F-key View changes cause glitch in PB

[Arco]

I have a new system i'm testing with a AMD Athlon 64 Dual Core 3800+ and a PCI Express ATI FireGL graphics card, MSI motherboard, 2G RAM.

It seems changing views during playback cause a quite audible pause/glitch in playback as if each change saps cycles from the rest of the PCI bus.

I've tried: turning down graphic acceleration, force single-cpu, done all the BobL tweaks (except the onecpu boot.ini option) with no luck.

I will try the onecpu option and see but any other suggestions would be welcome.

Anyone else running a PCI express card? Some BIOS tweaks?

[Arco]

the "/onecpu" option didn't change the problem. (actually i'm not sure that a dual core cpu will adhere to the /onecpu bios entry...?)

it seems more related to a video issue. I noticed that if i go crazy with the F-keys I'll get residual fragments of each view holding over into the next...more experimenting.

I hope I can get this figured out the speed of my the new setup is fun..

BTW:

RME HDSP 9632

[Sam C]

Did you remember to change your effects under properties, appearance/effects? Uncheck the shadows and contents while dragging.

[Arco]

Did you remember to change your effects under properties, appearance/effects? Uncheck the shadows and contents while dragging.

Yes I got those.

UPDATE:

--cutting back to 16-bit colors on the desktop made a slight difference.
--I pulled the PCIE card and things were even worse using the onboard VGA. --Increasing buffers helps the problem; now at 1024 (rme hdsp 9632) the sound/glitch is barely audible unless I really go nuts with the F-key views..but, it's still there.

There is consistently an odd sound when stopping playback..kind of like putting on the brakes. You hit stop but there's a short zipping sound before things are finally quiet.

I may head over to RME to see what they say...

[Naturally Digital]

Have you checked device manager to see if the RME is sharing interrupts with the video card?

Which chipset does the MB use?

[olzzon]

you should run "pci latency 2.3"
The Ati has probably been set for the highest priority.
And if the RME shares it Irq with the graphiccard it can give alot of problems.

[Carlos Mills]

Hi Arco,

I have HDSP 9632, PIV 1.8 GHz and I use buffer sizes of 512 kb as a starting point (don't forget you must maintain the buffer size in RME at least the same size of SS's settings, never higher). I change F-keys and only occasionaly I have interruptions on the audio (usually when CPU load is over 50%). For smaller projects I use buffers of 256, no problems. If I use 1024 buffer settings I never get a glitch. It seems that with your set up you should be getting better results than this. I never had any noise after hitting stop. I use an old Matrox AGP (2x) video card with, I believe, 32 MB.
I hope you find where the problem is...

EDIT: I assume you are using the MME driver?

Best regards,

[Bob L]

You should have much better buffer performance with the RME... it should work down to 2 or 3 x 64.

Something else is seriously being stepped on here...

What about Virus checkers... make sure they are not active.

I have seen this kind of thing involve mouse drivers or fancy trackball drivers... what is up in the mouse dept... tryt a generic mouse and see if it impacts things...

You may want to also watch the cpu load in the Windows Task Manager as you fling the mouse all around... if it starts to peak the load up to 50% and higher, something else is involved...

I have seen Matrox cards with dual monitor clone settings cause this problem... possibly your video card may be affecting this also...

Bob L

[Arco]

Have you checked device manager to see if the RME is sharing interrupts with the video card?

Which chipset does the MB use?

Yes I did. It all seems OK.

RME on 21, SATA on 23, Video on 18.


ATi RS482/RX480 & ATi SB450 are listed as the chipsets.

[Arco]

My problem is directly related to video as although the performance is super each change in views causes an audible glitch AND a slight pause in playback.

The system does not bog down, far from it. Unfortunately I seem to have a problem that is perhaps linked to buying the wrong motherboard. According to the RME forum I'm better off with an nForce3 chipset. Also the PCIExpress implementation is still evidently in its infancy and it grabs cycles from the PCI bus (not sure of my terminology here..)

I'm still looking for ideas on how to insulate the video pcie slot from the rest of the pci...any ideas? reserve irq's?


You should have much better buffer performance with the RME... it should work down to 2 or 3 x 64.

Something else is seriously being stepped on here...

What about Virus checkers... make sure they are not active.

I have seen this kind of thing involve mouse drivers or fancy trackball drivers... what is up in the mouse dept... tryt a generic mouse and see if it impacts things...

You may want to also watch the cpu load in the Windows Task Manager as you fling the mouse all around... if it starts to peak the load up to 50% and higher, something else is involved...

I have seen Matrox cards with dual monitor clone settings cause this problem... possibly your video card may be affecting this also...

Bob L

[mako]

Hello Arco - one of my machines is a 64 bit Athlon (single core) with a Gigabyte board K8NNXP (nForce 3) with standard PCI. It has never given this problem.

I think you'd be better off with an nForce 3 M/B and ditch the PCIe.

Sorry to hear of your frustrations.

mako

[Arco]

my problem is the form factor is mATX and i can't seem to find anymore nForce3 boards..mostly nForce4 which may work.


I'm thinking that my ATi graphics card may be a problem too so i will try a different manufacture and also get a less "powerful" card (SAW seems to like basic cards just fine)...more later, thanks.

.
Hello Arco - one of my machines is a 64 bit Athlon (single core) with a Gigabyte board K8NNXP (nForce 3) with standard PCI. It has never given this problem.

I think you'd be better off with an nForce 3 M/B and ditch the PCIe.

Sorry to hear of your frustrations.

mako

[SoundSuite]

Do the PCI latency adjusting apps work on PCI-x?
... I didn't have the impression they did, but may be wrong as I haven't gone to PCI-x on my computers here.

[Sebastian Eskildsen]

Have you tryed both asio and mme drivers with your soundcard ?,
I had a similar problem once, and on that machine it disapired when
using asio drivers.

I do also remember something about via chipset has the boad set to
"latency 32" but some soundcards like the Mixtream can have troubles
at that latency, try set it to 64.

Sebastian

[Arco]

ASIO is definitely more solid but the issue exists in both situations.

re: pci latency

i tried 32 and 128..but not 64! I'll give it a try.

The people over at RME say that i need a new MB:mad: and suggest nForce3 chipset boards. Unfortunately there are few or maybe none in uATX or mATX form factor. nForce4 is another option that works but is maybe less good..far more boards available though.

..I still wonder whether a different PCIE video card might make the diff. Off for the computer store...



Have you tryed both asio and mme drivers with your soundcard ?,
I had a similar problem once, and on that machine it disapired when
using asio drivers.

I do also remember something about via chipset has the boad set to
"latency 32" but some soundcards like the Mixtream can have troubles
at that latency, try set it to 64.

Sebastian

[Arco]

PROBLEM SOLVED:

my new Foxconn (Winfast) motherboard arrived and i'm running super fast with no conficts or glitches.

it seems one way to go with AMD Athlon 64 X2 processors is to get an mb with:

--no integrated video
--nForce3 or nForce4 chipset

the PCIe slot i have is in full use and there are no problems.

edl's that were at 40-50% are now at 12-15% so i'm grooving.

[Bob L]

Good news... it is amazing how the way the motherboard is designed or the chipsets themselves can make all the difference in the world... it seems the cpu speed is a very minor part of the equation for performance.

Bob L