Vista services...

You may want to check out Scott Garrigus site digifreq (http://www.digifreq.com/digifreq/) as well as the optimization guide on the Line 6 site (here). Also there are some great resources on the Sound on Sound site and here in this forum. Just do a search on Vista optimization.

One thing I can say about background services with Vista is that the settings can be different from one machine to the next. My Studio DAW runs with background services prioritized over programs and works great this way. My mobile platform (an Hp laptop) is the exact opposite.

Services I have enabled are the least of the issues I addressed. Rather I edited the processes that I allow to run on my DAW so I don't have to fool with the machine every time I start it up.

Lastly, based upon some input from this forum I have also loaded the SP2 beta which has addressed some stability and performance issues.

What specific aspect of the performance don't you like?

Aero is supposed to offload as much work to the graphics card as possible which should be a good thing.

The Cakewalk people have publicly stated that a lot of work went into making Sonar 8.3.1 more efficient. User experiences have shown that to be true.

If you run the DPC latency checker, what kind of readings do you see? If only a very rare few go over the 1000us (1 ms) level, then you are in good shape. If the levels are higher or you often see high values over 1ms, then you need to start looking at services or installed software that might be a problem.

ORIGINAL: PaPi

Remember that all these tweaks only achieve INSIGNIFICANT TO MARGINAL performance gains. If you aren't satisfied with the performance and the deficiencies are noticeable, your computer (or some of its components), your interface or both are probably not strong enough for your needs. Or maybe you need more RAM. Still, the solution is most likely in the hardware...

Tend to agree here. Certain motherboards are known to be troublesome and certain AMD chips aren't as efficient as others. I don't think there is enough information really to point to one thing or another..... Like which motherboard, which AMD processor, how fast is the RAM, what speed is the FSB, any info on the graphics, etc.