Quad 6600 Oddities...

Hey,

I've done a clean install of XP SP2 on a box with this:

Intel Quad 6600
Intel DP965LT MoBo
4 GB RAM, Windows XP sees 3.5 GB
RME Multiface II on PCIe
Matrox Millennium P650 PCIe 128 Graphics Card with dual monitors
320 GB SATA system drive
320 GB SATA sample drive
500 GB SATA Sonar audio drive

After the OS install and audio tweak, I installed the graphics card drivers, then the audio apps, then the most recent official driver for the RME.

At first the OS seemed much noticeably faster itself, but then Internet Explorer started to really drag, then totally hang. Oddly, when my wife turned on wireless access for our notebook downstairs, at that moment, IE really sped up ALOT....then everything was OK...

Later, on the first real run of Sonar 7, I loaded project with about 8 unfrozen VI's and the audio engine shut immediately, before playback even started. Of the four CPU meters, at least one would hover between 35-50% with no playback happening. ASIO latency on the RME was set to 2.9 ms with the I/O buffers at 256 each. I rebooted at least once and tried some other projects that were smaller and it started acting OK. It also seemed to do better if I rebooted after trying different latencies and better yet at 6 ms. So, I've left it there, which is fine. The CPU meters were each around 15-20% on the project with all the unfrozen VI's and would now play with no clicks or dropouts. That seemed OK, but the Core 2 Duo box was doing almost that well.

I have done the XP SP2 Microcode Fix for Intel Processors.

Donny

ORIGINAL: Jim Roseberry

That seemed OK, but the Core 2 Duo box was doing almost that well.

What speed was the Core2Duo?
If it was running at the same clock speed (2.4GHz), and you're running mostly soft-synths, the Core2Duo would indeed be just a fast.
Soft-synths aren't highly optimized for quad cores...

Hey,

The Core 2 was 2.14 I believe.

ORIGINAL: Jim Roseberry

The Core 2 was 2.14 I believe.

In this scenario, the Q6600 would be slightly faster... (300MHz)

I did notice that the last project I had basically no live VI's running and the CPU meters were really low...

So it's working, live multiple VI's just don't get a huge boost..?

ORIGINAL: Jim Roseberry

So it's working, live multiple VI's just don't get a huge boost..?

Exactly...
Soft-synths aren't optimized for quad cores... so you won't see the same performance boost as with straight up audio tracking/mixing.
The easy solution is to Freeze that tracks before mixing.

Thanks Jim. Box seems to be fine now. Froze all the VI's on that project and the highest any core ever gets is 18%. All the others are really, really low. This will work just fine.

The machine is certainly faster though. Project open really quickly in Sonar and other apps run noticeably faster too.

Donny

Are you using WiFi?
If so, disable it when working in your DAW applications...

Download the DPC latency tool... and measure your system's latency with the Ethernet/WiFi connection enabled vs disabled.
That'll shed some light...