency

Seems like the wireless USB network adapter causes quite a bit, and also the 1394 also causes a lot even though I don't have any firewire devices in the system.

Going to give it another try but I think this 780i evga board - while a very awesome gaming board is not going to handle protools.

Bingo. At least with PTLE the 6 and 7xx series Nvidia chipsets have been problematic to say the least.

Disabling the Wireless neworking adaptor and the Fw chip in Device Manager may let you work a bit smoother with what you currently have.