It's alive! ... now kill it

[SiO2]

Here's the vitals on my Frankenstein. Setup and installation couldn't have been easier.

CPU: P4 1.7GHz
MOBO: MSI Ultra 645, sporting the SiS645
MEM: 512Mb PC2100 DDR SDRAM
HD: Maxtor D740X 60GB 7200RPM (sys/audio)

Single HD configuration for both system/audio
certainly hurt in the torture test:

PTLE: 5.1.1.330
HW: Audiomedia III
TRACKS: 22

I was dismayed at the total track count and even though it wasn't in the red, overall system response was extremely sluggish. Also there was a noticeable 72Hz hum in both playback channels that gets coupled into the record path. I think this may be due to the fact that the mobo PCI bus is v2.2 compliant 32bit @ 66MHz. Too much for the PCI MatchMaker to handle? Any thoughts on this ?

Anyways, on to better things. Found a buyer for the P4/mobo combo but will hold on to everything else. Here's the bundle of joy Fedex will be bringing soon:

CPU: Athlon XP 1800+
MOBO: ASUS A7V266E
HD: Maxtor D740X 40GB 7200RPM (sys only)

Maybe I can get some aux.'s with this setup. Will post those results too.

- Aaron

[Allen Hallada]

Aaron,
Here is some new info for you regarding the VIA DDR motherboards.

This patch addresses the issue of PCI Latency with Promise controllers only on VIA DDR motherboards ie.KT266, KT266a. There is no "official" patch yet for earlier motherboards ie.KT133a chipsets. It can be removed in control panel easily if you decide not to use it. Has been shown to improve performance of drives on Promise controllers by as much as 40%. It does not support other controllers such as the Highpoint controllers. YOu can download it from the VIA website or use this quick link. http://www.tecchannel.de/hardware/817/9.html http://www.viatech.com/en/index/index.jsp

quote:
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This patch, for all Microsoft Operating Systems, will increase the burst rate. This may not be noticeable in overall Hard Disk performance benchmarks as burst rate is not measured separately and only makes up a small percentage of Hard Disk performance.This patch currently only supports KT266, KT266A, P4X266 and P4X266A chipset but later updates will support more VIA chipsets.
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DO NOT INSTALL THE 4 IN 1 DRIVERS ON THE VIA SITE. THIS HAS DECREASED PERFORMANCE OF THESE CHIPSETS SIGNIFICANTLY.

If your motherboard has the Promise controller I would use it for both hard drives and put your CDRW etc on the IDE channels. Do a search for A7V266E for setup info. Good luck and look forward to the results.
Allen
[img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[gerax]

Hey Allen

Any news about this A7v266E/A7M266 quest we were talking about?

Keep on Rocking

L.G. [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[SiO2]

Allen,

Thanks for the link. I'll post vitals as soon as I get them.

- Aaron

[Allen Hallada]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:<HR>Any news about this A7v266E/A7M266 quest we were talking about? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

LG you will have to refresh my memory on that one. So far I have only received one A7V266E result on the DAVEC test and that was before the latency patch came out. So the AMD761 chipsets are still outperforming any other chipsets. We have not seen the performance here that www.tomshardware.com is publishing yet, although the KT266a is running very stable with little setup problems.
Wish AMD would just keep on making their own chipsets and forget about VIA.
Allen [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[gerax]

I was referring to the fact that the A7V266e gave disappointing resulst according to Nuendo users, and that the go board was the A7M266 (can you belive this, I got it out of luck, because the A7V266e wasn't available at the time of the purchase, so I went with the second best).

Cheers

L.G. [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[G.roots]

gerax,

The A7V266-E makes a SMOKIN BOX! I can achieve 24+18 tracks with NO problem at all. Power is about instructions per cycle.

[img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[ValkRider]

Why doesn't the Asus A7V266 seem to be experiencing the PCI latency problems that other motherboards are? Different Southbridge chipset? It is using the same VIA chipsets isn't it? Sure seems like a hot setup from descriptions I see here. BTW I'm getting ready to build a system so I'm researching at this point. Thanks.