New Host

[JeremyJo]

I'm playing the shuffle game; building a new SAC Host and shuffling my old host to FOH remote/Backup Host duty so I can be ready to buy another SAC license for another venue on our campus.

This new machine has i5 2500 processor on Sandy Bridge, Asrock mobo with 4G ram and SSD for operating system. I'm running Windows 7, 64-bit because it's what we have and because I understand XP doesn't handle SSD as well. My previous experience with Win 7 has been good.

This new system is running well. I did Bob's Win 7 tweaks and my SAC load is about 46% where our old system (i5 650 w 8G ram and spinning platter HDD) ran out 60% consistently. SO that's a significant improvement.

BUT, NOW I get buffer slips with F-key changes or when switching mixers. The slips can be audible with a bunch of scrolling of channels. I believe this to be a graphics driver issue, but I don't know how to find and fix it.

Any suggestions?

Thank you

Jeremy

[905shmick]

Try changing the status of the Force Realtime Priority option under the Options menu.

The Win 7 rig I build needed that turned off, but our main XP rig needs it on, so I enabled it by default and it was the culprit of video based slipped buffers.

[JeremyJo]

Tried switching those items in and out. Still slipping buffers. Any other ideas?

[muzicman0]

Are you using the onboard video card? I have the exact same issues when I use my onboard i3 video...went to an ATI card (~$50-$60) and the issue went away.

I did have to play with force realtime priority/force single cpu settings to get it to play nice also.

mm0

[JeremyJo]

Yes, I was trying to use the onboard video. A separate card is no big deal; I just hoped to keep the machine as simple as possible.

I'll find a card and give that a go.

Thanks.

[muzicman0]

I know a lot of people have success with the on-board...just not me.

[ChrisCotton]

I had similar problems until I found motherboard drivers that worked better.

[Donnie Frank]

I'm running Windows 7, 64-bit because it's what we have and because I understand XP doesn't handle SSD as well.



I have an SSD in my Windows XP SAC rig and it runs well (see .sig). Bootup is very quick and SAC comes up almost instantly. I've had issues with SSD's, but those have been the Intel 320 series, which seem to be problematic all over the Internet. Had 2 fail within 12 hours of each other. My SAC SSD is a smaller, X25 unit which has worked well so far and seems to have no reliability issues.




My previous experience with Win 7 has been good.



I have had good experience with Windows 7, too, but not on my SAC rig. She's been solid as a rock with Windows XP.

[hkmorgan87]

Win xp is capable of handling ssd drives if the manufacturer offers a program that will handle the TRIM support instead of the OS. And for that matter, running a ssd drive without TRIM isn't really a big deal. Many of us use ssd's in our host with xo with no issues.

Some OCZ , corsair, and intel drives have that program available.

As for video stability, even with bobs win 7 tweaks, I find that win xp seems to work better with the HD 2000/3000 series video graphics. My host with win 7 will jump 30% when switching between fkeys in SAC. Same computer with xp only 2%. Who knows if that's because win 7 is more graphic intensive, or if the drivers between OS's are to blame.

So I personally have a dual hd dual boot setup with my host. I have it setup this way, so I can compare xp to win 7 in terms of performance. When I've made up my mind the discarded OS will become my tracks drive.

In summary, just because win 7 has the latest drivers, offers 64 bit support, allows 4+ gigs of ram, doesn't mean it's the best choice for an OS.

[905shmick]

Win xp is capable of handling ssd drives if the manufacturer offers a program that will handle the TRIM support instead of the OS. And for that matter, running a ssd drive without TRIM isn't really a big deal. Many of us use ssd's in our host with xo with no issues.


Very true. If the drive is only going to be used as the boot drive and you've turned off the windows swap file as well as disabled things like file indexing services and other things that keep updating the drive, you'll be fine with SSD in XP. If you're going to be doing SAW recording, get a standard 7200 or 10,000 rpm spinning hard drive and record to that.

[JeremyJo]

Found it; testing now, but so far it's working correctly.

I installed 4G ram in two 2G sticks. I didn't read the mobo manual and the print on the mobo was very small, so I installed them right next to one another in what looked like slots A1 and A2. Mobo manual says for two sticks in dual-channel mode, the sticks should be installed in A1 and B1. Made that change and it comes up rockin!

Stable, no slips with f-key action or mouse wheel scrolling. Too bad I have a graphics card on the way - maybe I'll try a four monitor setup :)

Anyway, hope that helps someone. I still get a couple slipped buffers when a remote connects, then stable after.

I also checked load with SAWStudioLite running; SAC load goes to about 60-80 after arming and RECReady with 37 tracks. This is in Win7 64-bit; I've seen this before. Not sure why, but it seems stable anyway and that's still lower than on the previous host. We don't record often and I just disabled tracks I didn't need last time I recorded to keep the load low.

Again, hope that helps someone. I didn't expect it, but it makes some sense with on board graphics and shared memory etc.

JJ

[hkmorgan87]

Congrats JJ, I hope that was your issue.