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AHA 2940UW Pro SCSI and .... (Read 9061 times)
plusfourfour
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AHA 2940UW Pro SCSI and ....
Mar 18th, 2002 at 11:07pm
 
Hi! Cheesy A great place to be instructed and learn from- congrats.  But I ned the Professor experience appraoch.  I am getting confused so I'd like to be told a system and one alternative and then I'll re-read this site and find out exactly why.  I am not very experienced with PC's but I've read as much as I can.

I have a AHA 2940UW Pro SCSI card.  I only use it at present to run some external stuff like an ESI4000 sampler, ZIP, and CD R/W plextor.  I am about to upgrade but I'don't have a lot of cash.  I will be spending about £900 (I'm in the UK).  I'm not sure that my SCSI card can work with today's scsi drives.  I use my computer to record and read  multiple tracks of Audio.  The software is SONAR (and some LOGIC) with lot's of VSt and DX plugins.  Plus I'd like to see if I can integrate gigaSampler.  Anyway I would like to upgrade in 2 stages.

Stage 1.  I have a PIII 700HZ.  I wish to attempt to overclock it (can this be done on a socket 370 MATX motherboard?). I wish to try a scsi drive to see if it's much faster (boot from it I suppose).  So that's easy.  Just suggest a scsi drive that works with the AHA 2940UW Pro SCSI card.  Or if this has no benefit tell me.

Stage 2.  Upgrade to Northwood P4 1.6 and overclock to 2.1ish.  So I will need a new case (mine's a micro at present), Mainboard (I don't mind which memory type for RAM).  Then I'll sell my old computer.

So can you Professors of Experience help out a Poor guy  of intellect?   Grin

Tom
 

Regards &&&&Tom Cheesy
 
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Re: AHA 2940UW Pro SCSI and ....
Reply #1 - Mar 19th, 2002 at 12:48am
 
the 2940uw is a classic card .. probably the most popular scsi card of all time .. tho dated today. two generations have passed. currently technolgy is at u160 (max bus 160MB/s).

b4 that was u2w, at 80MB/s. yiou have uw, or 40MB/s.

good thing about scsi is that it's backward compatible. it will run todays u160 drives, or at least it should. the card will limit the drive to ~34MB/s, real-life data x-fers, taking overheard into account. if you can live with that, cool.

u could boot from scsi and have another dedicated drive for your audio files.

i don't know about the matx mobo .. never heard of it, but if you have cB0 stepping p3, most can do 933 with a little voltage bump (i use 1.8v).

why do u want to o/c? r u having problems now? there are many sites dedicated to overclocking .. especialy in uk. search & you will find.

you can't go wrong with maxtor/quantum atlas 10K III .. ~US$189 for 18GB.

http://radified.com/Benchmarks/hdtach_atlas_10K3.htm

yours would truncate at ~ 33MB/s.

i just ordered northwood 1.6a, so will have more info next week or two. check out asusboards.com forums for all the poop.
 
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Re: AHA 2940UW Pro SCSI and ....
Reply #2 - Mar 19th, 2002 at 8:58am
 
I always wondered what that 2U meant on other 2490 scsi cards so thanks for that.  This ~34MBs I don't understand that?  I realise that the scsi disk spins faster than 7200RPM which a good IDE disk does.  But why don't IDE disks go faster anyway?  What I want to know is using my 2490UW card with a fast scsi disk will it be quicker when I run my software (SONAR with a creamware PowerSampler sound card)?  Also when I move up to a Northwood 1.6GB cpu system will it still be faster than just using the IDE 7200 RPM disks.  I just don't understand why a scsi card placed in a PCI slot can be quicker than an IDE that's integrated (hard-wired) on the mobo (and thx for allowing me to understand the word mobo- I wondered what it meant).

By now now should should appreciate that I am Mr Poor Intellect.
 

Regards &&&&Tom Cheesy
 
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Re: AHA 2940UW Pro SCSI and ....
Reply #3 - Mar 19th, 2002 at 10:27am
 
Re: "This ~34MBs I don't understand that?"

that's how fast it goes (x-fer data) .. it's like when you get in ur car & stomp on the gas pedal, and car goes up to xx km/hr. same thing.

Re: "why don't IDE disks go faster anyway? "

i dunno. you'll have to ask the manufacturers.

Re: "will it be quicker when I run my software"

i dunno. you'll have to try it & see. i don't have a power sampler. ask someone who does.

what kind of latencies are you seeing with the card? does it sppt windows 2000? 24/96? how about asio & directsound? crossfade looping?

Re: "I just don't understand why a scsi card placed in a PCI slot can be quicker than an IDE that's integrated (hard-wired) on the mobo "

the scsi *card* is not faster. the scsi *drive* is faster. it's like putting a porsche engine in your volkswagon.

Re: "when I move up to a Northwood 1.6GB cpu system will it still be faster "

will what be faster?
 
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plusfourfour
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Re: AHA 2940UW Pro SCSI and ....
Reply #4 - Mar 19th, 2002 at 1:10pm
 
I only came to this forum because creamware (who produce the PowerSampler sound card I'm using) won't answer any questions I ask them.  Cakewalk is the same.  Roland too.  Basically I used to connect by midi and SMPTE and MMC Cakewalk Pro 8   PowerSampler and synch to a Roland VS1880 multi-track.  I noticed that when I combined them all the sound did not feel tight in my Dance songs.  To cut a long strory short I have repeatly asked all 3 companies questions to try and solve the problem and they don't want to know.  So that is why I have decided to sell my VS1880 and just run all audio tracks on a PC.  Then all the SMPTE synch problems to a large extent will disappear. 

The main problem I have with PowerSampler is that they don't support WDM but my Cakewalk program will only support this format.  They do claim they are working on an upgrade driver that will support WDM but the drawback is you gotta pay $100!  That is a joke!!  So I have made the decision right now- to buy a new soundcard- a delta 1010 as this supports (I believe) WDM and all the other low latency types such as ASIO etc.  I will use my power sampler as that- a power sampler and use it via midi- hopefully this is possible.

Any way I diverge.  This is all I am trying to determine-

If I use my 2490UW pro card and buy a scsi drive will this give significant performance increase over any combination of mobo, cpu and RAM, and a IDE 7200RPM HD? 

Sorry if I am infuriatingly inaccurate with my words- I just hate computers but I want to learn to get the most out of them.
 

Regards &&&&Tom Cheesy
 
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Re: AHA 2940UW Pro SCSI and ....
Reply #5 - Mar 19th, 2002 at 2:02pm
 
not an easy question to answer. i don't think anyone will be able to tell you for sure.

here's what we *do* know:

1. faster cpu is better than a slower one.
2. faster hard drive is better than slower.
3. scsi is better than ide.
4. more ram is better than less
5. windows 2000 is better than w98/me

first off i'd suggest a dedicated hard drive for you audio. i would try running the o/s & apps off an ide drive on it's own controller(primary master with no primary slave), and your audio off a scsi drive.

check your ram usage to see how much you are using. if your using all of it, buy more.

dual-boot your system so that u have a system dedicated solely for your audio stuff, and nothing else. if you use your pc for other shit, do all that other stuff on another boot.

i play with audio a little, but not much (i have the CardDeluxe by Digital Audio Labs), but i do lots of video stuff. The principles are the same. You may want to lok at the first page of my video system to see if you can glean any tips that might apply to your audio system.

http://radified.com/DV_NLE/dv_nle_1.htm

Basically, both audio & video systems deal with large files in real-time. Video files are usually larger than audio.
 
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plusfourfour
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I love to Dance but my
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Re: AHA 2940UW Pro SCSI and ....
Reply #6 - Mar 19th, 2002 at 2:08pm
 
OK.  I'll look at your video pages and re-read the whole site again. I didn't know a dual or multiple boot was possible until yesterday.  Fanks Sir you are a gentleman and a pal.   8)
 

Regards &&&&Tom Cheesy
 
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Re: AHA 2940UW Pro SCSI and ....
Reply #7 - Mar 19th, 2002 at 2:32pm
 
 
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