Core Parking

I found an older post on this very topic:  http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=1861804

Anybody here with an i7 laptop using core parking turned off? It appears to be for better battery management, but does it also cause temperature changes and overheating perhaps?

The question remains as to how much, or if disabling core parking is beneficial with a laptop that isn't running on battery power. I'm trying to get some definitive answers from DAW power users.

Kreative


The question remains as to how much, or if disabling core parking is beneficial with a laptop that isn't running on battery power. I'm trying to get some definitive answers from DAW power users.

I tested all this kind of tweaking when there was some heated debate going round whether it was worthwhile on older i7 chips.  I don't know even if there was any benefit there  but since I've been running a 2nd Generation i7 Sandy bridge chip I concluded there is nothing to be gained except higher temperatures and brain ache.

I run with a 64 samples buffer all day long without pops or glitches and power to burn so I figured why bother.  All my system power settings are the BIOS (optimised/turbo) defaults with only slight tweaks to the Windows High Performance power settings to prevent stuff like USB from auto-sleeping.

Two issues: rise time, thread allocation

Most users will never notice the need for these two issues to be addressed. Except when they interfere with a specific demanding task.

Because of the speed of current computers users are usually not aware of all the auto updates, and little wait times. Consequently the comments about doing no tweaking with w7.

But, I surmise those who do no tweaking are also the ones who experience drop-outs, stutters, clicks,... Especially when working with large projects.

And they then complain that Sonar,...  is to blame when really it is the auto-defrag , updates for windows, adobe, java, AV,.... that they refuse to disable.

I am an old dude. My approach is to wring every last bit of performance from the box before I replace any componant.

And I do not want the defragger starting and interferring with my happiness.

jcschild


do not do it period.. its old and pointless now especially on a laptop
turn off the acpi battery...

Why do you say we shouldn't turn off the core parking on desktop workstations?
 

Freddie H

jcschild


do not do it period.. its old and pointless now especially on a laptop
turn off the acpi battery...

Why do you say we shouldn't turn off the core parking on desktop workstations?
 

He says in the quote it's old and pointless as far as I can see.

I agree.

Freddie H

Jonbouy

Freddie H

jcschild


do not do it period.. its old and pointless now especially on a laptop
turn off the acpi battery...

Why do you say we shouldn't turn off the core parking on desktop workstations?

He says in the quote it's old and pointless as far as I can see.

I agree.

Old or not its sill a huge difference in performance ON or OFF. I have it disabled! I don't use and you shouldn't use SpeedStep, C-State either. Full POWER no eco b-ulls-h-i-t- mode. No ECO on graphic card either! That is the default setting for any computer!
 
My two cents 

I've tested at this end, and the only benefit I got was more pops and clicks along with higher CPU temps and increased fan noise as a result with no discernable performance improvements at all.

What can I say?

For maximum DAW performance:
We don't want the OS/hardware having the ability to "throttle down" speed/performance to save energy.
We don't want the PC "tied up" managing non-essential tasks.

Depending on circumstances, you may "get by" without any tweaks.
For absolute maximum performance (especially when running heavy loads at ultra-low latency settings), tweaks are necessary.

Alegria

"Freddie H"

Old or not its sill a huge difference in performance ON or OFF. I have it disabled! I don't use and you shouldn't use SpeedStep, C-State either. Full POWER no eco b-ulls-h-i-t- mode. No ECO on graphic card either!

I agree (dedicated desktop DAWs only).

"Jonbouy"

I've tested at this end, and the only benefit I got was more pops and clicks along with higher CPU temps and increased fan noise as a result with no discernable performance improvements at all.

I believe it's very important to make a distinction between laptops and desktops. Core parking on laptops is needed to help manage heat. I wouldn't mess with it (unless I didn't care about the life span/longevity of important components). But when talking about desktops (dedicated and properly cooled), then all bets are off. I'm a tweaker, and I tweaked the heck out of my DAW, right down to background processes. The benefits are undeniable and I would go so far as to wonder what happened in your case?

Sorry, read up, the thread was about core parking, the clue is in the title, that's what I'm referring to, I've tweaked for sure, but only where there is a benefit.  Disabling core parking isn't an area that provided any.

"Jonbouy"
Sorry, read up, the thread was about core parking, the clue is in the title, that's what I'm referring to

Excuse me? I may have thrown in a general comment in my reply, but the context was about core parking.

"Jonbouy"
I've tweaked for sure, but only where there is a benefit. Disabling core parking isn't an area that provided any.

Well then, the point is moot. And that was not my experience btw.

"Jonbouy"

"Jim Roseberry"
For maximum DAW performance:
We don't want the OS/hardware having the ability to "throttle down" speed/performance to save energy.
We don't want the PC "tied up" managing non-essential tasks.

This ^^^^

I gather you agree with this (as do I). Then, what is your definition of core parking???

hehehe..., you're so cute. 

Freddie H


You have answer it yourself there.

You don’t need to be rocket scientist to understand if you park something, shutting anything off, it will decrease the performance. Drive V8 engine on only 4 cylinders doesn’t exactly increase its performance. Even a child understands that.

Freddie you are not even a child then, if an engine manufacturer could make a V8 use 4 cylinders when it's idling they would, it doesn't affect performance when the gas pedal is on the floor and all cylinders are delivering full power when needed.

 
When having C state, core parking or whatever activated makes very bad impact on any computers performance. As for an example what happens in DAW is that the core that is “park mode”, “C1 sleep” can’t wake up in time when you hit “play” when suddenly the computer needs all its CPU resources. C1 lower the CPU clock meaning slower performance.
One of the side effects that happen if you do have the core park, C1 sleep mode is that you get drop outs and clicks in the audio. Sometimes this can even cause blue screen death in rare cases.

If this is true why am I not getting blue screens pops and clicks when I press play?  I can run a 48 samples buffer under a reasonable load without glitching, I choose to run 64 samples and can live with the 7 ms RTL without having to change settings when I change from tracking to mixing.  What do I need to fix again? 
 

Microsoft green eco movement politics infinitum madness!
I like to stop global warming, ecologic when it comes to food, light, lower gas on cars or whatever but not when it’s all about my work computer and performance in the studio. It is better they; Microsoft, Intel, Samsung and rest of companies focus on something’s else;----> lower overall power consumption instead of lower the overall performance of our system and CPU:s.

Choosing the Windows 'High Performance' power plan effectively overides EIST anyway base a plan on that turning off all the going to sleep or hibernate nonsense and you've pretty much done all that's required.

Benchmark your CPU with Core Parking enabled/disabled, C1E (bios) on/off, and then SpeedStep on/off (you'll find that is overridden by the power plan anyway). 

Show us the different results in actual figures because here there isn't anything to support turning them off.  The only thing that would alarm me is from going from idle to full power if that was manifesting in glitches.  It doesn't.

Post #8 in this thread explains it well and highlights the more obvious areas of concern.  Some people are cranky enough to hack the registry to get the cores from parking but then install and run the ASUS AISuite, which is a far more evil performance killer than processor core wake times.  I hope you're not one of those Freddie!

One final note, just for kicks try benchmarking some stuff with hyperthreading turned off so you are restricted to just the 4 physical cores.  The results there might surprise you especiallly on stuff  that uses a lot of floating point calculations.

Me, I did all that at build time, now I'd just rather get on and enjoy using my machine.
 

Goddard


Eek! This thread is getting too technical for me! 

I doubt it.

More like you can't afford to expend the energy on a 10,000 word dissertation just now...

Jonbouy

Freddie H


You have answer it yourself there.

You don’t need to be rocket scientist to understand if you park something, shutting anything off, it will decrease the performance. Drive V8 engine on only 4 cylinders doesn’t exactly increase its performance. Even a child understands that.

Freddie you are not even a child then, if an engine manufacturer could make a V8 use 4 cylinders when it's idling they would, it doesn't affect performance when the gas pedal is on the floor and all cylinders are delivering full power when needed.

When having C state, core parking or whatever activated makes very bad impact on any computers performance. As for an example what happens in DAW is that the core that is “park mode”, “C1 sleep” can’t wake up in time when you hit “play” when suddenly the computer needs all its CPU resources. C1 lower the CPU clock meaning slower performance.
One of the side effects that happen if you do have the core park, C1 sleep mode is that you get drop outs and clicks in the audio. Sometimes this can even cause blue screen death in rare cases.

If this is true why am I not getting blue screens pops and clicks when I press play?  I can run a 48 samples buffer under a reasonable load without glitching, I choose to run 64 samples and can live with the 7 ms RTL without having to change settings when I change from tracking to mixing.  What do I need to fix again? 

Microsoft green eco movement politics infinitum madness!
I like to stop global warming, ecologic when it comes to food, light, lower gas on cars or whatever but not when it’s all about my work computer and performance in the studio. It is better they; Microsoft, Intel, Samsung and rest of companies focus on something’s else;----> lower overall power consumption instead of lower the overall performance of our system and CPU:s.

Choosing the Windows 'High Performance' power plan effectively overides EIST anyway base a plan on that turning off all the going to sleep or hibernate nonsense and you've pretty much done all that's required.

Benchmark your CPU with Core Parking enabled/disabled, C1E (bios) on/off, and then SpeedStep on/off (you'll find that is overridden by the power plan anyway). 

Show us the different results in actual figures because here there isn't anything to support turning them off.  The only thing that would alarm me is from going from idle to full power if that was manifesting in glitches.  It doesn't.

Post #8 in this thread explains it well and highlights the more obvious areas of concern.  Some people are cranky enough to hack the registry to get the cores from parking but then install and run the ASUS AISuite, which is a far more evil performance killer than processor core wake times.  I hope you're not one of those Freddie!

One final note, just for kicks try benchmarking some stuff with hyperthreading turned off so you are restricted to just the 4 physical cores.  The results there might surprise you especiallly on stuff  that uses a lot of floating point calculations.

Me, I did all that at build time, now I'd just rather get on and enjoy using my machine.

Whatever...You should try the opposite and activate the performance of your system.
What's next on your list that you try to convince us? A 32bit application can use more RAM then x64?

Out of curiosity Jon as I don't recall you mentioning it, is your system dedicated for audio only?