Gigabyte P35 motherboards and DPC

I have a Gigabyte G33 based board and I'm seeing the same thing. It doesn't seem to affect my low latency operation anymore after switching to a MOTU PCI424 based setup!

Rico

ORIGINAL: losguy

You're not by chance running Vista are you?

No. I'm using XP Pro 32 bit.

Hi SongCraft,

I just put together a new system, so I'm trying to see what it's capable of. Compared to my old system I can get very low latencies, but it would seem that the spikes must be limiting it from reaching it's full potential. Even my notebook (single core Pentium M 715) doesn't show these spikes.

What soundcard are you using and what latencies are you able to set?

ORIGINAL: Dan DAmico

Hi SongCraft,

I just put together a new system, so I'm trying to see what it's capable of. Compared to my old system I can get very low latencies, but it would seem that the spikes must be limiting it from reaching it's full potential. Even my notebook (single core Pentium M 715) doesn't show these spikes.

What soundcard are you using and what latencies are you able to set?

Back then I was using an M-Audio 24/96 pci card on a P3 running SONAR 4, I can't remember precisely what latency I had but there was no problem at all with latency although I was limited to the amount of tracks (18 to 20 audio tracks) due to my system being a P3 / 800 with 512 Ram. I did turn off all nonessential services and other apps whilst using SONAR but the spikes remained.

Maybe with some Gigabyte boards there's an indication of activity in regards to the OS, systems files, interrupts and whatever as these could be what's causing the spikes, I'm not sure! Also I think that particular Gigabyte board may have some sort of security features built-in (could be that) but I can't be sure.

I did a clean install of Windows XP without any chipset, audio or video drivers to see if the spikes remain. To my dismay, they are still there.
I had an Acronis backup of my full install so I just restored it.

I've read that the GA-P35-DS4 rev 1 early (before F6) BIOS did not have this problem, but the later ones do. My motherboard has only 3 available BIOS, and I've tried them all to no avail. Gigabyte must have changed something. I've sent them an email about it, but I'm told they have isolated it to the southbridge, but haven't had enough demand for a fix to do anything. I'm hoping that if enough people contact them, they will release a BIOS that fixes the problem.

Im getting some spikes as well, biggest one just past 500.
Rico had me check this a while back. Nice to have a good friend sonar user just down the street!

I must say this gigabyte rig runs awesome, OC'd from 1.8 to 3.0ghz

Still, I agree, ya wonder wut causes those spikes and do the effect something

ORIGINAL: Lanceindastudio

Im getting some spikes as well, biggest one just past 500.

Lance,

Could you send an email to Gigabyte tech support requesting that they address the problem? I'm hoping to get a few people besides me to contact them and get them to look for a fix.

I agree the performance is really good on these boards, but I believe it could be even better if they fix the problem.

...well Dan, yours is better than mine, which occurs like clockwork every 63 seconds.

[image][/URL][/image]

This is a relatively recent occurance on a HP ZD7000 series laptop. I have done everything that I know and have recently learned to track this without success.



Laptop Specs:
Processor Pentium 4 3.06 GHz
Installed Memory 1024 MB (DDR SDRAM)
Hard Drive 80 GB EIDE, 4200 RPM
Display 17 in. WXGA+ TFT Active Matrix
Operating System Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
Mobile Technology Wi-Fi Certified
Processor
Processor Manufacturer Intel
Processor Type Pentium 4
Processor Speed 3.06 GHz
Motherboard
Bus Speed 533 MHz
Memory
Installed RAM 1024 MB
RAM Technology DDR SDRAM
Max Supported RAM 2 GB
RAM Speed 333 MHz
Installed Cache Memory 512 KB
Hard Drive
Hard Drive Rotation Speed 4,200 RPM
Storage Controller Type EIDE
CD / DVD
CD / DVD Type CD-RW/DVD-ROM
Display
Display Tech WXGA+ TFT Active Matrix
Display Size 17 in.
Display Max. Resolution 1440 x 900
Video
Graphic Processor NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5600
Installed Video Memory 64 MB
Audio
Audio Output Type Sound card • Speaker(s)
Operating System
Operating System Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
Platform PC
Technical Features
Expandability 1 x SD Card Slot, 1 x Memory Stick Card Slot, Docking Station/Port Replicator, 1 x MMC Card Slot, 1 x Type III PC Card Slot, 1 x Memory Stick PRO, 1 x SmartMedia Card
Expansion Ports 4 x USB 2.0, 1 x IEEE 1394a (FireWire), VGA out, Parallel Port, RJ-11 (modem), RJ-45 (NIC), S-Video out
Security Features Kensington Lock Slot, Power-On Password
Input Method Keyboard • Numeric Keypad • Scroll Button • Touchpad
Networking
Networking Type Integrated 10/100 Network Card • Infrared Port • Integrated Wireless LAN
Data Link Protocol Ethernet • Fast Ethernet • IEEE 802.11b • IEEE 802.11g
Modem
Modem Type Fax / Modem
Analog Modulation Protocol ITU V.90, ITU V.92
Battery
Battery Technology Lithium ion

I have tried to locate/fix the "spiking" issue with:

Doubledawg
DPC Spike Checker v1.03 (TcElectronics)
DPClat
KRview
MotherboardMonitor
Process Explorer
Ulysses
RATTV3

I have done the "turn off everything tilll it crashes" routine including all drivers and controllers.

This spiking issue continues.

The next step is the big "F".

F@KKER

/format, that is ;)

[edit] I have also (after the issue manifested) updated to SP2 and SP3, checked the HP site for and installed all the latest drivers, tried tweaking the NVIDIA GeForce card with Riva Tuner, ran XP w/o the video card drivers- still no success.

ORIGINAL: F@KKER

This is a relatively recent occurance on a HP ZD7000 series laptop. I have done everything that I know and have recently learned to track this without success.

That is very discouraging. Are you getting dropouts on your audio?

ORIGINAL: F@KKER
...well Dan, yours is better than mine, which occurs like clockwork every 63 seconds.

Ouch. Looks like you were pretty thorough, so you probably already tried disabling the WiFi? That's been culprit #1 for laptops. (But you probably knew that already...)

Hey Dan, after reading my own post- I must apologize to you as my post appears as a hijack- sorry.

But in answer to your question, yes I am getting dropouts. I have spent a good 4 weekends on top of hours at a time weeknights and still no success. There is a rather large (45 pages or so) thread at the sos forum on this.

Additionally, I just tried installing the recovery disk drivers, there is no change. I just read that someone did a full format and the spikes are still there, so it must be either very low level -perhaps at the bios level or maybe a hardware issue.

This sucks because the laptop was my portable DAW and I spent a good amount of $ on specific gear just for this application.

losguy, yes, I disabled wi-fi -I even tried the remove hardware route to no avail. I did the same with usb and network adapters.



F@KKER

[edit] I failed to mention that I was running the laptop as it came from HP with 512 MB of Ram and it worked with no issues (other than FW-1884 issues, in which case I would use the Echo I/O sound card) and so I just installed 2 gb ram, still no change.

Yes and no. Even if it gets no higher than 1 msec, that's 1 msec eating into the latency that you would have otherwise had. If you're wanting to run at low latency, or loading your CPU up, or both, this is mission-critical time that's getting eaten up with system whatnot.

Seems that a lot of people have the same problem :

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/247210-12-audio-latency-problem-ds3r

Like i've written some posts ago my board is a GA P35-S3G , yes im think to contact the Gigabyte tech support,but i think is better to do that all togheter.
Let me know if u are thinking to write a single comulative mail asking to fix that problem.

Thanx.

http://myspace.com/_kwild

ORIGINAL: timboe
Hi Gigabyte P35 MB owners - see here for my post / solution:-
http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.asp?m=1353232

Hey Tim, great work digging this out.

Over on the Tom's Hardware forum, someone posted this:

On my P35-DS3R Rev. 1, the problem was solved by going from F11 back to F5 (original BIOS that came with the board). F11 added a High Precision Event Timer in the system devices, so maybe that's the source of this latency issue...

Maybe someone could try disabling the High Precision Event Timer to see if it fixes the problem. I can upload F5 later if anyone would like to try it. BTW, I also had higher NB temps with F11 for some reason.

Seems a reasonable thing to ask. Maybe someone here could try disabling this in their BIOS, before rolling it back, just to see if it works? It might be a way forward instead of backward...