Do Gigabyte EP45-DS3* motherboards have the DPC Latency isssues

[John2777]

I'm trying to get some info on the new released Gigabyte EP45 series of motherboards and if they have the DPC latency problem. I do audio recording and processing on my computer and high DPC latency prevents the audio software from using low buffer settings. That means during live recording you will hear a very serious lag between the recorded sound and the live sound. WIth a good DPC latency low buffer setting can be used and there is no noticable lag between the recording sound and live sound.

Anyway, has anybody ran the DPC latency checker on the new Gigabyte EP45 motherboards? I'm looking for latency under 50ms max. Are there several choices on the BIOS, or is there only one? Thanks.

 

[Nafets]

Just downloaded and ran DPC Latency Checker V1.1.0 on a Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3L (F7C bios).

Absolute Maximum was 20µs and Current Latency stayed around 7µs, after 5 mins of testing....

 

[John2777]

Nafets,

Thanks, I appreciate you taking the time to run that test. That is good news. It looks like Gigabyte is responding to the DPC issue. 5-7ms is perfect. If you move the mouse during the monitoring it will usually go to about 18-20, if it's a USB mouse. For some reason a PS2 mouse causes smaller increases to only 10ms or so. I have no idea why. I'll report the news to all my audio buddies. Thanks, again.

 

[Nafets]

Haha, yes it was rising to 20 when I moved my mouse (USB). Interesting.

 

[DarkRogue]

As far as this issue goes, Gigabyte appears to have officially released a finished version of their previous beta BIOS for their P35 boards and it seems that it is working on a wide scale so far. I have yet to try it though.. No floppy drive, and I hear the Windows Flash utility is very flaky. I've heard that the P45 boards were never affected with this issue, but it's comforting to have a bit of data to back that up, as my friends are looking to me for advice for their next builds.

 

[John2777]

Actually, I was getting info for a friend to help build a system. I recently built a system for myself using a GA-EP35-DS3P motherboard. It came with the F1 bios. This had the DPC Latency stepping problem. Then I flashed the F3 bios. That also had the stepping problem. I then sent an email to Janus at Gigabyte to request the F4c bios, which I had read on an audio forum (Sonar) that it fixed the stepping problem with my board. Janus replied on 7-18-08 with a link to download the F4c bios. I installed it and it worked beautifully.

But I just went to the Gigabyte website and I see they have posted a new bios dated 7-18-08, which is the same day I was emailed the link. Makes me wonder if the F4 and the F4c are the same. I really don't want to do another flash unless there is a really good reason. I think I'll email Gigabyte and find out what are the differences.

BTW, there is another problem with the Gigabyte EP35-DS3* boards- they all show DPC latency when used with the 8800GT video cards. We had a thread over on the Digidesign forum and were trying to fix the issue, but it was never resolved. Gigabyte didn't own up to the problem being theirs and nVidia just said that they raise the issue to a level 3 tech and would look into it. The funny thing here was that the same 8800GTX card would show no additional DPC latency if the Microsoft driver was used- it was just fine. But... the MS video driver only supported one monitor, and often for audio editing, or just playing games, it's nice to have two monitors. Eventually, the video card owner sold the 8800GTX and bought a Radeon video card, which worked fine with the GA-EP35-DS3.

Asus boards do not have the DPC problem, so I'm glad that Gigabyte has finally delivered fixes across their entire product line.