ASUS P8Z77-V Motherboard?

[Alex]

Has anyone tried this board Series yet ASUS P8Z77-V Motherboard - ATX, Socket H2 (LGA 1155), Intel Z77 Chipset, DDR3 2600 MHz (O.C.)?

I have a new build coming up and have had great results with the H61 and Z68.

If so any issues we will be running i5 3rd Gen

[stoven]

Actually building a system with that board and a pair of RME RAYDAT cards as I write this...Took a chance since I didn't see anything good bad or otherwise about this board. Will let you know how it works out...

[stoven]

FYI. Just completed my build and first run on a system using the Asus P8Z77-V motherboard with a Core i3 2120 processor and 8 gigs of RAM. Audio interface is a pair of RME RAYDAT cards connected to M-Audio Profire 2626 interfaces in standalone mode. 24 channels in use, 8 monitor mixes plus the FOH mix and a recording mix. I am seeing about 30% CPU usage at 24 bit/48 khz, buffer size of 32 with lots of compression and EQ active on the FOH mix as well as a reverb plugin.

The installation worked just fine once I got past a few things...

Issue #1: XP will not install without a BSOD unless you create a slipstreamed install media (or use a USB floppy drive with F6 at install). There are a number of write-ups about this issue and how to resolve it online. It will require either a USB floppy drive or a slipstreamed XP install disc with the appropriate drivers. There is no way around it by simply using a USB stick or another CD containing just the drivers. You MIGHT be able to switch the mode in BIOS to IDE instead of AHCI but that didn't work for me. It may have worked had I been using the 3G instead of the 6G SATA ports on the motherboard but then you lose the performance of AHCI and there is no way to upgrade the drivers after XP is already installed. It's actually pretty easy to slipstream the drivers into an XP install. Just do a Google search for it.

Issue #2: Only one of the PCI Express x1 slots is active unless you explicitly change the slot mode in the BIOS. The default is "Auto" which will NOT enable both x1 slots. If you plan to use multiple RME cards make sure you change the setting accordingly to enable the second PCI Express x1 slot. This will also disable the 6G SATA controller so you can only use the 3G ports on the board.

Issue #3: Increase the amount of shared RAM allocated to the onboard Intel video controller...By default (auto mode) there is only enough shared video RAM to do 1024x768 resolution. I increased it to 256 megabytes (what my previous video card had) and was able to use 1280x1024.

Issue #4: The driver DVD supplied by ASUS is useless. Do not use the auto play routines from the DVD...Navigate to the individual driver folders and launch setup. Installing the drivers can be a bit fussy but once it is done you should be in good shape with no more unidentified devices in the device manager.

Issue #5: You MUST disable hyper threading and dual core operation in the BIOS as per the numerous suggestions throughout this forum. Even setting force single core and real time priority in SAC was not enough. I had to disable the features in BIOS.

Once I did that I went from seeing slipped buffers every few minutes even at a buffer size of 256 to ZERO slipped buffers over many hours at a buffer size of 32. This one thing seems to be a key factor to ensure very stable operation. If anyone is running a system with multiple cores and/or hyper threading enabled and zero slipped buffers I'd like to hear about it.

All told a very good experience with this motherboard and processor combination so far. If anyone wants to use this combination and needs some advice on setting it up, feel free to send an e-mail to shane@broadcastengineer.org. Don't MSG me through the forum or I probably won't get it.

PS: I'm still not convinced an i5 or i7 would really have been worth the additional cost, particularly since you need to force the system to run single core anyway. An i3 seems to be just fine for most cases but if you've got the money to burn, I'm sure an i5 or i7 wouldn't HURT, I'm just not convinced it makes that big a difference overall.

--
Shane Toven
Lead Sound Tech
Harvest Christian Center
Laramie, Wyoming

[Mattseymour]

I've got three systems running on i3 CPUs without having to disable a CPU core. Hyperthreading is turned off, as per Bob's recommendation but in my experience dual core seems the ideal for sac. While the engine is a single thread I believe the ui will take advantage of a second processor. Certainly I found one vst (fish fillets) will lock up the ui on a single core machine but work just fine on dual core.

Sac benefits from the fastest core speed available so I suspect the difference between an i3 and i5 is principally the extra two cores, that are of no benefit. But the i7 is much faster and although much more expensive would be noticeable if you we're wanting the highest possible performance from your host.

[stoven]

I turned off multi-core AND hyperthreading...May not have actually needed to turn off multi-core now that I think about it and I think my previous P4 based system had hyperthreading enabled with no ill effects. Could always be something related to this particular motherboard--I'll have to experiment a bit more but in any case, it seems very stable with both multi-core and hyperthreading disabled in the BIOS. As for the UI, I use SAC remote to control the rig (pretty much exclusively--no VST plugins yet) so the performance of the UI on the SAC machine itself doesn't matter as much to me.