a comment on this. Chris Ludwig feel free to jump in here since you are the the one who did these tests (just dont disclose the usual :-O )

when we originally validated the SB platform both H67 and P67 we could fill all slots. including the PCI
HOWEVER if i recall (chris?) the PCI Madi would not work well due to its large I/O. but other PCI RME cards did fine. (PCIe Madi was fine as well)

somewhere along the way PCI stopped working regardless of what interface. it took some time but we narrowed it down to the ITE chipset (thats the PCI to PCIe bridge) its firmware had been changed.
supposedly now its fixed (having tested PCI cards again they do work but not RME Madi)

the only way to use PCI Madi is on X58
honestly the 980 (non x) is pretty much the same power as a 2600 sandy. (a bit better in fact stock for stock or OC for OC) and only about $200 more.

Call Vin have him take care of you i will even tell him what board to use for multiple PCI Madi.
( think we have already discussed this anyway)

Scott
ADK

Over at the Gearslutz forum there are also some posts about PCIe-to-PCI bridge issues (which Scott contributing some information, too). So you're not alone in this George.

Just because it came up here: Vin = TAFKAT? I didn't know he offered professional audio PC solutions himself.

Hi George,
What Scott says is correct. The funny thing is the board that ADK tested in it's early stages was the one that had the defective chip set that had to be recalled. Any of the fixed so called Rev 3 boards and now z68 board seem to have this PCI bridge issue.
So basically anyone looking for a new Sandy Bridge based desktop had better not have any PCI devices.
Even generic Firewire and USB cards will not work. SO if you buy one the fewer PCI slots the better.
The X58a chip set boards do not seem effected by this but the almost all of the X58a boards only have 1 or no PCI slots at all.
The board that Scott mentions is the only one that will have enough functional PCI slots to do what you want. It has 3 slots. They will run 3x Pro Tools HD Accell PCI cards just fine or 3x RME HDSP PCI cards just fine.

If you are in Australia then I highly recommend Vin (TAFKAT) as a DAW builder.

Thanks Chris

Hi again guys and thank you all so much for your assistance.

Timur, Yes I saw some threads over at Gearslutz about the flaky SandyBridge PCI implementation. That and some references by Vin (ie TAFKAT) regarding the lack of native PCI on SandyBridge is what got me started on the quest for more information. I posed the same questions over at Gearslutz, however Scott & Chris have thankfully answered my queries here very quickly (the posts at Gearslutz get swallowed up pretty quickly with the sheer volume of threads!).

Chris, thanks for the motherboard details and for recommending Vin. I have actually met him briefly before and greatly value his contributions to the DAW knowledge-pool, especially through his DAW Bench site. It was actually his work on low latency audio interface benchmarking that led me to RME in the first place. I also know that he is renowned as one the best of the DAW builders in Australia. I will be speaking to him in this capacity very soon I hope.

It is through guys like Vin, Timur & Chris here at the RME forums, and the current ADK guys Scott etc. that I have managed to glean lots of valuable information regarding DAW set-up & performance, without the marketing spin that often leads people astray. Thanks again everyone for your help, and for the clear explanations about what is going on with the newer chip-sets. It looks like my RME PCI cards will soon find a new home in an X58 rig.

Kind regards,
George

Hi,
Nice Scott. Was it a BIOs, driver issue pr did they do another board rev?
I know you guys were working directly with them on the problem.

Chris

firmware. they reprogramed the chipset thus newer boards should be ok. older stock not ok. (not a downloadable firmware)

Scott

Hi Scott,
Ah so they haven't really fixed it as much as improved it slightly so that sound blasters and generic peripherals work on them just enough that the don't have t do a recall .....again.
Not surprising but pretty sad.

Chris

UAD1 works as does RME PCI cards (other than Madi) and most if not all PCI cards from others. have not tried a Poco card in yrs so not sure

Thanks to all for this great info.  I don't fully understand every word, so I'm hoping someone can help...

Will my older PCI RME 9632 work in Z68 motherboard?  I was just about to start building a rig with a Z68 mobo and an i2700 processor.  Bad idea?  Should I break open my piggy bank and go for a new X79 board instead?  Thanks!

Thanks Chris.  I don't have any mobo or cpu on hand yet.  I'm spec-ing out a new DAW.
Along with the PCI HDSP 9632, I also have a much-used RME AEB8-0, so I'd rather not have to replace them (though I love RME products and I will gladly upgrade this card when necessary and/or when doing so will give me a performance boost).

Can you suggest a way I might check for HDSP/PCI issues with a z68 mobo?  Check out the mobo manufacturer's forum?

thanks again!

ATTN: Chris@RME or Scott@ADK

hi Guys:

I bought an XP system from ADK back in 2004 time frame and added 2 MADI PCI cards.

These were the Hammefall HDSP MADI PCI 64 channel/24 bit/192kHz generation 1 cards(as opposed to the current 128 channel version).

System still works!

All have worked great after I installed the upgraded BIOS in the first card (Which Synthanx graciously sent me!).

They are interfaced with an RME-648 and a SONY DMX R100 (The best mixer under $20k) w/ Sony MADI interface card for the DMX R100 (RME is the best in the MADI/IO arena by far).

I recently upgraded to Neuendo 5.5 from N4, Cubase 5 to Cubase 6, and Waves Platinum 6 to Waves Plat 8.

The system is showing its age with the VST 3 and the larger recording software memory needs.

I am trying to configure a new DAW, which I will be ordereing from ADK (Still the Best!,shameless plug, etc...).

My problem is that, both RME Hammerfall DSP MADI 64 channel cards are PCI (original, not PCIe) and I want to bring them forward into the new system. I dont want to have to buy new MADI cards all over again.

Have either of you verified the 2 PCI slot motherboard compatibility with 2 RME PCI Gen 1 MADI cards?

Also, in addition to needing 2 PCI slots, there must be enough physical room for both cards to fit side by side into them with the secondary expasnions included..

My desire is to have a Win 7/ i7 mother board with multiple processor slots and 24 GB of Ram, (4) 1920x1200 monitors via Matrox graphics card, with room to add newer onboard  DAW/Plugin cards, etc.

Your input is critical!

I have been involved in PCs, recording, and game development since 1981, buying the original Atari 800 PC (Way ahead of its time, both graphically and musically). In all that time I have learned that it is best to be on the latter end of technology rather than the "Bleeding edge", combined with compatibility problems. Thats why I have waited so long to upgrade.

After retiring from Take Two Interactive/Rockstar games in 2001, I started my current company, StormPowered.com and Storm Eagle Studios.

My setup has been used for both commercial game music, "Distant Guns" and "Jutland", as well as individual song writing & producing. Disruption of a production PC during development is the worst mistake one can make. I know, I learned the hard way!

Tech issue with recent RME MADI driver upgrade:

On a another note, after upgrading to the above mentioned software, the ver 2.52 RME driver did not wotk properly. I upgrade the drivers on both cards to 3.28 (or 3.27 which ever is the latest).

A strange thing happened that took me 2 days to figure out. All of the mappings in Total mix changed. Card 1 mapping was now card 2 and vis versa. You may want to make a note to older card users about upgrading from driver 2.52.

Thanks in advance.

Jim Rose
StormPowered.com
Storm Eagle Studios

Hi Jim,

As the original poster on this thread, I completely understand where you are coming from. I also use two of the older Madi PCI cards (not in the one system though) and am deciding what to do for my next DAW rig. As both Scott from ADK and Chris at RME have mentioned the high channel count of the Madi cards puts more pressure on the PCI bus than the simpler audio cards, so although the dodgy PCI bridges attached to the newer chipsets/motherboards may work for low i/o cards, this may not be a stable solution with the Madi cards.

I am also currently testing out a number of PCIe-to-PCI expansion chassis options in order to continue using my older cards in a newer DAW setup. Hopefully using a dedicated PCIe-PCI bridge within a new expansion chassis will avoid the problems associated with the dodgy on-board PCI bridge-chips. If this doesn't work out, it may mean upgrading to PCIe versions of the Madi cards. Expensive I know, however this may be the only stable solution, in order to take advantage of the greater memory and speed of the newer chipsets. The price of the expansion chassis also needs to be taken into account. Another potentially good thing about the expansion chassis option is that it will only use up 1 PCIe slot on the host motherboard. The two chassis' I am testing out are both 4-PCI slot models, so they will fit two Madi-cards plus their associated daughter-boards.

As regards video cards, I'm not sure about the Matrox cards, never used one, but the Nvidia Quadro workstation cards (Quadro NVS 450) might be worth a look as they support 4 displays. I use one of these, they are passively cooled (no fan) and they only take up 1 PCIe graphics slot. If you go this way, make sure your video card comes with the DisplayPort to DVI adapters, unless your monitors have DisplayPort connectors.

I'll let you know how things work out if and when I get the expansion boxes up and running. Flat out at the moment, but hope to get to it soon!

Cheers,
George

Guys:

Thanks for the response!

I have 2 PCI Madi cards. It is understandable about the driver upgrades. In addition the music.recording part,
we program our games and game manager in C++, Javascript, SQL and MS 3.5 Dot net. Having customers needing tech support is avery familiar topic with us!. You may wnat to make a note about it to save someone else grief.

One thing is for sure, Microsoft never tells the whole truth until much later in an operating system/development environment life cycle.

In searching through the major motherboard matix lists, it appears that there are several intel "San Clemete" chipsets that have as many as 3 PCI slots as well as 2 CPU slots. I believe these use the newer Intel i7 cpus. Have they been approved with the RME PCI MADI cards? I am willing to trade off pci-e slots if I dont have to buy another MADI card.

To this point, I have ran the current XP ADK system with both cards at very, very low latencys, 3-5ms. The recent software upgrades have forced me to raise that up to avoid crackling. I think the 32 bit PCI slots should be fine for the I/O in and out of the PC. The 64bit power of the i7 via the 64 bit software is intended for pushing the plugins and channel strips. I never record more than one track at any one time and usually bounce a temporary mixdown to one channel if I run into latency issues.
As for the plugins, I have been very happy with the Waves Platinum selection, but I do want to find a good sample/orchestra library plug in set and a replacement for the Stienberg LM Drums Plugins  (they still work!). I find it difficult writing drum tracks to individual drums/cymbals tracks. I have to have all of them open at the same time if they are one drum per track.

Thanks for all your help guys!

Jim Rose
StormPowered.com

I have a question to this wonderful thread :-)

Will all the newer GEN3 motherboards have the "updated" ITE chipset, so that my PCI HDSP 9652 will work without any problems, and with lowest latency settings. I'm not planing to use more than a single PCI card in the mobo. And have thought a lot about the Asus Z68 GEN3 mobo, which I have been reading lots of positive feedback about, also from poeple using PCI audio cards in it. But I'm not really sure, if it's still depends on if the mobo is from an old or new batch?

SLL

I answered this also in another thread. I have built a system based on an ASUS P8Z68-VLX motherboard and my RME 9652 card works fine as far as I can tell. It was a challenge to find a mobo with a PCI slot, though...

I haven't "stress tested" this setup with lots of I/O (it's my mix system), but I'm running a PCI Multiface in a new P8Z68-V GEN3 with a 2500K @ 4.5GHz (similar to zuijen), and it works fine so far.  That's not to say it won't go to hell if I need to max the I/O, but I do believe all current production Z68's with 1-2 PCI slots should be in descent shape.

That being said, I upgraded my Tracking DAW from the PCI MADI to the PCIe MADI for piece of mind - and I'll be going to a newer Sandy-E Tracking DAW in February :-)  MADI over PCI via a bridge chip = a big no-no!  Buying second hand RME gear is a good way to ease some of the pain, but RME PCIe gear doesn't cope up too often...

MF-I PCI still running fine over here as mentioned above.  I run large projects like you, but only use a few I/O's on this particular system for mixing.  The i5-2500K is easily OC'd to 4.5GHz - Talk about a cheap powerhouse!!! :-O

AFAIK - If you buy any current production Z68 MoBo with a current BIOS, you should be fine to run a PCI HDSP in it (I believe the PCI MADI card is still a bit much for the PCI bridge chip to handle, but that's 128 Channels!).

Have recently been getting some feedback that would indicate that this may well be the case.  Someone tried two MADI cards, which clearly did not work well, even one seemed to be a bit much. This may vary from board to board, though...

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Scott, that's interesting. At least AMD do seem to stick to native PCI, is that right?

Have you tested any B65 based boards, by any chance?

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Hi.

Is there any word on whether the HDSP PCI card works OK on Z77 motherboards.

(This is possibly the wrong forum, but this seemed like a sensible thread to ask on.)

Cheers,
Kai

Thanks for your reply.

Yeah, this is what I am trying to find out basically - can I get decent performance or will there be issues/degradation?

Cheers,

Kai

Hi guys:

Last year I decided to wait to upgrade my Studio DAW, which has 2 HDSP MADI PCI cards.

Waves recent 64bit upgrade of its plugins dropped support for Win XP.

It looks as if ASUS has produced the perfect motherboard to address the transition from the older PCI cards to the new PCI express world.

The ASUS KCMA-D8 motherboard is ideal for my need to use both of my older HDSP MASI pci cards and provide expansion for the new generation of RME cards when I can afford them.

Here isd the link http://www.asus.com/Server_Workstation/ … ifications
Here is the slot options:

Total Slot : 6
Slot Location 1 : PCI 32bit/33MHz
Slot Location 2 : PCI-E x8 (Gen2 X4 Link), Auto turn off if PIKE is occupied, MIO supported
Slot Location 3 : PCI 32bit/33MHz
Slot Location 4 : PCI-E x16 (Gen2 X8 Link)
Slot Location 5 : PCI 32bit/33MHz
Slot Location 6 : PCI-E x16 (Gen2 X16 Link)
Additional Slot 1 : PIKE Slot for Stroage expansion

The PCI slots are native pci.

Has this motherboard been approved or tested by RME?

Will I have any trouble running two older HDSP Madi pci cards?

Thanks,

Lempereur1

It is an dual AMD CPU board with an excellent arrary of options and 8 DDR3 memory slots!

Does anybody have an example of a Q67 or Q77 based MoBo that will provide native PCI slot(s)? So far, those Q*7 boards I have seen still use a nuvoton or ite bridge.

BR

Sebastian