Sonar X1 Producer memory and CPU management issues

What is your sample rate on the project? plus, is your Cache unticked?

Dappa1


What is your sample rate on the project? plus, is your Cache unticked?

what you mean by "Cache unticked" ?

I'm no expert but I have a comparable system to yours and experienced similar performance issues until I turned off core parking in windows. Runs like a dream now with lots of synth and audio tracks. Here's a link: http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=1861804 Hope it helps!
 

archerdrummer, thanks for the tip. I still have dropout problems with the registry edit but my cpu load seems more balanced now based on task manager. I appreciate your help on this one. 
brundlefly I may have too many Fxs and automation in this project. If I disable some of them then it defintely helps. I guess I have to keep trying other experiments to rootcause the issue. 

A few tips:

http://www.resplendence.com/latencymon

http://support.presonus.c...ettings-for-studio-one

http://support.presonus.c...dio-power-settings.zip

Thanks GIM. It could be. I haven't tried it out yet, but I was monitoring CPU usage through CPUZ and the frequency is definitely all over the place. I was thinking about disabling speedstep in BIOS but I changed my mind since I thought the CPU will run very hot. But I guess for this one project I can disable it. I wish there was an option in Windows and not in Bios so that I could do it realtime. I'll update you guys on how this experiment goes later today.
Thanks again. 

I'm not sure if this is applicable to your situation, but the link in Sandmannchen's thread regarding latency reminded me that my system came with software that monitors temperatures for the CPU, motherboard, fan RPMs, etc. This software wreaked havoc on CPU latency and significantly degraded performace (pops, noises, drop-outs, etc). As soon as I closed the application, latency was back to normal and performance was fine. I can run as many FX, Synths, and sampling plug-ins as I require (in real time!) with incredibly smooth and reliable performance.  With your specs, you shouldn't need to freeze any synths or compromise on any FX, even with a hefty project.

Hi KoolDude

Please use your footer to list your full hardware/software specs.

Don't disable speedstep, you don't need to. You need to disable core parking. NB There seem to be two methods, the best method is the one which exposes the core parking functionality in the Power Management area of control panel rather than the direct registry hack (not sure on the right links). Be careful, some posts may give the wrong info... which are then corrected later in the thread (something to do with 10% vs 100%). Anyway I noticed a massive difference with core parking off and a double quadcore PC (well an unusable system became fully usable).

If you are using firewire, then legacy firewire driver needs checking out. Other drivers may max out one of your CPU cores.

Hey guys thanks for the info. My problem is solved by disabling speedstep. Earlier I had tried disabling core parking through registry and I did see the CPU loads getting balanced out evenly between all my CPUs but the playback had become pretty worse after doing that. So I had to revert that back. 

So now the temp is at 47*C. I don't expect it to go beyond 55. Earlier it was 42*C so it's only 5 degrees difference. I can live with that. 

Here's my HW specs. 
----

Sonar X1 producer 64Bit (@ patch X1c)
Windows 7 64 Bit Enterprise 
Intel Core i7 990x Gulftown 
12GB DDR3 RAM, 1TB HDD  Asus Sabertooth X58 MOBO
Emu 1616m audio interface
Presonus Tube Pre preamp
Audiotechnica AT2035 condenser mic. 

I kind of agree with inaheartbeat, I think Windows task manager CPU monitor is not very accurate. But based on CPUZ, I found out that most of the time my project was running at less than 2.0G when it was choking. When it started choking, only less than 50% of the time it actually went up to the spec frequency (3.4G Max Non-turbo core freq) . And besides I don't know if switching from 2.0G to 3.4G is fast enough to prevent the dropout. Maybe my 520W power supply's not able to provide enough current for fast frequency switch. I don't know that. But I don't really mind running at 3.4G. It's waste of power when not needed and may also cause the system to freeze in case of catastrophic thermal event, but I don't think that will cause any damage to the CPU and can be solved with a reboot. Besides I haven't seen my system go past 47 degrees. I think Tcase for 990x is advertised at 67.9 degrees. So I think I have enough headroom without getting into trouble. 
I wish there was an option in windows to disable speedstepping (maybe there is some registry hack). If somebody found that, that would be great. 
I can't tell about other people since they may have different system configuration. But in my case Park Disable didn't work for me while disabling speedstepping worked. So I guess I will just have to go with that. 

Hi all,i have read your post and i think there is some confusion.Core Parking is a W7 feature that i can enable or disable with OS,while SpeedStep and TurboBoost are a features that i can found in the last generation chipset's BIOS. SpeedStep is very dangeorus for dedicated music DAW and here you can found the reasons. http://presonus.zendesk.c...ettings-for-studio-one Best Roby

CakeAlexS,

I tried the new core parking way through power management and here's what I think is happening based on CPUZ monitor. This is just pure speculation based on my knowledge of how a CPU and core parking works. 

Core Parking: This prevents the CPU to go into sleep (park) state which is probably the lowest frequency state that the CPU supports which would be somewhere around 1600MHz in my case. However throttling is still happning. CPU frequency that I saw during playback was anywhere between 2.0G to 3.47G. Some (hyperthreaded) CPUs were seen idling in this case contrary to what I previously saw with the registry hack to change the value from 100 to 0. So it's not true that all cores will be active all the time. At least not with the windows power settings options of doing the core parking. 

Most of the time the CPU was running at full frequency which is 3.47G, but occasionaly it went to a slower speed. When it went to slower speed, there were occasional clicks happening (But nothing bad). The clicks varied depending on how low the CPU speed went. One time when I saw it go down all the way to 2.0G there were few consecutive clicks and pops when it throttled up. However, the good news is that there were no dropouts. So I'm pretty confident that this method will work for most people most and most of my projects. 

SpeedStepping: This will effectively fix the core frequency at 3.47G. So there will be no throttling and hence no clicks or dropouts. However your CPU is always overworked even when not necessary and the temperature runs slightly higher. In my case it was 5 degrees higher than normal temperature. For some complex projects this may be a necessity. 

I think for now I'm going to stay with the Core Parking Option since the clicks and pops were not that severe. But knowing that I also have an option to turn off speedstepping in case it's needed makes me feel good. 

Thanks all for your inputs. Hopefully my discoveries will help you guys also make a decision when you are in a similar situation.