** Critical ** Windows 7 DAW Tweak .... Disable CPU Core Parking

As of  01 November 2009

NEW / BETTER METHOD IS HERE:-

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=1861804

 
Hi all 

Who is affected
The following is confirmed by me  [ in Win 7 X64 RC ]  and by a colleague of mine who is a MSDN subscriber who has access to the final / RTM Windows 7 X64.    It is NOT  a Sonar 8.5.1 issue - it is an O/S issue.   It is also NOT  present in Vista SP1  x64 or X32.   It  only  applies to Windows 7 X64 and X32 and  only  in systems using  more  than 2 physicial CPU's  and/or  more than 2  "logical" cores - ie:  Core i7 DAW's.

The Problem
 
Core Parking is VERY bad for DAW's - great for  non-DAW Laptops - but very bad for us in the DAW world.
 
See here for a bit of info / explanation / more info about CPU Core Parking - http://channel9.msdn.com/forums/Coffeehouse/453920-Windows-7-on-more-than-4-cores/ 
Without the following  " fix "  you will see massive CPU spiking in Sonar and Windows Task Manager - some CPU cores will be "turned off" / "parked" depending on load and they will be dynamically turned on or off and dynamically loaded up or down as the system deems necessary -  the scope for glitchs / pops / clicks / droputs  etc.... in such an environment is simply enormous. 
To the best of my knowledge, there is no known "switch" to turn it off - no utility I am aware of to "tweak" it off.
 
The Fix
 
- go to REGEDIT
- Search and Find this key  [  54533251-82be-4824-96c1-47b60b740d00  ]  without the   "  [  ]  "
- alternately, you can search and find the phrase  "  Core Parking "  -  again without the  "  "
- either of the above searchs works and delivers the exact same results
- delete the key(s)
- make sure you search the whole Registry - you should find it  [ from memory ]  6  times but will only be able to delete  [ from memory ]  the first  2 or 3 instances - dont worry about the ones you cant delete - just delete all the ones you can
- exit the Registy
- Shutdown Win7
- Do a full cold shutdown and re-boot
 
The Result
 
Perfect* load balancing across all you CPU cores - no spiking - both in Windows 7 Task Manager and Sonars CPU meters
 
Hope the above is of help.
 
Tom
 
* -  you will still see some  " unevenness "  depending on the EFX / VST / Synths  etc... you use because unlike Sonar - which is excellently "coded" to be multi-thread aware, compliant and cpu-load-balanced,  many, many other  EFX's / VST's / Synth's  etc...   [ most actually ]    are very lazily and poorly coded / written and  are no-where near  as  " even "  when it comes to multi-thread awareness,  compliance and cpu-load-balancing.

Hi Teksonik
 
At the risk of sounding contradictory, there is nothing at all wrong or problematic with Windows 7 and Core Parking - its a brilliant laptop-power saving feature and works very well for that purpose and indeed works  %100 exactly as designed and intended by MS.
 
Its just bad in a DAW environment when you are streaming audio / efx / syths / mid etc.... all at the lowest possible latency you can - for our purposes, we need  " all cores on deck all the time ".
 
The bit that surprised me was that  I thought / hoped  that the final / RTM version might have had a setting  [ in the Control Panel / Power Settings area ]  to turn this feature on or off - apparently, this is not the case - hence the need for the above Registry edit.
 
Tom

there is nothing at all wrong or problematic with Windows 7 and Core Parking


Not to be argumentative but if any user, musician or businessman has to do a Reg tweak to a brand new Windows version to get proper performance then yes in my opinion there is something problematic with Window 7.

But anyway I'm still happily using Win XP.  I'll let you guys work out these kind of bugs in Win 7 (I agree there should be a simple switch to turn off Core Parking ).

I wonder if Noel has chimed in on this issue and how Sonar 8.5 handles it. There are supposed to be optimizations specifically for Win 7 and the i7....

Teksonik


there is nothing at all wrong or problematic with Windows 7 and Core Parking


Not to be argumentative but if any user, musician or businessman has to do a Reg tweak to a brand new Windows version to get proper performance then yes in my opinion there is something problematic with Window 7.

But anyway I'm still happily using Win XP.  I'll let you guys work out these kind of bugs in Win 7 (I agree there should be a simple switch to turn off Core Parking ).

So you dont turn off any features in XP, and you leave your network adapter on as well?

Anyway! - Thanks for the info on this tweak, I'm going to try it tonight even though I'm still having problems in XP and W7.

Thansk for that INFO TomG... =)


I took the liberty to add this great info inside here...
http://forum.cakewalk.com/fb.ashx?m=1852730


Regards
Freddie

Jose7822

Teksonik


there is nothing at all wrong or problematic with Windows 7 and Core Parking


Not to be argumentative but if any user, musician or businessman has to do a Reg tweak to a brand new Windows version to get proper performance then yes in my opinion there is something problematic with Window 7.

But anyway I'm still happily using Win XP.  I'll let you guys work out these kind of bugs in Win 7 (I agree there should be a simple switch to turn off Core Parking ).

Right!
 
So, based on your logic, then there's something wrong with Windows XP since it also has tweaks involving REG edits.  Not to mention the /3GB switch.
 
:-)

Of course there is something wrong with WinXP.............why would we need Win 7 or the disaster that is Vista if there wasn't ? I'm staying right where I am until you early adaptors get some of the obvious bugs worked out of Win 7.

Good info:

I'm busy building my Win7 DAW and with how much work I am involved in right now, I hope I will finish it between Christmas and New Years. 

I'd say that deciding whether it is a problem or not is less of an issue for me.  It's just simply tuning the OS to do what I (we) need.  That's why they call it software.

Thanks for the heads up.

-D

Teksonik

Not to be argumentative but if any user, musician or businessman has to do a Reg tweak to a brand new Windows version to get proper performance then yes in my opinion there is something problematic with Window 7.

The musician and the business user have quite different requirements, so it's not unreasonable that the default configuration will be good for one, and the other will have to tweak...

Vista works great on my system. 

I don't even fire up my XP machine any more (not nearly as much anyways).  It's so 2001 :-P

BTW I just wanted to clarify that we're aware of core parking. We ran into this while we were doing some benchmarking and saw some cores not used. However its important to note that this doesn't necessarily mean underperformance. I wrote some stuff about it in my Win7 article on our blog.
 
In the test we did we didn't see any observable degradation in performance with core parking on other than the task manager CPU readout. However under higher load it appeared that all cores were working. Were you able to demonstrate actual glitching or loss of performance with core parking off? I agree though that core parking is primarily a power management feature so if power is not a concern its ok to disable it.
 

Jose7822



Vista might've been a disaster when it first came out, but that was a long time ago and a lot has changed since then.  So much so, that Vista (as of SP2) is currently better than XP.  

+1 - Vista 64 SP2 is much better that XP. My original dislike for the Vista GIU was fixed once I found you could switch to "Classic Mode".
 
It's a shame that so many companies have not made their software more Vista friendly. UAC for example is a very good idea but so many software packages need it switched off to function correctly.

John

I agree though that core parking is primarily a power management feature so if power is not a concern its ok to disable it.

Yes but don't we all want to be green? I am going to build a 1 watt power supply for my next desktop just so I can say I am  greener then anyone else.

 
Hehe Great John!! I will add a 2000 watt to compensate!

Yes but don't we all want to be green? I am going to build a 1 watt power supply for my next desktop just so I can say I am greener then anyone else.

 
Mine's powered by a dynamo driven by an excercise bike - be sure to keep an eye out for my new topic "How do I get the heavy breathing out of my vocal tracks"

John

Vista is working just find on my system. 

Well that makes two of you.  Certainly a feather in Microsoft's cap.

I see the Vista spellchecker is working "find".  :-)

Chill out. Just yanking your chains fellows. Like Vista? Use it. Who cares.