Hi,

PS: sorry for shouting in subject but I am really getting frustrated about deciding which mobo to get in my new PC?! Just read my story and help me PLEASE:

Is it true that with an NForce4 mobo like Asus A8N you can't get low latency without audio glitches or CPU spikes.

I intend to buy following setup:

AMD64 X2 CPU
Asus A8N-E motherboard (= NForce4!!)
M-Audio Audiophile 2496 PCI (apparently PCI cards and PCI-E architecture gives trouble!!)
videocard: 6600GT PCI-Express or higher (apparently gives also problems!!)

Anybody who has a similar setup like this. If so, how low latency can you get (how low can you set buffer @ 44.1khz) without getting choppy audio (audio glitches) or CPU spikes?!

Please also mention which setup you have + how much stuff (VSTi's, VST FX's, audio) you run normally so I can have an idea.

Thing is alot of people say NF4 is bad choice for audio. Sound on Sound wrote an article about NForce4 and PCI-Express problems:

quote:

However, tests on various PCs featuring this chip set have shown processor overhead that was larger than expected when the PC was running lots of plug-ins, as well as audio glitches unless the interface buffer size (and hence latency) is increased. Some users have reported having to increase buffer size as high as 2048 samples with an NF4 chip set, compared with 128 or 256 samples on a roughly equivalent PC featuring Nvidia's previous NF3 chipset. Although the vast majority of the problems reported by musicians relate to PCI soundcards plugged into the legacy PCI slots on PCI Express-equipped motherboards, RME have reported similar issues with their Fireface 800 interface, so other Firewire interfaces may be affected as well. The problem isn't confined to a single application, either, but has been reported by musicians running Cubase SX, Nuendo and Sonar, amongst others, and it doesn't seem to be inherent in the NF4 chip set itself, since some motherboards featuring it (such as Tyan's expensive dual-processor S2895 model) seem to be immune, and PCI Express motherboards featuring Via chip sets also seem to be causing similar problems. Many users suspect that the high-performance 16x graphics card often associated with such systems are somehow hogging the buss, and this hypothesis seems to be confirmed by the fact that replacing such a card with a less powerful model such as Nvidia's 6200 or ATI's Radeon X300 will reduce the problem.

Read the full article over here!!

So what they are saying is that NForce4 at low latency gives audio glitches and CPU spikes and they also say you need a low powered card but I want a 6600GT PCI-E videocard. Will I get all these problems?!! Is this all true?! Have BIOS and chipset updates improved anything?! etc..

Please let me know your experiences with detailed info cause I really want to know everything about this before I go buy my new PC!!

Thanks alot for all helpful replies!!

Last edited by Dance123 on Jun-23-2006 at 12:35

What about A8V-XE (regular A8V isn't available anymore at my local store).

It uses K8T890 chipset..

Thing is it uses PCI-Express and I wonder if a PCI soundcard like Audiophile 2496 has problems with ALL PCI-E motherboards out there?!!

Please give me some advice cause I don't know what to buy and it's driving me nuts!!

Well, I have a A8N-SLI Nforce 4 mobo and I do not have problems with latency, de only problem i have, was the MIDI port of the on-board sound. Solved puting a new pci cheap sound card + asio4all, it works fine with Cubase, Ableton + Kontakt, Reaktor.
all faster, with A64 3000+, 1024DDR Kingston dualchannel.

edit:

sorry, my mistake, you want use audiophile.

They also appear to be saying that disabling PCI-E peripherals like fast graphics cards fixes the problem. Is it so difficult to go into device manager and disable your graphics card before you go producing?

I have a Shuttle SN21G5 with an nforce 4 mobo and to be honest I dont really notice any difference over my old PC rig. But then I dont have a PCI-E graphics card in the slot so who knows...

Also you cant stick PCI cards into PCI-E slots. The PCI slot is much shorter and wouldnt work anyway even if you hammered it in, as the pins are a different size.

The problem has been fixed with driver and Bios updates according to http://www.adkproaudio.com/PCI-E.cfm

Nuendo 3 (whatever that is, never used it) still takes a 10% performance hit the article says. No mention of fruity loops, but I suppose if Cubase works fine, then FL will. I'd sure like to hear from the people here that use Fruity Loops with Nforce 4 mobos.

I don't have a link, but I viewed a forum thread with people saying the Bios and driver updates fixed the latency issues they were having with Nforce 4. I'm starting to think it's safe now to use Nforce 4 for production. I'm currently shopping around for upgrades as well.

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Hi,

Aside from the setup you use, could you please mention how low latency you can get and which stuff you normally run etc..?!

Aside from NForce4, any other chipsets that support PCI-Express that anybody here is using?!

Thanks alot for all helpful replies!!

you could get an nforce3, or wait like a month until nforce5's are readily avialable if you are really that worried about nforce4, or you could get an intel chipset.

This is what I am considering at the moment:
https://secure.newegg.com/NewVersio....asp?ID=3347343

but it will inevitably be changed around daily until the time comes that I actually buy it

uhhhh. with latency, I start at like 64 samples (which is pretty much 0 ms) but as soon as I load a big instrument or bring out an instance of SIR I have to increase the latency. When I am pushing 100% CPU load, memory usage is high and the DMA buffer is full up, I invariably end up on 2048 samples on the ASIO buffer (max buffer length on the Delta 1010) which is equivilant to 46 ms at 44.1khz. At 96 khz its about half that, but it literally rapes your CPU.

Either way, I never seem to just pick a buffer size and leave it that way. If I am not performing anything, I tend to just whack the ASIO buffer up to full so I dont have to worry about glitches. If I am performing I will typically record them in a separate project with no effects so I can get 0 ms latency. Then in some projects when I'm improvising stuff in between I just keep upping it, as the pops and glitches start to occur.

It was the same story with my old P4 rig. Having never really produced anything on any other computer, I dont really know if thats normal or rubbish or whatever. I do know that I am used to working like this so its not a problem for me.

if you wait like a month you will be able to pick up a x2 3800 for like 160 bucks... If you were to get something now i would recomend one of the newer intel boards with conroe support as conroe will destroy pretty much any chip out. The 500dollar conroe will out do the 1200 amd fx62.

If i was building a music comp it would look something like this

Intel 975dbx bad axxe motherboard(fact is intel boards are rock solid)

Intel pentium d 930

4gb ddt2 800

and either a radeon x1600 silent or 7600gt silent. Then load it up with 2 250gb hard drives and a silent PSU.

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