a7v266-e

[Allen Hallada]

Hey guys,
I would just hook the hard drives to the Promise controllers in parallel and not use the Raid setup or the IDE controllers. The 10-20% increase I posted above was just with the Promise ATA100 controllers not Raid. Make sure Digi is in PC slot 3. Print out your IRQ settings (system settings) in Device Manager and post them when you get it running. Good luck.
Allen [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[Mark_Knecht]

Hi,
That depends completely on your hard drive, but probably somewhere between 15MB/S And 30+MB/S. (I'd guess on the higher end...) The other thing you want to look at, which HDTach shows you, is the CPU usage while the drive is being used. My system drive gives me a read speed of about 29MB/S with a CPU utilization of 5.9% This utilization number is pretty important, as the amount used by the CPU is not available for plug-ins. High CPU utilization is pretty common when DMA is not enabled.

It truly is a zero-sum game.

Cheers,
Mark


<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:<HR>Originally posted by littlegreenmen13:
what kind of numbers should i look for when i test the drives to make sure dma is up and running?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

[littlegreenmen13]

where can i download those 2 hard drvie testing programs? thanks for all y'all's help.

[Allen Hallada]

You can get Sisoft Sandra here: http://download.cnet.com/downloads/ 0-10102-100-6313817.html

Not sure where I got HTACH from.
Sisoft Sandra is actually an industry standard for benchmarking CPU, Motherboards, Memory, Hard Drives etc. You will find it on almost every test being performed on these components. It gives you a hard drive index comparing your current drive to ATA66 7200 rpm, ATA100 7200rpm, ATA100 RAID X2 etc. If you are running an ATA100 7200 drive hooked to the promise controller, you should be getting between a 24,000 and 36,000 drive index. I think mine was around 28,000 the last I checked hooked to the Promise controller.
Good luck.
Allen
[img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[bstaley]

I am typing this half asleep from work because I have been up very late the last two nights building the new system. All I can say is...WOW!!!!

I haven't done the DaveC test yet but I did a test of simply opening the "Be There" demo and adding stereo aux inputs and loading Waves RenVerbs on them. Here are the results so far:

My old system (PIII 933/Cusl2c):
6 RenVerbs

New System (XP1900+/A7V266-E):
12 RenVerbs

I was able to get 13 RenVerbs but it wouldn't play very long without running out of CPU. I am blown away. I am getting more than DOUBLE the performance of a 933 PIII. It really is making those expensive DSP cards for the TDM systems look kind of silly isn't it?

The amazing thing is, I haven't done ANYTHING to tweak this system out yet. There are plenty of settings in the bios I haven't touched, let alone trying to overclock the thing (not that I need to). I simply put the basic pieces together and ran the test.

Right now I have my system drive (26GB Quantum Fireball Plus KX) on the the Primary IDE controller. HDTach shows it is using 11% CPU. Max Read speed is 29MB/sec and minimum Read speed is 13MB/sec.

I have my Audio drive (60GB IBM 60GXP) connected to the first raid controller and HDTach shows it is only using 5% CPU. Max Read speed is 41MB/sec and minimum Read speed is 19MB/sec.

I wonder if I put the system drive on the Promise controller too if it will use less CPU? The only problem is in the Bootup section of the bios it doesn't show anything attached to the raid controller as available to boot from. It only shows what's on the regular controllers. How are you getting it to boot from raid?

I'll try the DaveC test in a few days. I want to tweak this a little more. I also have to install Windows2000 on the second partition of my system drive since PT LE still only runs on 98/ME! I CAN'T WAIT FOR THE DAY WHEN ALL OF MY SOFTWARE CAN BE RUN WITHOUT HAVING TO DUAL BOOT!!!!!

Has anybody messed with different bios versions? Different VIA drivers? I'm sure my system can't be optimally configured already. Keep sharing the information guys. This is great. Thanks.

[Allen Hallada]

Yes, you will get better performance by hooking the system drive to the Promise controller Port A and your audio drive to Port B. In bios select SCSI as a boot up option after your floppy and CD.
Let us know how it goes.
Allen [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[bstaley]

Allen, I will try changing to the raid controller tonight.

One thing I noticed is that when I put the Digi001 in slot 3, windows didn't recognize it. I had to put it in slot 2 for it to work. Does your motherboard have the onboard audio? Mine does and I think it shares with PCI slot 3. Maybe that is the problem. Right now I also have a NIC in slot 5. The Digi001 is currently using IRQ 11.

[Mark_Knecht]

Hi,
I was working with another user that was having P4 problems. In reading his Asus manual, it specifically stated that if you used a PCI based audio card you HAVE to disable the onboard audio stuff in BIOS. I think you should check your manual closely for similar wording...

IRQ11 is fine. The only questions would be what do you have at IRQ9 and 10, and are you sharing anything on 11?

11% CPU usage for the system drive seems high to me. This could be a driver issue. However, I don't think the system drive is actually accessed too much of the time while recording, so this moght not be worth messign with. 5% on the audio drive is great. I don't know if you can get too much better than that. (Do I feel another challenge arising?) [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

One thing I would STRONGLY caution AGAINST is updating your BIOS.Do NOT do this unless you have something that is failing and you are 100% CERTAIN it will be fixed by changing BIOS. Way too many people find themselves unable to reboot after BIOS changes. Be VERY careful in that area. I haven't updated any of my machines in over 4 years now...

Cheers,
Mark

[Allen Hallada]

I disabled the onboard sound. I really don't think the quality is that good anyway. You can use the Digi001 card for all your Windows sounds anyway, just hook up some active monitors to the Digi001 monitor outs, switch your sounds in Windows to Digi001 for out and in and your set. Will be interesting to see what kind of results you get with it in slot 2 and IRQ11. Most of the research done in here on the DUC has lead to Digi needing to be in slot 3. That all may change with these new motherboards. Run the Davec stress test after you have a few hours of burn in and let us know how it goes. As far as VIA drivers, you should have the most current ones already since this motherboard is so new and the bios should be the latest also. I agree with Mark, the one thing that has screwed me up the most with motherboards, is updating the bios to the newer most current version (on older boards) without the bugs being worked out in them first. I think the most current versions are sometimes beta versions. So I usually select the one behind that and make sure the bugs have been worked out first. www.amdzone.com has great info on the newer bios versions.
12 Renverbs, you are the king! Did you download the new optimized version off the www.waves.com site or is that the version that came with your bundle? Optimized version may give you twice the performance.
Allen [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]
[img]images/icons/cool.gif[/img]

[bstaley]

I discovered that PCI slot 4 is the unshared slot on the A7V266-E. I'll have to try that too. Maybe I should assign IRQ9 to it in the bios?

Those were the updated .dlls for the RenVerb which I downloaded from their website. I'm very happy with 12.

Usually in my mixes I am only able to run one or two Renverbs once I have all of my other plugins and automation going. I often end up writing the plugin to the file using Audiosuite to free up CPU. I have a feeling I won't have to do that anymore. [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]