I have the Asus A7A266 mobo with the Ali Magik 1 chipset. I work primarily in audio recording. I was in the market for a new pro audio card. The 2 I was looking at, RME's Hammerfall/Multiface and ST Audio's C-Port both had warnings on their websites concerning this mobo and chipset:
http://www.ridimultimedia.de/kb/staudio/incompatible/index.html#ali
ALi MAGIK 1 chipset
A number of users reported performance problems with mainboards using the ALi MAGIK 1 chipset (for example the ASUS A7A266 or the IWILL KA266-R). When using all I/O channels at 24bit/96kHz, the data transfer for busmastering devices is not high enough which will result in drop-outs during playback or recording.
According to our tests, the ALi MAGIK 1 has a very low performance PCI compared to the other DDR-RAM chipsets. To playback and record 20 audio channels at 24bit (32bit transfer) with 96kHz, a steady transfer rate of 7.5 MB/s is needed. Our tests have shown that the ALi chipset in certain situations is not able to deliver the needed transfer rate, especially when other PCI busmaster devices are installed (NIC, SCSI-controller, SB Live!, etc.). We know that this sounds unbelievable (the PCI bus specifications allow 130MB/s transfer rate) but our tests confirm this: even without another busmaster device installed, the transfer rate can be under 8 MB/s (!) which shows the bad performance of the chipset.
This has been confirmed by other audiocard vendors and also by manufacturers of TV-cards such as Hauppauge [1]. As result we cannot recommend to use a mainboard with the ALi MAGIK 1 chipset with our hardware. You might get acceptable performance with 44.1kHz signals and/or a lower number of channnels (e.g. with a DSP24 Value). However, already the installation of other busmaster devices might get you into trouble and recording without drop-outs is no longer possible in that case.
What can you do if you already have a mainboard based on the ALi MAGIK 1 chipset and you want to use DSP24 hardware? The best solution from our point of view is to exchange it with a mainboard based on the AMD761 chipset (like the ASUS A7M266 for example). If you don't want to change the mainboard, contact the mainboard manufacturer and ask them for a BIOS and/or chipset driver update adressing this problem. Although not confirmed from ALi, we do not expect that this limitation exists intentionaly. It seems more like a fixable bug or a issue related to certain settings in BIOS and the behaviour of the chipset drivers to us.
http://www.rme-audio.com/english/faq/alarm.htm
Asus A7A266 and Iwill KA266-R with chipset ALiMAGIK 1
Several users report significant performance problems when using the Hammerfall and DIGI96 series. The Hammerfall can't be used even at the highest latency setting, the DIGI96 series shows sub-average performance.
Comment: As far as we know the Ali chipset MAGIK 1 is the slowest of all DDR-RAM chipsets, it is even slower than the fastest PC133 chipset. Additionally it offers a PCI-bus performance that can hardly be lower. The Hammerfall, which requires a constant transfer rate of 9 MByte/s (52 channels I/O at 44.1 kHz), can't be used with this board at all. The DIGI96 series works, but suffers from bad performance. While DIGICheck will normally measure a transfer rate of more than 30 MByte/s (on Intel boards up to 130 MByte/s, which is the maximum transfer rate of the PCI-bus), the ALi-based boards reach sensational 8 (eight) MByte/s. Therefore we have to warn against boards using this ALi chipset. And we are not alone. Hauppauge, manufacturer of TV cards, also mentions the ALi chipset as critical.
Anyone got any opinions or information about this major flaw? I'd rather not replace this mobo but if I ever want to record at 24 bit looks like I will have to unless Ali or Asus fixes this. I have an e-mail off to Asus, sure they've heard it before, though. Couldn't find an e-mail address for Ali, guess they don't like mail. 🙁
http://www.ridimultimedia.de/kb/staudio/incompatible/index.html#ali
ALi MAGIK 1 chipset
A number of users reported performance problems with mainboards using the ALi MAGIK 1 chipset (for example the ASUS A7A266 or the IWILL KA266-R). When using all I/O channels at 24bit/96kHz, the data transfer for busmastering devices is not high enough which will result in drop-outs during playback or recording.
According to our tests, the ALi MAGIK 1 has a very low performance PCI compared to the other DDR-RAM chipsets. To playback and record 20 audio channels at 24bit (32bit transfer) with 96kHz, a steady transfer rate of 7.5 MB/s is needed. Our tests have shown that the ALi chipset in certain situations is not able to deliver the needed transfer rate, especially when other PCI busmaster devices are installed (NIC, SCSI-controller, SB Live!, etc.). We know that this sounds unbelievable (the PCI bus specifications allow 130MB/s transfer rate) but our tests confirm this: even without another busmaster device installed, the transfer rate can be under 8 MB/s (!) which shows the bad performance of the chipset.
This has been confirmed by other audiocard vendors and also by manufacturers of TV-cards such as Hauppauge [1]. As result we cannot recommend to use a mainboard with the ALi MAGIK 1 chipset with our hardware. You might get acceptable performance with 44.1kHz signals and/or a lower number of channnels (e.g. with a DSP24 Value). However, already the installation of other busmaster devices might get you into trouble and recording without drop-outs is no longer possible in that case.
What can you do if you already have a mainboard based on the ALi MAGIK 1 chipset and you want to use DSP24 hardware? The best solution from our point of view is to exchange it with a mainboard based on the AMD761 chipset (like the ASUS A7M266 for example). If you don't want to change the mainboard, contact the mainboard manufacturer and ask them for a BIOS and/or chipset driver update adressing this problem. Although not confirmed from ALi, we do not expect that this limitation exists intentionaly. It seems more like a fixable bug or a issue related to certain settings in BIOS and the behaviour of the chipset drivers to us.
http://www.rme-audio.com/english/faq/alarm.htm
Asus A7A266 and Iwill KA266-R with chipset ALiMAGIK 1
Several users report significant performance problems when using the Hammerfall and DIGI96 series. The Hammerfall can't be used even at the highest latency setting, the DIGI96 series shows sub-average performance.
Comment: As far as we know the Ali chipset MAGIK 1 is the slowest of all DDR-RAM chipsets, it is even slower than the fastest PC133 chipset. Additionally it offers a PCI-bus performance that can hardly be lower. The Hammerfall, which requires a constant transfer rate of 9 MByte/s (52 channels I/O at 44.1 kHz), can't be used with this board at all. The DIGI96 series works, but suffers from bad performance. While DIGICheck will normally measure a transfer rate of more than 30 MByte/s (on Intel boards up to 130 MByte/s, which is the maximum transfer rate of the PCI-bus), the ALi-based boards reach sensational 8 (eight) MByte/s. Therefore we have to warn against boards using this ALi chipset. And we are not alone. Hauppauge, manufacturer of TV cards, also mentions the ALi chipset as critical.
Anyone got any opinions or information about this major flaw? I'd rather not replace this mobo but if I ever want to record at 24 bit looks like I will have to unless Ali or Asus fixes this. I have an e-mail off to Asus, sure they've heard it before, though. Couldn't find an e-mail address for Ali, guess they don't like mail. 🙁
