A couple of questions with the new machine

[Naturally Digital]

I did a quick test, setting to real time priority seems to have made it about one slipped in 10 seconds. There is the ATI stuff from the ATI driver disc and some Realtech stuff from the Gigabyte driver disc that I will try to loose and see if that cures the problem.

Definitely get rid of the catalyst software. You may need to completely uninstall and remove the card then reinstall the drivers only. IIRC there are usually two different downloads available on the ATI site.

Did you move the Raydat card so it isn't sharing an IRQ with the ATI card?

[Wink0r]

I worked a show yesterday, so I am just getting back to this now. Thanks for the further suggestions. JLudlow also had some problems with some GigaByte garbage that I will check out. I am going to go through the add/remove programs list and see what is there that I don't want on a dedicated machine.

[Wink0r]

It appears that the problem was some GigaByte power management software that came from the GigaByte driver disc. I would suggest that anyone using a GigaByte board check what they are installing on the computer. This software had an entry in the add/remove programs folder. The machine has been up with SAC engine running for about a half hour now with zero slipped buffers. Now on to a bit more testing.

Thanks to all for the help.

[Wink0r]

Another update: The machine has been on over two hours and I played an eighty minute live CD through it with no slipped buffers. It appears that the initial problem is solved.

[Bob L]

Those background services can get you in trouble... and they are not always easy to figure out.

Good job.

Bob L

[DominicPerry]

Gigabyte boards are top tier, up there with Intel and Asus. There should be no problem with it. A lot of mobos come with vast amounts of 'dross'. My Asus board came with about 10 utilities, most of them are uninstalled now.
If you are worried about the performance of the machine, then the best thing to do is run dpclat.exe and if you get amber or red spikes with it, shut down devices and/or services and/or running programs to see if it stops the spikes. This is the fastest and most reliable way of getting good performance with no glitches that I know. Odd things cause problems - I was not the first to find that the ACPI Battery service on my laptop was causing dpc latency spikes, until I disabled the device. This essentially meant that I get no battery control features, but it's necessary to make the machine work properly. This is another reason to dedicate a machine to DAW use - you can kill whatever doesn't serve the DAW purpose without worrying about whether you need the service/device/app for something else.

Dominic

[Wink0r]

dlc is happy!

[DominicPerry]

Cool.

Dominic