Incompatible hardware

Professional audiocards like our DSP24 hardware need a good and optimized system configuration to work with optimal performance. Because of that we are regulary testing our products with different hardware setups to ensure and check best possible compatibility. We had to notice that a number of other PC components have certain compatibility issues when used together with our hardware. This page provides a list of products that we believe are incompatible with the DSP24 series of cards. This should help you with your planning when you are about to buy a new PC system.

The following hardware components are not or only partially compatible with our DSP24 series of cards (this especially includes the DSP24 Value, the DSP2000 C-Port system, the DSP24 MK II, the DSP24 MEDIA 7.1 and the DSP24 ADAT). Please understand that we cannot provide the same level of support when these products are used together with our hardware. Of course we will update this list regulary as there are many changes in the PC hardware industry all the time:

EPoX 8KTA3/8KTA3+ and ENMIC 8TTX+

The EPoX 8KTA3 is a mainboard based on the VIA KT133A chipset. The 8KTA3+ is the same board with a built in HPT370 IDE Controller. The ENMIC 8TTX+ is an OEM version of the EPoX 8KTA3+. Several users reported significant stability and also performance problems with this mainboard when used with our DSP24 series. The operation at lower latencies (ASIO, WDM) often causes clicks and pops. Even more serious: changing settings inside the External Links or Output Mixer software may crash the system.

We have notified EPoX about this problem and mentioned that other consumer soundcards that have been tested by us on this mainboard show problems which are usually related to the installation (this includes cards based on the Yamaha YMF7x4 chipset and the Sound Blaster Live! by Creative Labs). At the moment we hope that a future BIOS update for this mainboard can fix the known problems but we did not receive a confirmation from the mainboard manufacturer. As result, we cannot recommend using this mainboard with our DSP24 hardware. We have not seen similar problems with any other mainboard based on the same chipset (e.g. the ASUS A7V133) and this seems to be confirmed by the feedback we get from our users.

3Com Network Interface Controllers

A number of users report significant performance problems when using 3Com NICs and our DSP24 hardware. Problems seem to get worse under Windows NT 4.0, 2000 and XP compared to Windows 9x/Me. Operation at lower latencies using the ASIO driver can cause pops and drop-outs.

We have noticed that the current 3Com NICs are very much optimized for high-end server operation. This means that the PCI bus usage is at a very high level. This causes the serious performance problems when combined our hardware. As alternative, we recommend NICs with chipsets from Intel, Realtek or Digital Equipment. Similar problems are currently not known from other network controllers. This issue has been first reported by RME [1] together with their recording hardware. The same compatibility issues obviously exist with our recording hardware.

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last updated: 04/02/2002 author: Claus Riethmüller