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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Brief recap and focused plan tied to the thread: has vintage 5V-keyed Yamaha PCI cards and reports intermittent audio stuttering after moving to a newer Asus board with mixed SATA/IDE drives; already suggested memory/CPU stress tests. Below are targeted diagnostics and fixes that address the usual causes of DAW dropouts on mixed-new/old hardware.

Run a latency/DPC check first

  • Use a kernel/DPC latency tracer (for example the tool from Thesycon) while playing audio to see if driver DPC or ISR spikes line up with the stutters. If you see large red spikes, the problem is almost certainly a driver or controller causing high interrupt/DPC time.

Driver, BIOS and storage controller checks

  • Update the motherboard BIOS and the official chipset/SATA drivers from Asus (prefer the Intel-supplied driver for the southbridge if available). Third-party SATA controllers (JMicron, Marvell, etc.) have historically caused DPC spikes; if the board has a separate controller, disable it temporarily or move the system disk to the native controller for testing.
  • Be cautious swapping SATA/IDE modes: changing AHCI/IDE in BIOS can make an existing Windows install unbootable without the proper drivers. Test with a spare disk or a short clean install if necessary.

Power-management, HT and resource isolation

  • Temporarily disable Hyper-Threading and any aggressive CPU power-saving (EIST/C-states/SpeedStep) in BIOS and set Windows to High Performance. Some DAW workloads are sensitive to core parking/clock changes.
  • Remove or disable nonessential devices (onboard LAN/FireWire, extra drives) and try the card in another PCI slot. Check IRQ/resource assignments in Device Manager for conflicts.

Hardware checks

  • Monitor CPU and chipset temps and check PSU voltages; Prime95 hangs can point to overheating or voltage/VRM problems.
  • Verify the PCI slot key and the board manual to confirm full 5V support if using older 5V-only cards; 3.3V-only slots will not accept 5V-keyed cards.

If DPC traces point to a specific driver, update or remove that driver. If no driver shows spikes, try a minimal clean OS image on a single drive to exclude driver/service interaction.

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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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