[Bri Gee]

Regarding i7 motherboard compatibility with Blackmagic systems, I can confirm the following. I own 4 Blackmagic cards, a Multi-Bridge pro, two older PCI decklink cards and have been testing a newer Blackmagic Decklink Studio card PCIE x1.

The Blackmagic Multibridge does work very well fitted into the Intel DX58SO and basic testing of the older Blackmagic PCI cards suggests that they also work fine.

I can confirm that with the latest firmware (4014 ) in the DX58SO, the Decklink Studio PCIE x 1 card does not work. My experience is that the DX58SO will not sometimes even post ( get into a working windows environment ).

I really hope Intel or Blackmagic can resolve this, and I am very curious to know who has deviated from the PCIE x1 specification to create a situation where two respected manufacturers no longer talk to one another on a standard, well established interface. Other mobo manufacturers use Intel Chipsets ( the Asus P6 uses the X58 with ICH10 ) possibly explaining its officially stated incompatibility also.

On a further note, and this sometime is sometimes not spelled out to new users, it is essential for ( Blackmagic ) owners to fit a high quality graphics card ( eg Nvidia / ATI etc ) along with a 2 or more disk Raid 0 to their system to ensure trouble free operation. In built motherboard graphics will not work for video applications.

Out of necessity two weeks ago I recorded 270Mb/s SD 625 uncompressed for 1-2 hour recordings with no issue at all onto a single 7200 RPM 500 GB SATA using a low spec HP desktop fitted with an Nvidia 9600. I do not recommend this style of operation in any way but it can work if you have to ( ie budget / time etc ). Without the graphics card, this system / Media Express would not of ingested a single frame.

Brian

BBCWST
Dhaka
Bangladesh