CPU Issues

[Cal D]

I have been susing Protools 8.05 for the longest time and never had a problem. My sessions would only start being problematic when i had over 10 tracks all of which had at least one, and sometime many plug ins operating.

Recently however, Protools seems to be having problems even when i have two tracks with a plug in on each track. I get an error saying that i am running out of CPU power and I ought rto remove some plug ins.

I don't underdstand why i am getting this error.

I am runnign Windows 10 and my computer in an intel Core i7-2600K CPU @ 3.40GHz. It has 24 GB of installed memory. and is a 64 bit x64 based processeor.

I am using a Fast Track ultra sound module and I have the buffers set at 512.

In terms of my Playback Engine settings within Protools, i have assigned 7 of my 8 processors to Protools, at 99% CPU Usage Limit.

When I play the session, the su=ystem usage monitor states that i am using roughly 14% under CPU(RTAS)

So I don't know why the system seems to think i don't have enough CPU power and that i should remove some plug ins.

Any ideas?

Thank-you

[Wizzoboy]

Two things come to mind. First off PT 8 is not compatable with Win 10. It may work but will not function properly. Also if I recall rightly, PT 8 is a 32bit programme. Therefore it cannot take advantage of any of your RAM over 4Gb.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Wizzoboy

Two things come to mind. First off PT 8 is not compatable with Win 10. It may work but will not function properly. Also if I recall rightly, PT 8 is a 32bit programme. Therefore it cannot take advantage of any of your RAM over 4Gb.

Actually any RAM over 3 and a some GB.

Time to upgrade Pro Tools.

[albee1952]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

Actually any RAM over 3 and a some GB.

Time to upgrade Pro Tools.

Agreed^^^. the old PT software is the weakest part of the chain

[mjslakeridge]

I think your biggest problem is trying to use Windows 10 with the old version of PT. I have an even older version of PT on Windows XP and can easily run sessions with 20+ tracks and lots of plugins with a 6 core processor. The only issue I sometimes run into is if I try to use a 128 or 64 sample buffer size for tracking, even with only 1 track. But I think I narrowed that problem down to a setting in my BIOS. I inadvertently had it set so the CPU frequency ramped down when full power wasn't needed. In the instant it took to ramp back up to full frequency, PT would through the "increase buffer size" error message. Once I fixed that, I can track at 128 or 256 buffer size on most sessions.

Check to make sure you have the CPU set to run at full frequency at all times.

Even with my old setup, I am able to get over 300 instances of DVerb running in the DVerb test.