Problem using 3 card system in a mixture of PCI-x and PCI slots

[kirkgale]

Hi x9Blade...

your Gigabyet board is for a different CPU Socket than my 965 i7 et. al...

I already knew from ploughing thru Newegg's listings for LGA Socket 1366 boards that there is no ATX form factor with 3 adjacent PCI-x slots, and have now verified the same unfortunate state of affairs for 3 adjacent PCI slots.

There is, however, the Supermicro MBD-X8DA6 with 3 adjacent PCI-x slots (just like our old G5's...) IF I wanna go ATX extended (and lose the nice horizontal home theatre type case) and....is it a MUST to fill in that second CPU slot...?

I'll hold off a total system redo of this nature for a few more days pending any wisdom offered here....

[DigitalMetal]

wow that board looks awesome !
i wish PTHD could deal with more than 2GB of RAM, can you imagine how good it would be with that thing stacked full ?
:)

The chipset doesnt look familiar though, dunno if its one thats beeen tested to work with PT cards

[x9blade]

hello kirk....... yes my mobo is already a relic
someone please make a mobo with plenty pci slots for new cpu

[kirkgale]

Hi DigitalMetal,

wadda ya mean...?

w/ Win 7 x64, PTHD has 4 gig all to itself (a la long-time Mac state of affairs) so in a VI-loaded-up session, my Omnisphere's "remaining memory available" meter (or whatever its called) still indicates 2.x giga free. Its why we are here...


As for the chipset, AFAIK, no one's testing or waiting for testing (and my P55 chipset works fine w/ no so-called testing)...It seems like Digi's release of the beta for Win 7 (x64) w/out chipset recommendations is as much encouragement as we are gonna get...

[DigitalMetal]

im pretty sure protools itself cant use more than 2GB
open up your windows task manager and on the processes tab look at the memory usage for PT, does it go above 2GB at all?
Id be interested to know (i could well just have the Xp scenario in my head but dont remember it being any different in W7 64)
Although the new beta might work on W7 64 im not so sure its actually been written to make use of the advantages to the OS yet.

im a lil bit vague on these details though so please do investigate and let me know anything to the contrary,

[RyanC]

I talked to a couple guys at supermicro a while ago. . .

I have an X7SBA which will run HD6 for 44.1/48 k sessions, but over that it wont seem to use more than 4 cards (still works just wont put plugs on em). I knew this was true with a 192 session, but it appears to be the same on this board at least with 88.2/96. Is the GB board like that? Magma's?

When I was emailing the guys at SM (dead board. . . really easy RMA BTW) I told them that would have a pretty damn good market for a 6 PCI or PCI-x board with dual i7, but I'm not sure he realized how many of us might be out here. . . Especially when you think about the sheer number of PCI-x core systems about to hit the used market as the mac guys eventually have to ditch their G5's.

Maybe we should all bombard them with emails? It seems that with the number of products they make over there it wouldn't be too hard for them to make one to suit our needs? Low DPCLT tests, basic PCIe for vid, it should have integrated FW I think (just enough people bring me their sessions on a FW HD) and USB, no built in audio. We probably don't need old style serial or parallel ports, and the FW, USB and NICs (dual please) should be either PCIe or integrated into the SB.

What would be REALLY amazing is if digi would qualify the board (and a 6 slot PCIe one, now I'm really dreaming, haha DIGI=cockos? yeah right. . . )

Anyone know a good way to do an email petition? My guess is if we had ~500 buyers at ~500/board, they would do it. I know that's a little steep for a board, but it's not bad for a board and a magma and all the downtime we spend experimenting.

Thoughts?

[RyanC]

I'm no motherboard designer but it looks like supermicro x8dtn+ could easily be modified to be the perfect board for us.

It uses intel 6700PHX PCIe to PCIx hub that connects directly to the NB with no bottleneck (2GB/s theoretical bandwidth and only faster upstream from there. . . )

The PDF on 6700PHX seems to say that it can support up to an 8 slot PCI sub system, especially when running at lowly speeds such as 33mHz. Also this would seem to be ideal as there are 16 IRQ's dedicated to that specific hub.

They could ditch UIO and IPMI, put the six 64 bit slots in there and we should be set for quite a while. . .

[Brandonx1]

Originally Posted by RyanC

I have an X7SBA which will run HD6 for 44.1/48 k sessions, but over that it wont seem to use more than 4 cards (still works just wont put plugs on em). I knew this was true with a 192 session, but it appears to be the same on this board at least with 88.2/96. Is the GB board like that? Magma's?

You can't use anything more then a HD4 with sessions over 48K. It's some kind of limitation. Look in the expanded systems guide. Even with a expansion chassis, nothing more then an HD4 over 48K.
Best,
Brandon

[kirkgale]

Yaow...RyanC:

I'll join that petition to Supermicro...(i.e., to get 3 PCI-x slots adjacent) for an LGA Socket 1366...

but are all Sockets created equal...?

(I just found on the net that the dual CPU Supermicro board w/ 3 PCI-x sluts that I was getting hot over as an alternative to the 8XSAX (i.e., the MBD-X8DAE), supports only Xeon 5500 quads, while I have the first generation 8 core i7 965...

is that apples and oranges with my i7 CPU...?

[PasteEater]

@x9blade

That board (ga-p35-s3g) looks great, but how can 4 or 5 cards fit in there? It looks like there's a giant heatsink in the way that would make it difficult to seat the extended PT TDM cards.

I'm having the same issue with the board I'm using now: a heatsink sits at the rear end of the first PCI card slot, so I am unable to put my Core card there. Is there a way around this that I don't know about?