The PCIe issues were mainly to do with addon cards like the UAD rather than basic soundcards. I think, that by and large the later N4 boards have at least resolved some of this problem and also people seem to say that running and X2 chip cleared the problem up mostly anyway.

Onething, and pain as it maybe, its worth doing a fresh install of windows from word go for a new mobo.

As for the help, no worries, this is to a large degree one of the least judgemental music forums around. No matter how seemingly *trivial* or *basic* a problem is there is usally someone around to at least point one in the right direction.

No one was born understanding how to mix, use compression, or build a successful DAW we all learned , often the hard way, from somewhere or someone.

Ayway, good luck hope this helps resolve the problems

--------------------
nibbled to death by an Okapi http://www.soundclick.com/tubilahdog

Damn ive made a bit of a boo boo here.... your Matrox AGP card wont run on a PCIe board you will need to change it... many apologies.... Gigabyte GA-K8NS Ultra-939 nForce 3... if you dont want to buy a new graphics card try looking for one of these boards from Gigabyte.

If not, most cheap vid cards have dual outputs on them these days.

--------------------
nibbled to death by an Okapi http://www.soundclick.com/tubilahdog

Hey Thanks again Stevedog , I've ordered the board , any thoughts on a Graphic card as it will have to be a pci express!? bearing in mind the only game I ever played was pacman.It just has to work. Thanks again

Again im biased towards ATI cards cos i like the colour better than Nvidia boards... Make of that what you will but like you i dont have any games on my system.

So id go for something like a Radeon X550

--------------------
nibbled to death by an Okapi http://www.soundclick.com/tubilahdog

Hi,

Quote Stevedog:

---

The PCIe issues were mainly to do with addon cards like the UAD rather than basic soundcards.

---

I don't entirely agree with this.


The problem lies in the support for PCI provided by the nF4 PCIe switch. PCIe is now the principal data transport protocol on PCIe mobos, and the legacy PCI bus is attached to the PCIe switch as a PCIe device.

Soundcards certainly are affected, not jusst UADs and PoCos.

However it is true that running an X2 alleviates the problems with the soundcards. I'd be happier if I had the faintest idea why...




Peter

--------------------
PaQ

Hi Peter C, thanks for your input.First to stevedog I'll probably go for a PCI express graphics card.Thanks for your suggestions.On your point Peter C ,this is what I understood as well regarding PCI express and this was part of my reason for going with a pure PCI board in the form of the MSI above.Also I now remember reading the review in the January issue of SOS of the Scan3XS which uses the ABiT AV8 board with the same VIA K8T800 pro chipset ,same as the MSI I decided upon.I rather niavely, it seems now,thought that would be ok!? I think ppl will now get the point that there are varying opinions on these issues and consequently the less experienced of us,ie me, are prone to confusion.Anyhow I take on board what you say.The question remains however if the chipset is the problem as Stevedog thinks, then if I had bought a Scan 3XS would I have had the same problem with this card.There's the rub.Ah well I shall keep you all posted on the outcome.If I have further problems then it may be a faulty sound card or an even greater incentive to buy an Apple Mac and logic!...lol...

Well here is an update on my situation for those who are interested.I bought today a Giga byte GA-K8N Pro -SLI and a Gigabyte GV-RX60P128D Graphics card finished the windows install about 9.30pm UK time.All fine installed the MaXio 032 card all fine for about 5 minutes then it all crashed.Couldn't even boot into safe Mode this time.Had to do a Windows repair from the install CD.I had a email from the ESI support asking me to try the card in a another system, so I have just written them to say I have and it has crashed.I am now convinced the card has been defective all along.No component in this current except the case and power supply, floppy is the same everything else is new.Currently listening to the onboard soundcard, which I must say is rahter good actually.Will run the machine all night without the card to make sure.Seems I got one built if a friday afternoon as they used to say.I will keep you posted.

Well if its any recompense... At least you have a system that will now work with any number of other soundcards without any problems in all probability........... err fingers crossed

--------------------
nibbled to death by an Okapi http://www.soundclick.com/tubilahdog

Hi,

My working dual-core setup:

mobo: Asus P5P800 SE (AGP, 4xPCI)
CPU: Intel D 830 3.0 GHz dual core
mem: 1 GB
Audio: Terratec EWS88D
DSP: Powercore PCI mkII, 2 x UAD-1


Note:
After nightmare with new Poco PCI mkII and my previous DAW (AMD XP2600+, ASUS A7N8X, ...), I've considered two options for the new dual-core DAW: AMD64X2 and Intel D series.

Ok, Intel is slower than equivalent AMDx2, but at the moment, it is practically impossible to build a AMD64X2 system which doesn't have issues with both UAD-1 and Powercore PCI mkII! So I've played safe and built an Intel D system instead!.

It works!
Cheers!

There seems to be a consensus around quite a few forums, for example the nuendo-forum http://www.nuendo.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=7386, that for an AMD X2 setup, the Asus A8V VIA mobo is among the best.

Problem is, they all say the mobo has to come with an AGP graphics card to play it safe. Since motherboards with AGP are getting old and rare, I would like to ask if you think this is still the case?

Hi Martin
I am currently in the throes of changing our main studio machine & am anxious not to waste money buying kit that is not going to do the job so any advice you can offer would be gratefully be received.

I am currently running an athlon1800xp machine with a moto i/o24 & a motu 2408 mk3 using the motu proprietory pci card with Logic 5.5

I do own a p4 3ghz system & an athlon64 3200 system & have been wondering whether to just move my hardware into one of these machines as a temporary measure, or to buy/build a new dual core box for the additional plug in power?

I haven't seen any posts using the motu hardware so I wonder if anyone has heard anything about any issues with it?

My initial thoughts are to get an Asus a8v & an athlon64 x2 but I am open to suggestions & want to keep latency to a minimum.

--------------------
BigDave - Merfangle Music

Just thought you ppl may be interested in the following regarding PCI express cards.... http://www.motu.com/newsitems/the-pcie-424-card-is-now-shipping
http://www.maxioxd.com/ check out the ESI Pci express card.
Any reviews planned?

Excellent news fdotbone - at last we PC Musicians have some PCI Express interfaces to consider.

As soon as I've built my proposed PCIe-equipped PC we may well review one of these

Thanks for the heads-up.


Martin

--------------------
YewTreeMagic

Thanks for the heads up fdotbone - the only problem is I see they are charging $295 to upgrade the pci424 card to pcie. I look forward to a test of this in the near future.

This now opens up the debate about motherboards again though - I believe pcie is more stable on the pentium boards than the athlon boards?

--------------------
BigDave - Merfangle Music

Just to add to that, TC Electronics have now announced that a PCIe Powercore will be available in summer - no details, though. Time to abandon PCI-only mobos?

SH

--------------------
This message was sent from my I and I-phone, an' t'ing.

Hello to all.

After about 6 months of research, I built my DAW PC about 3 weeks ago. Here's what I chose:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ (not overclocking at present), Asus A8R-MVP Radeon Express 200 Crossfire mobo (with BIOS revision 0402), 2 x 1GB Corsair Twinx3200C2 RAM (timing set at 2.5-3-3-6-1T), Antec Phantom 500-watt pwr supply, ATI FireMV2200 128MB video card (thinking that I'd save on processor headroom with a lower-capacity video card), 3 WD Caviar 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s HDs in a RAID 5 array, 2 x Asus DVD burners, WinXP SP2 with all updates.

My audio/MIDI interface is a Tascam FW1082 (using version 1.50 of the XP drivers). It works very well with Cubase SX3.1 (once I figured out how to set it up!), controlling all of the functions I care to access from the control surface.

I purchased a single AGM Neovo 19" widescreen flat panel for use initially and plan to purchase a second one soon, since I'm happy with the AGM's performance in this application. The ATI card supports dual monitors.

Everything is very stable and I'm getting processor temps in the 35C range with two stock case fans and the supplied processor cooling fan. Admittedly, I haven't been pushing the system very hard yet. I'm still tweaking some settings in BIOS and the OS to determine what will provide optimum performance.

This was a major upgrade for me, since my old rig was a Yamaha MD-8 minidisk recorder synced to a Win95 PC (Pentium 100!!!). Hope everyone else who decides to go the build-it-yourself route has as good an experience as I have.

--------------------
BassPilot

OK, I built the system...full component list is

Athlon 64 X2 4200
Asus A8N32-SLi Deluxe nForce4
Corsair 2GB DDR XMS3200C2PT TwinX (2x1GB) CAS2
Tagan TG530-U15 530W ATX2.01 Easycon SLi Compliant Modular Silent PSU
Saffire ATI Radeon X1300 Pro ICEQ 256MB DDR2
Antec P180 SPCR Advanced Super Midi Tower Case
2 * Western Digital Cavier 200HG 7,000rpm PATA hard disks (from old PC) for storage and audio
2 * Western Digital Raptor 80GB 10,000rpm SATA hard disks in RAID config for system
Cubase SX 2
Focusrite saffire audio interface

I've not been able to stress test it with cubase sx yet, but...

I tested it with a cubase project. On my old Athlon XP2000+, VIA KT266A, 1GB, Audiophile 2496 system with the latency set to about 50ms, it had the CPU up to about 95% and still glitched.

On the new system using the saffire set to 10ms latency, the CPU is fairly steady at about 27%, playback is rock solid, screen refreshes are fast and the project loads in a fraction of the time (from the same hard disk as was in the old machine)

...so I'm very happy so far.

The system is also pretty quiet, and I was particularly impressed with the Antec P180 case. Highly recommended.

Yes, I liked the Antec P180 case when I reviewed Millennium's PC in SOS March 2006. Did you use that top vent though, or mount the exhaust fan on the back panel and block the top vent as I suggested in my review?


Martin

--------------------
YewTreeMagic

I'm gutted. I bought an A8V when I specced up my Athlon 64 3000+ a year or so ago, but it was DOA so I got a Gigabyte MB as a replacement, which works but can't overclock properly (the Venice 3000 has a good reputaion as an Oc'er which is why I got it).
Happy with my quiet Antec case though (cheaper model, no top-blowhole)

Quote jackieT:

---

Hello Guys & Girls?
I am looking at Intel Core Duo specs and I can't see the words "64 bit" anywhere? Are they dual 64 bit cores or dual 32 bit cores with Hyperthreading ??I've noticed that the systems I have found so far all use XP pro,and not X64.Are they cheating?? Cheers Jack

---

The current Core Duos (codenamed Yonah) are 32 bit CPUs; the second generation models (Merom) will be 64 bit, they are likely to appear in Q4 of this year. They are pin compatible with Yonah, so upgrades are possible with BIOS updates. Desktop motherboards that support Core Duos are more likely to receive a BIOS update, as I don’t see laptop manufacturers being that keen to encourage their customers to upgrade their laptops which are still under warranty!
Martin’s response to your post was referring to the Pentium D chips, so I guess he misread your post.

You don’t see many systems coming pre-installed with 64 bit XP Pro; I think that is mainly because there aren’t that many applications that are 64 bit at this point. Unless one of your main applications has been ported to 64 bit AND it offers a significant performance boost that you need, I would keep away from XP-64.
When Vista is released the situation should change quite quickly as most new PCs should ship with the 64 bit version; expect a flood of 64 bit applications with software vendors rubbing their hands with glee at the potential to sell yet another upgrade.

Hi all,

Have recently built a dual core system comprising of:

AMD 4200 dual core
Asus A8V
Matrox P650 (Dual DVI outs)
2Gb Corsair RAM
1 x 80GB Hitachi Deskstar (for system)
1 x 250GB Hitachi Deskstar (for data)
Antec case
Sony CD/RW - DVD ROM
2 x Dell High Respolution 19inch monitors

I am still using my old M-Audio Quattro as I couldnt justify any extra expense at the moment..

Set up the system. and configured it for dual boot (WinXP Pro for office apps, and Win XP Pro for Music boot). All worked very well for the first two weeks. I had reason up on one monitor, rewired to Acid on the other, and I was in remix heaven! It was great, and so fast! I didnt seem to care how many VST's i added, rock solid.... Untill.....

Two days ago i turned on my system and now it will not boot. I get the Asus screen, goes through the POST without errors, then I get the choice of office or music boot. which ever I select, it displays the windows loading screen, then as soon as it should display the log-in screen , I get a blank monitor (this is also the point that the two monitors should kick in for dual screen mode).

I can start in safe mode, but it gets as far as loading a driver called GAGp30KX.SYS and then freezes. I have tried locating that driver using the recovery console, and renaming it, but when I restart It stall on another driver, so I now think that the mentioned driver as the last to load successfully, and It is stalling on a driver that I cannot yet see on the screen.

Matox have advised me to do the following:

Flash the MOBO Bios
Flash the chipset BIOS
Flash the Graphices card bios
Use the Matros drivers rather than the windows ones

still no joy....

Its confusing that both operating systems fail in the same place? This cannot possibly be coinsidence?

I downloaded the microsoft memory tester programm that runs in DOS, and it reports no errors...

I have tried all the advanced start up options, It wont even boot in Safe or VGA mode....

Sometimes if i leave the system for half an hour or so, then return I has managed to load windows, but this is rare and speradic to say the least.

I have also slightly overclocked the AGP buss from 1.5v to 1.6v, and changed the AGP speed from 8x to 4x, which was suggested whilst researching this on "Tin-ter-net" (I think on the Matrox user Forum)

I guess my next move is to reinstall windows, but am reluctant to do this, as im not convinced it is a windows problem, due to the fact that both os's fail in the same place (two windows operating systems corrupted in exactly the same place at the same time, unlikely..)

I am also going to try another graphics card.

The pain is, that I deleiberately went for the Asus A8V to avoid and PCI-X issues, and now am wondering if there is a compatability problem between the A8v and the Matrox card (hightened only by that fact the most of the Mobo problems reported on the matrox forum are to do with the A8v... not very encouraging..)

Ohh well... I will keep you posted if i manage to work it out...

Nick.

Edited by Game0ver (25/04/06 12:52 PM)

Quote:

---

at last we PC Musicians have some PCI Express interfaces to consider.

---

I'm beginning to wonder if PCIe is the right issue to worry about. The word is that Vista will mandate signed drivers. Quite a lot of my consumer and pro computer drivers are unsigned.

It occurs to me that a Firewire audio system will work on Win98, WinXP, OSX and Vista without needing signed drivers and, because the motherboard-based Firewire ports are effectively just connectorless PCI devices, one gets the benefits of optimised PCIe when the right mobo comes along, but can use one's ancient 2 month old X2 PCI mobo in the mean time. What happens to a PCIe card with an unsigned driver when Vista comes along?

Am I missing something? Isn't Firewire more future-proofed in terms of performance than a PCIe audio card? The other benefit is that the interface can be swapped from desktop to laptop thus getting the expensive, but high quality audio wherever you need it.

The real issue is whether the performance and features of Firewire audio will match the equivalent PCIe card. Any thoughts?

Regards
Roy Leith

I am awaiting my Inta Audio AMD workstation, which i upgraded to a X2 3800 processor. Will repost when its up and running.

This is kind of a pointless post really, I'm just a little over excited and struggling with the wait, my current, dying, DAW being a PIII and a very old version of cubase.

Hi Nick,

Quote Game0ver:

---

Hi all,

Have recently built a dual core system comprising of:

...

Until.....

Two days ago i turned on my system and now it will not boot.

Ohh well... I will keep you posted if i manage to work it out...

Nick.

---

You clearly have a hardware fault. The question is: in which component?

It seems to me the key evidence is:

1. Same problem in two OSs running (please confirm this) from two differnet partitions.
2. Won't boot in Safe or VGA mode
3. Will boot into DOS and run MS memory tester


So we are looking from some item of hardware that Windows depends on (even in safe mode), but DOS doesn't.

If you have a spare HD lying around I'd remove all the existing HDs and try installing windows onto the spare. My guess is that it won't work, but even that tells us something. It eliminates the HD, and the exact point where it stops working may provide a clue. And of course, you might get lucky and end up with a working system.


Based on what you have said I'd be inclined to suspect a mobo or graphics card fault; but at this stage that's no more than a guess.




Peter

--------------------
PaQ

Hi Peter,

Indeed you are correct. Last night I removed the 2nd data HD, and the PC booted fine...

So I then assumed a failed HD, so I downloaded the Hitachi deskstar HD fault Finder DOS programe, and scanned both the drives.

The test concluded that both drives were indeed ok, with no errors.

I then booted into windows, but windows would not read the 2nd drive at all. It appears that the file structure must have corrupted somehow, although the eventlog doesn't shed any light on it.

Reformatted the 2nd HD, and all now ok

(lost a few new samples created last weekend, but I store all the arrangements on the system drive, so shouldnt be too hard to re-create)

Thanks for your thoughts!

(After this episode Im now considering purchasing a 3rd drive, and having my Data drive mirrored across two drives for some extra redundancy...)

Edited by Game0ver (27/04/06 11:01 AM)

Just about to order ASUS Nforce4 mobo, AMD X2 4200, GEoForce 6800 PCIe dual head graphics - barebone system.

I am planning a clean install of XPHome+SP2

Anything to worry about or gotchas ?

Hi All,

After trying in vain to get Asus PCI only boards in south africa I settled for:

AMD 4200 64 X2 dual core
MSI NEO 2 Platinum
2 x 1gb Corsiar value ram
Seagate 250 gig SATA drive
Matrox G450
Thermaltake 500w Psu
whatever case was handy
A very flakey Polar TI (+ internal PCI card for i)
echo gina (the old 20 Bit job - no really)

Aftert a VERY frustrating evening where I though I'd blown R7000 after the system kept freezing, it turned ou the pc builders had put the ram in the wrong slots -After that everything is running REALLY well -

I stress tested the system and the max tem the processor got to (running 2 instances of prime 95, one for each core) was 37 degrees)

cheers

Brett

Edited by bmfbmf (01/05/06 07:11 PM)

OK here's mine:

Asus A8R-MVP motherboard
AMD X2 4200 CPU
ThermalRight XP-120 CPU cooler
Seasonic S-12 430W PSU
Corsair XMS PC3200 Cas2 TwinX - 2 x 1GB
Gforce 6200 graphics
2 x Maxtor MaxLine3 Reliability 250GB HD
Pioneer DVD/CD Writer
RME Fireface

So far so good - running comfortably at reported 2.9ms latency (I know the Firewire adds a bit more) - haven't seen average CPU over 17% so far, bags of headroom for the additional stuff I want to do.

Touch wood - I'm actually now able to concentrate on making music again after fighting with my old machine all these years

Thanks to forum members CC (for showing an interest last year when I was close to convincing myself that PC music wasn't worth the effort) and PeterC (who built the system).

cheers
Adrian

{edit} PS - hard to compare with my old P4 1.7GHz system, but the same project I am running at 2.9ms/17% CPU now would not run at all at less than 50ms on the old machine.



--------------------
getting better all the time..

Edited by dunch (02/05/06 07:53 PM)

Processor; Intel Pentium D Processor 920
Processor Speed; dual core 2.8Ghz
Processor Cache; L2 Cache 2x2MB
Bus Speed; 800MHz Front-side Bus
Memory; 2.0GB PC2-4200 DDR2 SDRAM memory 2x1GB
Windows XP Media Center
Hard Drive; Samsung 250GB 7200RPM Serial ATA hard drive
Maxtor 100Gb SATA Ultra drive
Tascam US122

This is an off the shelf HP computer that I bought on special. It's very quiet, and works very well with Cubase SX3, Kontakt 2.1, Garritan J&BB and Virtual Guitarist 2.

Had problems with an external USB2 hard drive (Maxtor One Touch II) that kept blue screening the computer, but replaced it with an internal drive and haven't had a crash since.

I don't know what the motherboard is... how do you find out?

R.

Quote Richiebee:

---

I don't know what the motherboard is... how do you find out?

R.

---

Hi - try CPU-Z.

cheers
A

Quote dunch:

---

Hi - try CPU-Z.

---

That worked...

The motherboard is an ASUS P5LP-LE (it seems... it actually comes up Emery).

Enermax 480watt PSU/Abit AI7 MB'd/P4x3.06 Dual core (HT On)/2gig ram/160+160+80 Maxtors/Nvidea GE Force 5200/Delta 1010lt+EmulatorX//Win XP Home SP2/Cubase 3.1/EmuX VSTi/LM4 MK2/ All usual FX and VSTi's etc.

Self build, no surprise troubles of the kind plaguing some Cubase SX users. Some crackles but that's the EmuX samplers multitimbral overload if I forget to use something else instead. Midi stable with Audio priority set normal or high.

--------------------
Success is round the corner. It's also round the bend.

Hi All,

I think royleith's post about firewire (powercore for ex) rather than the PCI version is a good point. I'm not tech spec'd enough to be able to answer but would welcome someones thoughts.

Put my money down at Millennium today for

Asus A8N SLi Deluxe for Athlon s939
Athlon 64 X2 4800+ 2.4ghz S939 2x1mb
1GB DDR SO-DIMM Memory x2
Raptor 74GB 10,000RPM SATA Hard Drive
250GB Serial ATA Hard Drive
Configure 2 x 250Gb Serial ATA hard drives as RAID 0.
RME digi 9632
Matrox Parhelia 128MB TripleVGA Graphics & Windows XP Pro.

Thought about Powercore firewire but haven't got £. Will be running Giga studio & SX and groovey stuff like Spektral delay. Movin' up from my old Win 98 P3 450, which still works well and can record 20 or so tracks of audio. Millenium are going to rack mount it and I'll use it for recording gigs from my 01v via adat.

Can't wait.

Bob Bryars

My pal just helped me build a dual core machine. and it goes like stink. dont know what the technical term for that is!
it's a 2 x dual core opteron 266
Gigabyte NVIDIA Fanless 6600GT+HSI 128MB
Tyan K8WE S2877
2 gig registered ram
with 2 sata 300G maxtor drives
RME HDSP 9652
UAD card

it's shaping up really well, I seem to be able to load tonnes of plug ins, even at 96k and the hard drive isn't dropping out like it used to...
the only thing needed ironed out is the UAD card only works at a latency of 3ms! no bad thing, except the IR1 reverb only works at 12ms! I've no idea how this stuff works, I just really like it when it does. I've posted this question on this forum too.. see if anyone can help..
cheers
andy

I've just finished my first self build. It's an Athlon Dual Core:

AMD X2 4200 CPU
Gigabyte GA-K8NSC-939 Motherboard (nForce 3)
Antec P180 Case
Seasonic S12 430W PSU
Crucial 4GB DDR
Radeon ATI 9250 256MB Graphics
WD 80GB ATA
WD 300GB ATA
Intel Pro 1000MT Ethernet
EgoSys WamiRack 192X

Everything went surprisingly smoothly until I ran into problems with MOTU's MachFive Sampler causing the entire machine to reboot without warning. Although I had already successfully run this software on a P4 for sometime with XP service pack 2, I took it back to service pack 1 and this sorted the problem...

Now awaiting Cubase SE3 in the post so that I can fully utilise my brand new dual core DAW.

Chuffed to bits.

Ben

How quiet is that setup BHWH ? Did you purchase any specifically quiet fans? Ta

Neil

I can't really give you any specifics (ie. dB levels) but what I would say is that with the 3 standard P180 case fans set to low, CPU heatsink & fan and Seasonic PSU fan all running it's still a whole lot quieter than my old 'off the shelf' Evesham P4.

I don't really have much experience of other quiet PCs but considering what's going on inside the beast it's quiet enough for me!

Oh - and I made sure I bought a fanless graphics card.

Quote Game0ver:

---

Hi Peter,

Indeed you are correct. Last night I removed the 2nd data HD, and the PC booted fine...

So I then assumed a failed HD, so I downloaded the Hitachi deskstar HD fault Finder DOS programe, and scanned both the drives.

The test concluded that both drives were indeed ok, with no errors.

I then booted into windows, but windows would not read the 2nd drive at all. It appears that the file structure must have corrupted somehow, although the eventlog doesn't shed any light on it.

Reformatted the 2nd HD, and all now ok

(lost a few new samples created last weekend, but I store all the arrangements on the system drive, so shouldnt be too hard to re-create)

Thanks for your thoughts!

(After this episode Im now considering purchasing a 3rd drive, and having my Data drive mirrored across two drives for some extra redundancy...)

---

Try to Zero Fill the defective drive and it will work again like a dream. Oh it's a deskstar!!!??? Just released! Throw it away mate... Go for Western Digitals and Seagates only...

--------------------
http://www.myspace.com/joystickmusicgreece

Well anyone who followed my tale of woe in March may be interested to know I now have a working computer.Well sort of...lol.Alas! There was a problem from the start with my ESI Maxio o32 sound card and indeed this was confirmed after it was returned to the supplier in germany who subsequently returned it to ESI who then replaced the breakoutbox and returned it to me.I can only say that their support from the UK via email was very very good and helpful and friendly.I chose the UK as I am english speaking although based in Switzerland.Well after that i had a new breakout box within a few weeks.Ok I was unfortunate in that I got one made on a friday as they used to say.All in all I have no real complaints and the card itself is first class.On top of that I had a Western Digital HD 10,000 rpm SATA a week before it started sounding like a Massey Ferguson with two ton of cow [ ****** ] on the back and it had to go back and took a lot longer to be replaced, although they did in the end.This is just another in a long line of electronics that I have had to return due to faults in the last year or so.My Korg D1600MkII arrived new but defective!! maybe I have an Albatross although I don't remember shooting one! Water water everywhere and not a drop to drink etc etc....
Anyhow if you're interested I really do believe that this ESI card would have worked with any of the three computer configurations that I tried and am now convinced that the faulty card was the problem all along.I now have a Gigabyte based GA-K8N Pro-SLI Dual core AMD which is very good apart from the fact the Bios has a mind of its own in that it some times makes a very long bleep and then reboots and then starts fine.It has never failed to boot as of yet.One tip is don't try to update the bios from the web browser I had problems making it "stick" use a floppy and update from within the Bios itself .It also has Dual Bios anyhow.The ESI card is PCI and I also have a PCI-E firewire card on which hangs an epson scanner without any issuses thus far.The sound card has absolutely no clicks or pops although I'm only running one 8 channel of ADAT straight into it.Anyways thanks to all who contributed and helped me out.Cheers....Mike

Hi everyone!
As a newcomer,first thanks for the great forum!

I built myself a new PC:
Thermaltake "Kandalf"
Bequiet dark power pro 530 Watt
Asus A8N-SLI Premium (Nvid4 chipset)
AMD Athlon 64X2,4800+,Socket 939 boxed,2x 2,4 GHz
2 x RAM Corsair Twinx PC 3200,400 Mhz,1024MB,CL2
Scythe Ninja Plus Heatpipe cooler
ATI Radeon X1300 Pro DDR 2 PCIe passiv
Western digital Raptor 10.000RPM
2x Sata drives

Interface:
Edirol UA-1000 USB 2.0
Steinberg Midex 8

Everything worx fine!!No Problems anyway!Scythe is the best cooler on earth-never over 50 degrees C!
I tried to insert all my VST Instruments in a little song (20 VST`s)-CPU does`nt matter at all!
I could increase the latency to the minimum (6ms on Edirol USB!)
I`m glad I`ve changed.The only problem is UAD-1 (since I can get the new PCIe card from UAD,I`m connected with my old PC-AMD 2600+,Asus A8V deluxe- via Teleport,so Ì´m able to use UAD1 anyway)
My old Powercore card makes no problems.
If you have any questions,contact me please
Greetings from Vienna
Klaus