Member Avatar for davejw

Hi there,

I have a problem that I need to solve.

I have a PC with an Asus P4B motherboard, 1.7 Ghz CPU, 400 fsb, 1 gig SD Ram. My problem?
I'm a music composer and work via two 'vintage' Yamaha PCI sound cards (DS2416s). I would like to upgrade my system because the latest audio plugins are very cpu intensive. I'm increasingly finding the need to do tedious work arounds (such as bouncing groups down to stereo pairs, offline processing etc).

However, I've recently read in two audio mags (Audio Technology and Sound on Sound) that all of the latest motherboards have PCI slots keyed to 3.3 volts (as well as PCI Express which I know I can't use). My soundcards are keyed to 5 volts and the article claimed that the cards won't run in a new board.

I've gleaned from various forums that I could upgrade the CPU on my board to a 2.6 ghz P4. I'm wondering what kind of performance lift this might give me. IE: is it worth the cost?

Hopefully,
dj

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Member Avatar for disophisis

Find out what socket the cpu is, and what is it that you have now? a celeron? a p4?

The socket information will probably be listed in a motherboard manual, or if you bought it from a manufacture (say dell or hp) then the information is probably on their website.

Member Avatar for davejw

Find out what socket the cpu is, and what is it that you have now? a celeron? a p4?

The socket information will probably be listed in a motherboard manual, or if you bought it from a manufacture (say dell or hp) then the information is probably on their website.

I had a P4 intel cpu on the P4B but that motherboard decided to die and thus forced my hand on an upgrade. As 'luck' had it the local computer shop had a second hand 'Asus P4P 800 E Deluxe' board in - which I have purchased. It has PCI 2.1 I believe, which provides 5 volt power to pci devices - as does PCI version 2.2. The problems begin with v 2.3, which ditched 5v support and only provide 3.3v.

Anyway, my new board has a 2.8 ghz cpu with hyperthreading, which seems really quick and responsive, but runs my music software with great instability. I experience intermittent audio stuttering and sudden cpu spikes and have to reboot to get things working again.

I'm running a sata drive trogether with an IDE drive and wondering whether this is causing stability problems. The old system was incredibly stable - until it just died one day.

Any clues about the audio stuttering? Are there known issues mixing IDE and SATA drives?

Member Avatar for disophisis

You could bench your CPU with prime95 or some other stability software to see if the processor is having problems. You could also do memory tests (such as memtest) to see if there are any problems with the memory.

Running a SATA drive and an IDE drive should not hurt stability unless there is something wrong with the controllers.

Also, make sure you have proper drivers for all of your equipment.

Member Avatar for davejw

Mem test was fine. Prime95 froze up any drive I downloaded the zip folder to (I didn't download it onto my music computer - I keep safe from the net).

Found another stability test that didn't find any problems.

I should probably try a computer music forum - I guess this is fairly specialised stuff.

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