Pulsar II vs MSI K8N Neo4 Ultra

[Bennetz]

Hi!!

I'm a MSI K8N Neo4 Ultra owner, and in my recording studio everything is ruled by my Creamware Pulsar II soundcard. A couple of days ago I bought a new PC with the above mentioned mainboard for a significant upgrade of my studio (I'm working on a big project for a movie, so I needed more power), but I couldn't install my soundcard.

The PC is this:

CPU AMD Athlon64 3200+ 2000MHz
Motherboard MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum S939 NF4U
DDR-RAM 2 GB PC400 CL2 G.Skill
VGA 256MB Connect3D Radeon X800 GTO PCIe
HD 1 Western Digital WD360GD SATA
HD 2 Western Digital WD2000JS SATA
DVRA NEC ND3540A DL

It's new, and I installed only winXP SP2, then the ASPI 4,71 (requested by Creamware's software Scope Fusion Platform 4, which makes the card work), the driver is seen by XP, but after reboot the error message I get is always the same: "Hardware cannot be setup properly" "System error: timeout waiting for acknowledge from dsp0", and the second window "Code error 0004". I tried EVERYTHING: install XP without ACPI but only "standard pc" (by pressing F5), I disabled USB, firewire, onboard audio (obviously), changed PCI slot, disabled APIC support in the BIOS...

....always the same message. I don't know what to do. On my old PC (PIII 733, 256 MB RAM) the board still runs and all is ok, so my Pulsar is not damaged, I think.

Yesterday I wrote to the Creamware support, and immediately they answered me it's a problem of Nforce4, which is reported to have problems with audio cards, and the Pulsar II is a very professional one, so I think more "delicate" if something is unstable in the PC...

Maybe this helps: with my old PIII 733 I got this message, and the solution was to disable the "PNP OS" in the BIOS: in fact, it's a problem of IRQ sharing. I tried also to install an old PCI video card, and IRQs are now different (before, Radeon X800 and Pulsar had ALWAYS the same IRQ), I disabled almost everything in K8N BIOS, but I still see "ACPI controller" on IRQ 9.
Can I REALLY disable ACPI ctrl?

Creamware technician said the Nforce 3 are very stable and solid chipsets, and suggested me to buy a Neo2 motherboard, but I don't want to spend more money: if it's a good pc it HAS to do its work!

PLEASE help me, it's my first big work and it's VERY important to me, and for my future.

I thank you very much!

 

[marshahu]

Hmmmmmm.....only suggestion I can reccommend is move the soundcard as far away from the graphics as possible. If need be use the very bottom PCI slot for the sound card. The further away the sound card is from the graphics the higher the value of the IRQ numbers it will use, thus, it should not need to share any IRQs with the graphics. This may not be true for you but it worked for me when my Audigy 2 started conflicting with my TNT2 causing severe stability problems. :idea: Now, using the last PCI slot the Audigy 2 shares IRQs with the likes of my NIC, USB 2.0 Expansion card and 56K Modem which is seldom used except for phonecalls and faxes, and the system runs like clockwork! :lol:

Have you disabled you're onboard audio totally and uninstalled any drivers relating to it? This is especially crucial if the onboard audio is one of them Realtek AC97 or SB Live! onboard chips which MSI tend to ship with their motherboards. So many features yet so useless at recording and performing professional tasks :roll: so say good riddence to these annoying little gremlins!! :x - this may not be the case for the SB Live! onboard since that little fucker is better than my Audigy 2 8O but the Realtek AC97s have always offered sub standard performance compared to Audigy 2s!

Let me know if there is any progress! Sorry I couldn't be of more help but I thought I could enlighten you with my past experiences!