Cake 9.03 and Pentium IV

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kilgoretrout

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I am having fits using my new 1.4 Ghz pentium IV with cakewalk. Does anyone have good suggestions for optimizing the system for a daw? I have windows me, i tried 98 but it wont recognize my processor.

The only thing installed in my computer besides my audi card (MOTU 2408) is a modem. The IRQ's dont seem to conflict.

Whoever gets this right deserves a grammy.

Thanks
 
Please define "fits"

You say you are having fits - can you be a bit more specific? Does it load? Does it lock up ? ??????

You are using new, unproven, pioneer technology - good luck.
 
I know exactly what the problem is...

your too rich and im jealous :D
 
Fits - my system locks up continuously. Every five or so minutes when I am recording audi, although midi is not as problem prone. I also routinely hit the wall on processor availability when I am applying even one rich reverb (against 3 or 4 audio tracks). This is a 1.4 GHz computer. It is supposed to be way more powerful than the PIII.

And yes, darnold I probably have more money than talent. But you probably have more time to play.
 
Go to your motherboard manufacturer's website and download a BIOS update. Your current BIOS almost definitely cannot recognize the P4. Be careful when you flash the BIOS, though; follow the instructions in the readme file very carefully.

You'll also need to go to Intel's site and download the new chipset updates (the Microsoft site might have these, too) so that Windows will recognize the P4.

Basically, what you have to remember is that your motherboard and Windows 98 were made before the P4 came out, so unless you upgrade the software for both, they simply won't recognize the processor.

Good luck!

Ryan
 
Yah there could be problems with your flash. but my guess is it would have something more to do with cakewalk. also i definately would recommend that you have the newest drivers for your MOTU. Also if you can, upgrade to windows 2000 if everything you have is compatible with it. also, i dont know much else about your computer. one thing that is very important while recording which is usually one of the main problems with drop outs, is you need two harddrives. one harddrive with system files, one just straight recording. your system file one doesnt need to be extremely fast, but the one dedicated for just recording, the faster the better. the reason for this, is if you have one harddrive doing everything, if at anytime the harddrives head has to move position to access a system file, it will cause a break in the audio stream causing a drop out.

Just let me know if you have more problems and ill be glad to help you out. just let me know. but like i said, my main guess is cakewalk doesnt know how to access your p IV correctly. just make sure you have latest drivers on everything or wait for a cakewalk update.

btw. wonna send me some money to help out with my studio??? :D
 
Well, there is no way your motherboard could have been made before the P4. The mobo must have been made FOR the P4.
There could still be a chipset update though.

Now that bad news. The P4 is a higher clock rate processor, but in some applications it can be less powerful that a PIII. The problem is Intel's very poor implementation of the x87 floating point unit on the P4. The P4 has a very powerful extension known as SSE2 - but alas, no software is available yet to take advantage of this.

Check out this article that shows how bad things can be.

http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/00q4/001122/p4-03.html

I hope this is not the situation with you and it is just some poor driver that can be upgraded. But if its not too late - one might consider returning the P4 for an Athlon or dual P3 motherboard for a processing powerhouse. Don't be sucked in by the Intel marketing hype, and don't be sucked int by processor clock speeds.
 
Well, let's clarify here: Did you just upgrade the processor, or is this a whole new, off the shelf system? Because if you just upgraded the processor, then contrary to what trashcan-man says, it's extremely possible that your motherboard was built before the P4 came out. I mean, it's a flip chip processor just like all the other recent Pentium's; it would certainly fit in an older motherboard, but just wouldn't work properly without a BIOS update (and even then it might not work depending on the physical capabilities of the motherboard).

If you just bought a new, completely integrated system, however, I'd say that something is wrong with it and that you should take it back. There's no reason why Cakewalk should freeze up a computer with a P4 processor anymore than it should freeze up one with a P3, unless the system with the P4 processor isn't configured properly. I mean, getting varying performance is one thing, freezing up is something entirely different and suggests a hardware misconfiguration.

Keep us updated, and good luck once again!

Ryan
 
I would have to disagree with yah 37point5. :) :). I definately agree with trashcan-man.
 
Well I disagree about your disagreement! :)

I wasn't aware I was being so controversial! ;)

Ryan
 
This is an off the shelf system, with an intel mother board (thankfully not including the VIA chipset). It has two hard drives - one for audio and one for the rest - plenty fast and plenty big (60 g each. Here is the link

http://www.powerspec.com/systems/system_specs.phtml?selection=8130

I added the other hard drive, gutted everything else (USB modem instead of the PCI slot, system sound card out, netwoark card,... all gone).

As for the bios related issues, maybe I should clarify.
The bios recognzies my PIV chipset fine when I am running ME. Its with 98 that it doesn't seem to recognize the PIV. I got an error stating something like "unrecognized hardware". I tried to load the drivers for the PIV and 98 never reocognized it enough to run smoothly.

I think the problem must have something to do with the audio card and the way the data is handled. While I am not an expert, I understand there are a few significant differences in the Rambus architecture and the memory bus used in the PIII design. After all, the memory I have is supposed to be capable of data bursts over 1Ghz, and the continuous clocking of the bus is something around 400 MHz (vs 133 I think on the PIII).

This is probably resulting in a flow of data to the audio interface (in my case a MOTU 324 system) at a rate faster than It might be able to handle. However, since the 324 interface is in one of the PCI slots, it cant be subject to the same data transfer rate issues.

One other source of differennce in the PIV technology as I understand it is the floating point processor (FPP)implementation, which is supposed to be way more popwerful than the PII, but my guess is that a lot of the older software doesn't even slightly recognize it.

If the FPP is supposed to be offloading some of the burden from teh Cpu, then maybe the lock ups are coming from the fact that the software (either Cakewalk or MOTU) isn't entirely compatible with the PIV architecture yet.

As to taking the system back, I am past the 30 day window.
 
Its possible that your motherboard was built before the P4 came out, but as to plugging a P4 in it, that is impossible.
Take a look at every P4 system being built - they all use Rambus Ram. Why? because only the P4 uses the 100 Mhz - quad pumped memory access - hence the 400 Mhz memory access claim. This is opposed to every other motherboard that uses a 133 Mhz front side bus (FSB). (Note - new 266 MHz DDRAM mobos are a recent addition.)
The bad news about this is that you have to buy memory, 4 sticks at a time. The good news is its fast.

Pentium 4 (in its current form) and only Pentium 4 works with Rambus ram.

As for floating point - if a program is optimized for SSE2 extensions then P4 blows everything out of the water, that includes 1.3 GHz TBirds. It is just that there is NO software available yet that does this. Why? because compilers (the programs that builds the programs) do not have that option yet to optimize for it. Until such time you may see poorer performance on your P4 than P3.
But don't take my word for it - cut verbatim from
Tom's hardware guide

http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/00q4/001122/p4-04.html

"It is obvious that Pentium 4's mediocre x87 floating-point unit is responsible for those poor results. It is incredible, but Intel didn't seem to care about Pentium 4's FPU-performance whatsoever when this processor was designed. The Pentium 4-designers relied completely on the new SSE2-unit and the fact that SSE2-enabled software won't use the x87-FPU anymore. I leave it up to you to decide if you consider this as a brave move of Intel or an ignorant one. I suppose that Intel doesn't want to sell Pentium 4 processors to Quake 3 players only. However, for the time being Quake 3 is the only benchmark that shows above-average scores of Pentium 4."

The good news about your system is, it uses the PC800 Rambus ram. Its expensive - but its the fastest. The Dell P4 systems use PC600 (I think) which also can show worse performance than 133 MHz SDRAM.
 
Actually, since this is an off the shelf system from Powerspec, I don't believe there is much chance that the motherboard was a pre-PIV design. With the combination of the Rambus memory, it has to be a PIV motherboard - I do not think the other processors are set up for Rambus yet.

For what little other stuff I have tried on the computer (it is basically a DAW, although I have Excell for studio templates and Word for songwriting) the computer is a dream. Fast, stable, ...

Its just the DAW applications.
One of the articles I read about PIV technology (unfortunately well after I had bought the computer) went into great details about the power of the FPP. As a result of incredible floating poing power, I think the CPU implementation was somewhat different - in some cases a step back - because the horsepower the CPU needed was considerably less with the FPP there to take care of the intensive operations.

I am not a detective (but I play one on TV) but my suspicions are that the root of a lot of the PIV problems to date is not that it is a bad design, but that a program probably has to be optimized for using the FPP - if not (say its a PIII or PII app), then I don't see how the FPP would be used effectively. If that is the case, and the apps I am using are older (Cake 9.03) then the design choice Intel made by putting the FPP in may not be showing any benefit with the older software. Additionally, the smaller cache and other changes could be causing real-time programs (such as DAW's) to hang more frequently.

Keep me posted on what you hear.
 
The main reason this subject interests me is because I had a similar problem last month. I tried to upgrade my PII 350 to a PIII 600 (an upgrade which the motherboard manufacturer insisted would work out fine). Both the BIOS and Windows recognized the processor after respective upgrades, and everything seemed to be working fine.

Unfortunately, I soon found that even though the computer was fine with lower level CPU intensive activity, it completely locked up whenever I did anything that required a lot of CPU and HD power, specifically mixing down audio in Cakewalk 9.03 and creating MP3s out of WAVs in Wavelab.

I beat my head against the wall trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with it, and eventually just sent the processor back and got a Celeron 566 which I successfully overclocked to 850. $70 cheaper, and it benchmarks higher than the PIII 700.

So, to wrap it up, I feel for you, but unfortunately don't have much more advice. The only other things I would recommend are changing your OS to Win2000 (if your soundcard and progs are compatible, that is). It seems to deal with processor issues much better (e.g., dual processor setups), and is certainly more stable than 98 or ME (which continually crashes whenever I get near it).

Keep us updated,

Ryan
 
Tonight I tried to help a friend troubleshoot Cakewalk PA9 running on his new Dell Pentium 4 - 1.4 GHz, with Windows ME. His soundcard is a new Turtle Beach "Santa Cruz". We got nowhere! If you set a track up to record digital audio, CW would sit there and stall then start but not record. If you inserted a wav file it would crash when you tried to play it . . . system lock-up . . . the old kernel32.dll error. We tried updating the soundcard drivers, reinstalling them, reinstalling CW . . .nothing worked. I'm beginning to think that this is a cakewalk issue, but I can't find anything about it on their web site. I don't know if AudioX and ME don't get along or what, but something's screwy. Anybody else had this problem ??

PAPicker
 
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