Red Rocket stuck at x4 lanes. Playback is faster without the Rocket enabled.

[Matthew McGinity]

Hi,


I have two computers here.
One is a Windows 7 PC 64-bit, with the Red Rocket card installed in a x8 PCIe slot.
The second is a MacbookPro Retina (OSX 10.7.5) with a Magma ExpressBox Thunderbolt expansion.


On both systems I receive the"Red Rocket #0 is in a 4x PCI-Ex Lane" when launching RedCineX.
And on both systems the performance of the Red Rocket is extremely poor.
In fact, on the PC, playback is slower with the rocket than without.
Without it, I can play 5120x2700 footage at 1/8 resolution smoothly (with 20% CPU usage).
With, I can only just manage 1/16 resolution smoothly. (with 2% CPU usage).


Both systems:


Red Rocket Driver: 1.4.32.0
Red Rocket Firmware: 1.1.16.11
RedCineX Build: 16.24124


I have tried re-installing the firmware multiple times.
I double-checked all the dipswitches were OFF.


I tried putting dipswitch #8 to on. Like this, when I launched RedCineX, it now says "RedRocket #0 Driver and or Firmware is out of date. This version of REDCineX requires Driver: 1.4.28.0 and Firmware: 1.1.16.8". REDCineX now shows Firmware 1.1.16.5 (and still driver 1.4.32.0), and still warns that it is only x4 lanes.
With dipswitch #8 still on, I run rocketup_1.1.16.11.exe, which now says I have version 1.1.16.5. I try again updating to 1.1.16.11. It reports that the update has been successful. I power down and up and find that I still have 1.1.16.5.
I power down, put all dipswitches back to OFF and reboot. Firmware is now back to 1.1.16.11, but x4 problem still persists. I have no idea what dipswitch #8 does, so I dont know if this is normal or not)


I've opened a ticket with Red, but if anyone has any tips now, please let me know.


Matt

 

[paul schefz]

i am pretty sure the retina needs 10.8 to run properly, especially thunderbolt....not sure if that is part of the problem but it might very well be....

 

[Mike Harrington]

I had that warning about rocket in an x4 lane once, but it went away on reboot.....(win 7)

open the rocket prefs in redcine and see what it says...

realize that depending on your motherboard...if you have GPU's sharing the pci slots....your PCI lanes could be as low as 4x...
check your MB specs and see which slots are running at what speed when others are occupied...

other then that....could be the rocket

 

[Matthew McGinity]

Hi,

My motherboard is definitely x8/x8/x4 . Tried it in different machines. no luck.
I RMA'd the Rocket. Hopefully the repair won't take too long...

Matt

 

[Ryan Damm]

I had a similar experience, RMA'd the rocket, and they said it was fine.

But if it was my system that was the problem, no one at Red could help me. No documentation suggested what the problem could be, and randomly swapping PCI slots eventually made the problem better -- but it's still slower than just using the processor. The rocket is now an expensive piece of junk taking up space in the case. I use processors to decode.

Am I pissed? Damn right I'm pissed. Do I have time to deal with this? No, Red has absorbed enough of my time between camera and hardware bugs. I read (too late) a bunch of opinions from frequent posters that the rocket no longer makes sense with today's machines. It's been passed by; I wish I'd saved my money.

(In fact, I can say the same thing for the entire Red system. Next camera system will almost certainly be something else; the Alexa is looking better by the day.)