jschildno its NOT native its bridged.. there is no direct connect its bridged thru 1 of the PCIe connections 
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/chipsets/performance-chipsets/x79-express-chipset-diagram.html 

Um, per Intel's tech specs (see 5.1.1 here: http://www.intel.com/cont...chipset-datasheet.html ) 
the X79 PCH does indeed provide a 'native' (conventional) PCI bus interface. 

Yes, there is the option for a "PCI legacy mode" bridging off PCIe (see 5.2) but that will require equipping an extra PCIe-PCI bridge chip and thus increase costs and layout complexity, which may explain why none of the X79 mobo's I've seen having a PCI slot (and there are a few on the market) has bridged PCI slots. 

See for example Intel's DX79SI mobo (which also btw has VIA VT6315N PCIe FW). Oh yeah, I'd forgotten before, some ASRock X79 boards do offer 2x PCI slots, as well as the same VIA PCIe FW.



[edit: had to change browsers, formatting here wouldn't work with FF]

jcschild



PCI does not nessesarily offer lower latency than USB/FW it depends on the interfaces you are comparing.
i would put an RME USB up again an M-Audio/Echo/Emu PCI all day long.. ]

Ok, so just compare RME to RME then. Even RME have stated that their PCI is lower latency than their FW/USB. See message #8 here:
http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=12311


Of course it also depends (often, especially) upon how good the drivers are, and whether they work under the OS and with the particular app. This being a Cakewalk forum, it is notable that Sonar X1 is capable of exploiting WaveRT drivers for lower latency and reduced cpu load under Win7 (and Vista also). But WaveRT only works with PCI/PCIe, not with USB or FW.


For example, Lynx's AES16 PCI card has some advanced capabilities for a PCI card, such as "scatter-gather DMA" capability, which mean it is capable of working well in a 64-bit system with more than 4GBs of memory. And particularly, Lynx do offer WaveRT drivers (which can exploit scatter-gather DMA for even lower latency with a PCI card) for it, so it has the possibility to work especially well in Sonar X1. Echo also offer WaveRT drivers for their later PCI interfaces. And ASIO4ALL also has WaveRT support.


Sure, if someone is moving to a new up-to-date system it may be more future-proof for them to replace their existing RME HDSP PCI with the HDSPE PCIe version, or their existing AES16 with the AES16e PCIe version, but that is a fairly expensive proposition on top of the cost of the new system which may not be really necessary if they can still use their expensive PCI card just as well in a new system which has native PCI support. And they might even achieve lower latency and loading in Sonar  if their PCI card manufacturer offers well-written WaveRT drivers (or perhaps, current ASIO2 drivers).

for the record, the Frontier Design Dakota (PCI) works on MSI and AsRock motherboards with bridged PCI. I'll have to dig up the model numbers, but these were two SandyBridge based systems, built primarily for gaming, and while I had them in the basement I figured I'd at least test them. I am quite bummed that I will have to finally retire my Dakota/Montana/Sierra combo, it has worked so well for me for a very long time!

Goddard,

how many systems a week do you benchmark? how many different interfaces?
does RME send you beta interfaces in order to test compatibility and benchmark?

how much impirical data do you have to back up your posts?

oh and waves RT dont make me laugh... anything but asio is a joke.

I'm wondering how a 3770 would perform on an older 1155 board, I notice my BIOS update now supports the new chips so I'm wondering if it would be worth considering one of these newer processors as a mid-life upgrade for one of the older H67/P67 chipset boards.

Not that I NEED one you understand...

jcschild


Goddard,

how many systems a week do you benchmark? how many different interfaces?
does RME send you beta interfaces in order to test compatibility and benchmark?

how much impirical data do you have to back up your posts?

oh and waves RT dont make me laugh... anything but asio is a joke.

Scott,

I rarely benchmark these days, although there was a time back when I did quite a bit involving busmastering DMA on chipsets and drive controllers, hard drives and PCI interfaces. Back in the dark days when we all struggled desperately to stream multitrack audio on underpowered PCs. 


In fact, I've been spec'ing and building PCs for A/V (for my own demanding self) since the TB Quad and Twelve Tone days, at least as long as that Studio Cat critter, and recording/producing on them at least as long as that Perlman feller. Ha, I once even had an 'argument' with Sr Jose Catena about early BM IDE support (Jose, if you are still around, Hi! and what ever happened to DskBench and your articles on ProRec?). IOW, been around DAWs for a good while (like, even before they were called 'DAW's).


Got turned off Cakewalk for various reasons and went in a different direction after that until recently, after picking up a V-Studio, and have decided to give Sonar a chance now. Which brought me back here after all these years (used to post here and elsewhere back then under a different nym, so not really as newbie as I may appear, only stats-wise since the old CW forums are gone/redone).


And no, RME don't send me betas to test, although I'm quite willng to test out a Babyface for them if they like. They claim to have a good USB implementations and I'm kinda curious how well their DSP FX works (referenced to my old DSPF FX), and for sure, if they ever do a PCIe version (hint, hint), I'd be very happy to be a guinea pig.

Don't have any data at hand (had asked Vin/TAFKAT a while back about benching  Echo's WaveRT drivers but no joy). However, from the info and test results on Vin's DAWBench site, it seem pretty apparent IMO that PCI/PCIe interfaces still perform better than outboard USB or FW ones.

And, I do know how to read a tech spec (and know better than to rely only on Intel's chipset block diagrams, which often omit more mundane details like native PCI). And I do have a bit of experience using a few audio interfaces with a number of PCs over the years. For a while I was even involved on the technical side with a Korean manufacturer which produced one of the early PCI audio interfaces. 

From my own perspective, I've encountered a lot more problems with USB and FW interfaces (and USB/FW external storage as well) than I ever have with PCI audio interfaces (or even with ISA audio cards), such that I tend to shy away from replacing a still-workable PCI audio interface with a FW or USB one when I upgrade to a newer system. And fortunately, even some of the latest mobo's still offer native PCI support, which I find to be just great even if you happen to think it's a dead end.

Regarding WaveRT and anything but ASIO being a joke, well, maybe I'm just being hopelessly wishful. Been around long enough to still appreciate any technical advance that offers the potential to reduce cpu loading at smaller audio buffer sizes. And IME ASIO still has its quirks and limitations. True, few interface manufacturers offer WaveRT drivers (no USB or FW support) and only a few DAW apps including Sonar support it so far. But that lack of support  IMO is not because WaveRT doesn't work.

So, have you actually benchmarked WaveRT on any PCI/PCIe interfaces with Sonar? How about the Lynx cards?

I'm reminded of a thread I once lurked across here back in the early Vista days, where someone had posted low latency/cpu-loading figures for their laptop's onboard audio using WaveRT drivers (or maybe it was ASIO4ALL with WaveRT wrapper?), and everyone jumped on the poster, arguing that couldn't be so because of Vista having much higher latency  As I recall, even Noel B. chimed in that Vista had latency problems, with high latency figures for a Roland interface (USB, not WaveRT of course). 

Really, this all kinda reminds me of how, way back when, Adaptec and the other SCSI folks were dissing and downplaying EIDE for audio, until busmastered UDMA was shown to actually outperform SCSI at lower cpu-loading and at far lower cost. 

Look, I'm not selling PCs and audio interfaces, and really have no interest in what equipment people buy or use. Doesn't matter to me whether people want to try to extend the life of their older PCI interfaces or go buy a new USB or FW one from you. But speaking personally, if I had a once-expensive PCI interface that was still supported, I believe I would rather spend whatever disposable income I had on a better mic or preamp or a more powerful system rather than on a USB or FW interface I might not really have needed or which might not perform as well. 'Cause as we all know, nobody ever had a problem with their FW/USB interfaces...

Btw, I do currently use some 'recent' USB interfaces with notebook PC (V-Studio and Tascam) and iPad (Alesis and Tascam) and they work ok. Got rid of the older USB and  FW gear years ago, was just too much of a crapshoot, er, chipshoot, whether it would work reliably.

And I'm not all that keen on going PCIe unless it does perform better or I have no other option. Sure, MOTU came out with a PCIe version of their 424 PCI/PCI-X host card, but it's basically still the same PCI guts with a PCIe-PCI bridge chip (same for ESI's Maxio host card). Seems a number of  PCIe audio card offerings have been driven by what slots Apple put in their current Macs (e.g. PCI-X replacing PCI before), with PCs just an afterthought. RME being a notable exception there, I suppose.

There was an interesting survey in SoS mag some years back where they'd asked a bunch of audio interface manufacturers about future support for PCI,  PCIe (which was then quite new), USB and FW, and IIRC some PCI card makers were saying that PCIe did not offer the same performance advantage over PCI as PCI had over ISA, so they thought there was no rush to come out with PCIe versions. Ok, found it:

http://www.soundonsound.c...rticles/pcmusician.htm

Now then, if I did happen to be in the biz of selling DAW PCs, I might just  think about validating and then advertising that native PCI support was still available (maybe as an option) on certain PCs I offered. Might just be  folks with old PT-HD, Scope, PoCo etc. cards interested.

Heh, looking just now at Scan's site, noticed that they describe their 6-core X-79 offering thusly: "We selected the Asus motherboard solution for this system as it's one of the few offering legacy PCI support on this platform, so you don't have to get rid of that old soundcard or DSP card. What it does allow you to do is mix old and new and build your own ultimate studio solution" 

Hmm, now what do they mean by 'legacy PCI support'? 

Hmm, maybe that's why PCI interfaces still work on some X79 mobo's.


Ok, lunch break's over, back to the license plate stamping machine...
=Goddard

Hmm, maybe that's why PCI interfaces still work on some X79 mobo's.

Some PCI interfaces work on some bridged motherboards.  It's just that its a bit of a crap-shoot now.

The other thing is that there are increasingly fewer card vendors updating PCI drivers.

I'd say the situation overall was bad enough to call PCI dead as far as audio goes, unless you do have a legacy card that you can get working on a current board, good luck with that.

Certainly if you were looking at re-equipping PCI would most definitely not be a good choice.

elsongs


I'm building a new DAW PC soon, should I go Socket 1155 or go state-of-the-art and jump into Socket 2011? What are the advantages/disadvantages? I haven't built a system since 2005...

Go with 2012 and Intel I7 6 core
Invest in something that has real performance gain now and has headroom for the future. You have something that will work for years. Add at least 16GB of RAM!

Jonbouy

Hmm, maybe that's why PCI interfaces still work on some X79 mobo's.

Some PCI interfaces work on some bridged motherboards.   

Sigh...


Ok, look, it's very simple, and I'll type slowly so you can understand (that  my statement you quoted above was meant to express 'irony'):


Intel's X79 PCH (Platform Controller Hub = chipset) actually does support "native" (conventional) PCI, because Intel do include a native PCI bus interface in it. so that an X79 motherboard does not need to use a PCIe-PCI bridge for its PCI bus slots.

And, sure enough, X79 motherboards which are equipped with' PCI slots use this X79 PCH' native PCI bus interface, and do not use a PCIe-PCI bridge.

But, some uninformed people (unnamed, look in the mirror to see our latest parrot, er, contestant), who failed to grasp that such PCI slot X79 motherboards do indeed have native PCI support, have been posting misinformation in several DAW-related forums (fora?) stating incorrectly  that X79 mobo's use a PCIe-PCI bridge for PCI, while also making it seem like the great crapshoot miracle whenever a PCI interface works in an X79 mobo.

So, I have attempted to point out the error of said uninformed people's incorrect misinformation. And, with a try at irony, to dispel the great myth about why those PCI cards worked in X79 mobos.

Ok, here's a modest proposal: I invite you to read the X79 PCH datasheet to which I linked previously, and then check the PCB of an X79 mobo with PCI slot for a PCIe-PCI bridge chip (wot, can't find any bridge chip? hmm, wonder why...  <[hint: more irony]).

Thank you for playing "Perpetuate the 'X79 uses bridged PCI'  Misinformation"...

wst3


for the record, the Frontier Design Dakota (PCI) works on MSI and AsRock motherboards with bridged PCI. I'll have to dig up the model numbers, but these were two SandyBridge based systems, built primarily for gaming, and while I had them in the basement I figured I'd at least test them. I am quite bummed that I will have to finally retire my Dakota/Montana/Sierra combo, it has worked so well for me for a very long time!

Bill, did you track down those mobo model numbers? Kinda curious.

If your Dakota still works, why do have to retire it? Are the FD drivers (ASIO iirc?) buggy, or something else?


And iirc, the Montana only uses the slot (ISA or PCI) for power (same as AX16 ADAT card for DSP Factory) so no driver required.