I bumbled into buying the Asus A7A266 Ali Magik 1 mobo for my Digital Audio Workstation. The new audio cards I was planning to get both have warnings against the board and chipset. Here 'tis:
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.
I have an e-mail off to Asus abou the situation. Anybody got any more info on this thing?
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.
I have an e-mail off to Asus abou the situation. Anybody got any more info on this thing?
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