Graphics card can cause glitches?

[Mike McCarthy]

Hello all

I've noticed that when my VI's GUI is open, I get audio glitches during playback, from my P4 slave. Close the GUI and the glitches disappear. This is OK when I'm doing small stuff, but here's my problem:

With App violins, violas, cellos, and Solo violin, Solo viola, Solo cello playing simple unison lines (perf legato) at moderate tempo, the glitches are quite bad, even with the GUI's closed.

CPU load is only 50%, RAM is only 550MB (after optimizing).

So it must be a graphics issue. Could anyone advise on a specific card that works well under these circumstances?

Or is there a configuration I can do on my system?

Slave P4s (x2) networked with Midi-Over-Lan 3. Audio hardwired back to Master PC RME Multiface (not over LAN).
2 gig RAM per PC.
Graphics card: NVidia GeForce4 MX 4000

Thanks in advance,
Mike.

[cm]

just a shot into the blue: this might be related to some BIOS setting (*mirror VGA memory* or similar wording) where the GPU tries to access computers RAM besides the GPU onboard 64 MB so reducing the bandwidth for other data.
maybe also have a look into any advanced settings for VGA and disable all *gaming stuff accellerations* which are not needed for an audio work station.
christian

[Mike McCarthy]

Thanks Christian - I'll give this a try and report back.

Mike.

[Mike McCarthy]

ummm.... not too sure how to access the BIOS and VGA settings you mentioned [:O]ops:

Sorry for the basic question!

Mike.

[cm]

please refer to your motherboard manual how to access BIOS (read meaning and relevance of settings carefully and note down every changes you make to be able to revert them in case)
your VGA settings should be either accessible via properties of display and some *advanced settings* dialog or actually your card has some kind of *control panel* (possibly shows up from START - system - control panel or in the status section in your taskbar)
christian

[Mike McCarthy]

[I] I've just noticed that this card is a PCI card. It should be an AGP card, right?

If this card uses the same PCI bus as my audio streaming, then that could be the cause of my problem, yes?

Regards,
Mike.

[cm]

if your motherboard offers AGP this would of course be a better solution ... (since the board appears to be an older model please again check the manual which AGP types the slot would allow) - the PCI bus could be a bottleneck in your case ... which motherboard is it?
christian

[Mike McCarthy]

Thank you very much for your efforts to help me.

I will try to find this information and report back.

Mike.

[synthetic]

AGP will definately be better, but it's tough to find a simple AGP video card, especially for an older (>1 year!) motherboard. Most video cards seem to be marketed towards gamers, and have a fan which we don't want in our studio. One place to search in the US:

http://arstechnica.shopping.com/xPP-graphics_cards

Select AGP 4x or 8x. I also really like the system building guides at arstechnica.com and usually build their "Hot Rod" system when putting together a new computer.

As far as getting to the BIOS, you can usually access it by repeatedly pressing the DEL key during startup.

You should also look at Control Panels > System > Hardware > Device Manager and make sure that there are no yellow question marks. You may need to install a video card driver.

[Mike McCarthy]

Thanks Synthetic - I've had this P4 for at least two years, so I know realise it can't possibly have an AGP card.

So my glitches are happening because I'm streaming lots of samples through the same PCI bus as the grahics. Short of upgrading the entire mobo (argh) - is there some way I can use another bus for the graphics card?

BTW, I checked all the drivers are installed - no yellow question marks.

Where do I look for the details regarding mobo, chipset etc. so I can at least tell you guys what I've got?

Thanks for your help so far - much appreciated.

Mike

[synthetic]

AGP has been around for a while. Does the slot look different than the PCI slots, and have a little plastic switch in the back? It's usually set further back on the mobo than the PCI slots. That's an AGP slot.

You might be able to find the motherboard model printed on the motherboard. For some reason, they don't always do this. [8-)] Once you find that, you can download the manual for your motherboard. You want to find the list of interrupts. This will be a chart that shows you which components share an interrupt. If your graphics card is on the same interrupt as the PCI slot that your sound card is plugged into, try moving the sound card to a different slot. On my new system, I put my sound card (RME) in the PCI slot that shares an inturrupt with the on-board audio, which I will turn off in the BIOS. Some sharing is unavoidable, but you wouldn't want your hard drives sharing with graphic card or anything.

[cm]

if it is 2 years or actually 3 it should have an AGP slot (usually brown, whereas the PCI slots are white) - on your motherboard you should find prited in white letters the manufacturer, the type and the revision of your board (eg. ASUS P4B rev.1.3). of course it would be easier to look at/in the manual if you have recieved any.

if nothing works get everest's last free edition - this tool knows more than you like to see [;)]
christian

[popmann]

I would look to your HD and/or controller. RAM only keeps you from loading more articulation patches. Hard drive is the bottleneck of performance in any modern computer for disk streaming samples.

Are they installed to your boot drive? Defrag? 7200 RPM? SATA? Access time? I'd look in that direction. I think the video card issue is a bit far fetched, although if you've actually got a PCI card, there's a problem. UNLESS, as I imagine you have a PCI Express video card which is about the only kind of motherboard video format that's been supported for some years. Try finding new AGP cards. It went away a few years back. Anyway...if it's PCI Express, that's normal and unavoidable.

I'm putting money on the hard drive. Whether it's big strings or big pianos, I can hear my dedicated drives ripping and roaring. And the samples were laid onto the drive in contiguous space. I can't imagine if you tried to install the VSL stuff to a fragmented boot drive.

[Mike McCarthy]

Thanks for your suggestions Popman - I'm prepared to look at any aspects.

1.No, I have seperate boot drive. Drive C is Windows & progams, Drive D is VSL Special Edition. 7200 rpm Seagate IDEs.
2.I defrag regularly - drives are healthy.
3.Could you elaborate on the IDE Controllers you'd like me to check? What do I look for?

Synthetic:
1.Yes, one of the slots is brownish colour with little plastic switch, others are white - so it looks like I have an AGP slot after all .
2.For the life of me I cannot see any markings on the mobo re model number, etc (god, I feel foolish)

I will try an AGP card. If that fails, I will look at the HD.

CM:
1.I checked all the BIOS settings. Nothing unusual, but HyperThreading was disabled, so I enabled it.
2.Couldn't find anything that suggested "mirror VGA memory"

Thanks guys!
Mike.

[popmann]

Serial ATA drives? Honestly, if you've got it on it's own 7200 rpm, you should be relatively fine...if they're NOT SATA, though, you may want to check the IDE controlllers in device manager--make sure the DMA is enabled.

Yeah...if you're using a real (old) PCI graphics card on a system meant for AGP...that is a likely cause of issues. I don't know where you even found one of those. I was recently looking fora PCI Radeon for an old Mac, and I had to turn over quite a few online stones to find it.

The video memory thing is also called "VGA shadowing"...I really don't see that causing any more problem than you have 32-256mb less RAM to work with, though.

[Mike McCarthy]

Popmann - the reason this thread is focussed on the graphics card (rather than HD issues) is that there is a definite link between an open VI GUI and pops & glitches - so it must be a graphics issue (of some sort).

I agree with you that it's unlikely to a VGA shadowing issue - because RAM is not the problem (only 550 MB after optimizing).

It's also not a soundcard issue either, because it still happens with a buffer size of 1024!

Frankly, I'm really pinning my hopes on simply replacing the graphics card - perhaps naively.

Would a 128MB 8x AGP suffice?

Many thanks,
Mike.

[popmann]

AGP--whatever max speed your mobo supports. It will autodetect. Usually the cards are backwards compatible...so, if you get one faster than you mobo, it will just kick it own in speed, which is fine.

the speed of AGP and video RAM and what not is not really that useful. You just want it off the PCI bus so it doesn't get in the way. I don't think there have been significant 2d performance gains in video cards in years. Go cheap, IMO. stick with ATI or nVidia chips, though.

[cm]

not knowing which motherboard it is i thought i'll mention AGP versions, since AGP 2.0 (4x or higher) voltage is 1,5 V, below it is 3,3 V - both versions are not compatible and not all have the correct notches to prevent mismatch.

AGP 4x - 8x are compatible (in both directions) but i've not found a reliabl compatibility matrix for 16x - 8x - one should assume it's similar there.
christian

[Mike McCarthy]

OK - finally, here are my specs - sorry for the delay.

Intel Pentium 4 CPU 3.00 GHz (Socket 478 mPGA)
Bus speed 199.5 MHz
Rated FSB: 798.0 MHz
Cores: 1
Threads: 2
L1 data cache: 8 KBytes
Trace cache: 12 kuops
L2 cache: 512 kbytes
Motherboard model: Springdale PE
Chipset: Intel i865P/PE/G/i848P rev.A2
Southbridge: Intel 82801EB (ICH5)
Sensor: Winbond W83627THF
Graphic interface: AGP version 3.0
Transfer rate: 8x
Max supported: 8x
Side band: enabled
NVidia GeForce4 MX 4000 (Location: PCI bus 1, device 0, function 0)
Memory: dual DDR 2gig (Performance mode: disabled
Intel 82801 Ultra ATA Storage Controllers (location: PCI bus 0, device 31, function 1)
Boot drive: 7200rpm Seagate IDE (Location: 0 (0))
VSL drive: 7200 Seagate IDE (Location: 1 (1))
LAN card: Realtek Gigabit Ethernet NIC (PCI bus 2, device 0, function 0)
Soundcard: MAudio Delta 2496 (PCI bus 2, device 1, function 2)
Midi-Over-Lan3

I have changed the PCI latency settings to the following:
Bus1 (GeForce4 MX4000) from 248 to 32
Bus2 (Gigabit Ethernet adaptor) to 32
Bus3 (ICE1712Envy24 PCI Multi-channel I/O Controller) from 32 to 248 (I assume this Bus is the one carrying the audio streaming, hence the highest setting).

With 6 instances of VI playing moderate tempo perf-leg instruments, I get glitches at buffer setting 512. Fewer glitches at 1024, but still there.
If I add one more instrument, it goes really crazy.
RAM loaded is only 600 gigs (after optimizing).

Am I asking too much from this system?
If so, what do I need to upgrade?

Thanks,
Mike.

[cm]

i think i've found your motherboard, it is possibly a GA-8ISXT in a fujitsu computer.
http://vsl.co.at/upload/users/449/SpringdalePE.png">
if we talk about this board (or a similar one) we have to play the *find the right PCI-slot* game, because the respective manual does not provide an IRQ-table (meaning: which slot is using which IRQ and which of them are shared, possibly actually with onboard devices)

common IRQ routings on such boards are: AGP is shared with PCI1 and PCI2 with PCI5 - this means no bandwidth sensible devices should sit in the respective slots if the correlating one also holds a sensible device.
tell us in which slot which card is sitting for further suggestions.

in any case an AGP card will improve the overall performance on your system (this board supports 4x 1,3 V as well as 8x 0,8 V ... try to get a simple ATI card, they have the most reliable drivers.

in a second step you need to place your delta into an unshared PCI slot (we have to find out which would be the best) - make sure in your BIOS IRQ assignement is set to *auto*, everything else makes things worse usually. possibly the problem disappears already with replacing the PCI VGA with an AGP version.
christian

ps: please keep also the PCI latency settings at their default value - this kind of tweaking is a science by its own ....