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PCIe for Audio & DSP Cards

Forum CPU & Components : Other Components - PCIe for Audio & DSP Cards

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destro   08-16-2007 at 01:56:51 AM

Currently building building an DAW and need to know if I'm better off with PCI vs PCIe for my Audio Card & DSP Cards....A three companies, Motu, TC Electronics, & Universal Audio all make PCIe cards that I want to put in my systems aka Motu 24 I/O, Powercore Express, & UAD-1. Each one of those cards are PCIe x1 cards. This system will also have a PCIe x8 Raid card & a PCIe x16 video card. Now I'm only going with Asus motherboards because I've had a very long and loving history with them, they never let me down and have great features. But, will I have any audio problems or DSP processing problems, if I put these cards into a PCIe x16 slot? Since, the Asus Blitz Formula is not available, which would give me the slots I need; If I go with another motherboard from asus, most likely the P5NT WS, will there be a performance hit in audio using a PCIe card in a x16 slot? I would think since its a faster bus that I would see an increase in performance when doing big projects that consist of 80+ audio tracks.

Project in Progress:

Q6600 Intel Quad Core Processor
4 Gb Ram
150GB WD Raptor for System & Applications
2x 150GB WD Raptor in Raid 0 array for the Audio drive
WD-750 for Sample Drive
WD-750 for Backup drive
Motherboard - ????? Ideally Blitz Formula when available or P5NT WS currently
Matrox APVe video card
Highpoint Raid Card
UAD-1 Express
Powercore Express
Motu 24 I/O PCIe Core System




P.S. Why can't I find any 2 GB singles? Everything is 1Gbx2 kits?

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septic   08-16-2007 at 02:27:33 AM
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From what I can find quickly, Geil and G.Skill supply 2 gb sticks.

Reply to septic
destro   08-16-2007 at 04:26:34 PM
- 0 +

Yeah, but not in the DDR-2 800 ram chips.

Reply to destro
chunkymonster   08-16-2007 at 05:09:11 PM
- 0 +

About your question on "losing" performace by putting a 1X PCIe card into a 16x PCIe slot, the following excerpt is from wikipedia...

Quote :

 

A PCIe card will physically fit (and work correctly) in any slot that is at least as large as it is (e.g. an x1 sized card will work in any sized slot), and a slot of a large physical size (e.g. x16) can be wired electrically with fewer lanes (e.g. x1 or x8) as long as it provides the power and ground connections required by the larger physical slot size. In both cases, PCIe will negotiate the highest mutually supported number of lanes.


So no, you will not lose anything by putting a 1x PCIe device into a 16x PCIe slot.

If you go with the Asus P5NT WS mobo, according to Asus this mobo has 3-16x PCIe slots, 2-1x PCIe slots, 1-PCI-X slot, and 1-PCI slot. So, using two of the audio cards in each 1x PCIe slots, a RAID contoller in 1-16x PCIe slot, a gpu in another 16x PCIe slot, the 3rd audio card will work fine in the 3rd 16x PCIe slot at 1x speeds. You may need to verify some of the BIOS settings by specifically enabling the "master" 16x PCIe slots for the gpu and/or changing the signal selection on the other 16x PCIe slots to be 8x and 1x for your RAID controller and 3rd audio card. Just keep in mind that if the audio card is 1x PCIe, and putting it in a 16x PCIe slot, it does not mean that the audio card will function at 16x. A 1x device is a 1x device regardless of the number of lanes the PCIe slot has available.

Sounds like quite a machine. Good luck!

------------------------------ ASRock X58 Extreme - Core i7 920 - 6GB Crucial Ballistix DDR3 1600 - Sapphire 4890 2GB - Creative Xtreme Gamer - 4-80GB WD in RAID0 on HighPoint RR 2310 as OS drive - 1-320GB WD scratch drive - Corsair CMPSU 750TX - HAF 932 - Hanns-G 281DPB @ 1900x1200
 Reply to chunkymonster
destro   08-17-2007 at 04:48:36 PM
- 0 +

yeah, thats what I thought! Thanks a lot!

Reply to destro
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