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Asus
A7A266 and Iwill KA266-R with chipset ALiMAGIK 1 (Top)
Several users report significant
performance problems when using the Hammerfall and DIGI96 series. The Hammerfall
can't be used even at the highest latency setting, the DIGI96 series shows
sub-average performance.
Comment: As far as we know the Ali chipset MAGIK 1 is the slowest
of all DDR-RAM chipsets, it is even slower than the fastest PC133 chipset.
Additionally it offers a PCI-bus performance that can hardly be lower. The
Hammerfall, which requires a constant transfer rate of 9 MByte/s (52 channels
I/O at 44.1 kHz), can't be used with this board at all. The DIGI96 series
works, but suffers from bad performance. While DIGICheck will normally measure
a transfer rate of more than 30 MByte/s (on Intel boards up to 130 MByte/s,
which is the maximum transfer rate of the PCI-bus), the ALi-based boards
reach sensational 8 (eight) MByte/s. Therefore we have to warn against boards
using this ALi chipset. And we are not alone. Hauppauge, manufacturer of
TV cards, also mentions the ALi chipset as critical.
ABIT
KT7 / KT7 Raid (Top)
Several users report significant performance
problems when using the Hammerfall. An operation at lower latencies causes
clicks and pops.
Comment: There are numerous boards on the market using the KT133
chipset, but the ABIT KT7 is the only one getting reports about such a bad
behavior. Therefore we do not recommend this board.
MotU
MIDI Express XT (Top)
Several users report severe popping at latencies
below 512 ms, when the MotU MIDIExpress XT interface (printer port) is used
in conjunction with emagic Logic 4.7.
Comment: We are used hearing such reports from USB interfaces, but
we don't have a clue how a printer port MIDI interface is able to hit the
system this hard.
3COM
network cards (Top)
Several users report significant performance
problems when using the Hammerfall. An operation at lower latencies causes
clicks and pops.
Comment: It seems 3Com cards have been specially designed for server
operation, so they hog the PCI bus to achieve maximum throughput. We recommend
NICs from Realtek, D-Link or Intel, which offer a very good performance
but don't cause audio problems.
Promise
Fasttrack RAID Controller (Top)
The Promise Fasttrack Controller
causes performance problems when using the Hammerfall. An operation at lower
latencies generates clicks and pops.
Comment: To achieve the highest rating in benchmark tests the Fasttrack
controller hogs the PCI bus, thus impacts the data transfer of other PCI
devices (the Hammerfall.) This is true for both the PCI-card and the on-board
version (as on the MSI K7T266 Pro), but not true for the majority of 'normal'
Promise RAID controllers.
Promise offers a software tool to set up the controller. Move the slider
labeled PCI
Bus Utilization
from 100% (right side, default) to about 75%. This solves the problems. |
