My new DaveC scores on 6.1

[Chris Cavell]

Here they are on my 002:

44.1k/24 bit
-1024=29
-64=28

96k/24
-2048=14
-128=11

I took a much smaller hit than I expected with the update to 6.1, an average of 3 or 4 tracks. This is probably due to the fact that I have recently taken my external drives and placed them on my onboard promise ata133/raid controller (set to ide mode). I also noticed no difference in track count when using 16 or 24. This system isn't tweaked at all. I'm about to do a few simple tweaks and see if they make any difference. I'll post again soon.

The reason for my switch to the promise controller is due to the fact that all of my non-digi approved FW drives encountered never before seen difficulty in 6.1, making them nearly impossible to use for any real work.

I've also noticed a bit of an increase in performance in real world use. It seems it can handle more of my Waves plugs than before. And prior to switching to the promise card, I thought of my 88.2 and 96k capability as unusable, but they are very usable now. Also, prior to switching, I would run into some pretty funky audio artifacts at low latency buffer settings.(I just wish I could disable write behind caching on my system. My drivers are too new.)

Heres my sys:
p4 2.4 533
1gb generic DDR 333 (2*512)
gigabyte GA8PE667-Ultra F3(intel 845pe chipset)
dvd drive + cd burner on secondary ide
40 gig ata133 Maxtor sys drive on primary ide
80 Gig 8mb buffer WD and 30 gig Maxtor ata133 audio drives on onboard promise
built in sound enabled (gives me an extra midi port that PT recognizes)
lan disabled in windows
adaptec fireconnect 4300
ati radeon 7500 with two cheap Kogi flat screens
Extra Unused USB buses disabled in bios(to free up some irq's)
USB microsoft optical wheelmouse

If anyone is using a similar setup and getting better performance, I'd really like to know the differences.

[Chris Cavell]

So, I performed all of the tweaks at this site mentioned in Allen's thread. It certainly improved scores a little.

44.1k@24 = 31@1024 and 30@64
96k@24 = 15@2048 and 13@128

The only problem was that disabling some of the services let to me losing my ability to have dial-up internet connections. Does anybody know which services I need to keep at least at "manual"? It also disabled my ability to run chkdsk. If anyone knows what services these two item rely on, I would greatly appreciate the info.

Also, I think I should really find a way to disable write-behind caching as my computer hasn't seemed stable lately (although adjusting the cmos irq priority appears to have made a pretty big difference). The radio buttons for switching between the methods of optimizing are greyed out, and the checkbox that many see underneath for disabling write caching is completely non-existent. Does anyone know of a registry tweak to force xp to give me the options normally available?

Thanks again in advance guys, and anyone with a similar setup getting better performance, please clue me in!

[mykhal c]

hey chris. fyi...

Processor Scheduling:
Set this for Background Services

this setting had an adverse affect for me using 5.3.2 . i'm on 6.1 now and have not seen whether or not it's still the case. but when i made that paticular tweak and had...

1) select operations >scrolling options> page scroll during playback
2) timeline insertion follows playback

both selected, i would have a 'hesitation' visibily every 5-7 secs during playback. now audio was not affected. but seeing that timeline hesitate that often was VERY annoying (at least for me). and it took me a couple of days to figure out what i had done 'cause i made all these tweaks at once. my setup is...
P4 2.26 533
640 ram
80 gig 7200rpm system drive
100 gig 7200rpm audio drive
video card w/64mb ram

so system is decent. and like i said don't know if is an issue now in 6.1 but wanted to throw it out at ya just in case. hope it can help. aloha....mykhal [img]images/icons/cool.gif[/img]

[nikki-k]

Hi! While that site offers some great suggestions, some are not applicable to all Win XP situations, and changes in newer motherboards' BIOS's have helped this.

Installing Win XP as "Standard PC" is actually NOT recommended IF the BIOS supports ACPI/APIC. Installing as Standard PC has been shown to actually decrease performance in those cases.

NTFS vs Fat32- for the main/OS/Apps drive, it has been suggested to install OS/Apps on an NTFS formatted drive, and the audio drive can be formatted as either, really personal preference, but to format the drive with 32K allocation.

Although most of the graphics options when enabled using Win XP mode instead of Win Classic mode can cause a performance hit, I have all turned off except Win XP style buttons and Show Win Contents while dragging, and compared with these two disabled, not even one track or plug-in difference in performance. Some apps were written with the Win XP GUI scheme/style in mind, and wil look differently, and some will even show minor graphic anomolies due to running in Classic mode.

How optimizing the Start menu gives greater performance, I dont know. Has not "hindered" me, and with XP start menu, I have NO icons on my desktop. Nice n clean...

For virtual memory- Page File. The last setting is NOT encouraged at all. First, if your audio drive is on a different cable/port than the system drive, and one has a fast IDE drive sitting around, put the spare drive (7200 rpm, ata100 or better) on the same port/cable as System drive, create a partition just over 1G, and then use that partition SOLELY for your page file. Also- DO NOT set page file higher than 1024. There are a few audio/midi app developers that have said this. If one has a gig of mem, it has been suggested on other forums/sites to set PF at 512 or 256. YMMV, try a few diff settings.

As difficult-annoying as it may seem, if one wants to turn of services, do 'em one at a time, and go with it for a day or two to see if any of the day-to-day apps are being affected. Also, here is one site that is a bit more comprehensive in what each does: http://www.blkviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm I highly suggest checking this site before following the previous site's advice on services settings.

CHRIS- this may help you- http://www.blkviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

There are more alternate suggestions, but I have babbled enough....

[tele_player]

I just wonder why people keep making recommendations about setting up a pagefile?

It's _very_ rarely needed, and not a good reason to install another heat/noise-generating device. A better recommendation is to setup a pagefile on the system drive, and if it EVER gets used, go buy more ram. RAM is cheap, I turn off VM.

That COULD change - I don't run gigasampler or Steinberg's "the grand"... but even these _should_ be configurable to limit their dynamic memory allocation so that VM doesn't get used.

[Chris Cavell]

Mykhal,
thanks for the response. I'd never heard of any adverse affects to the processor scheduling thing.

Nikki,
I understand everything you've stated. A few things though, while it is generally understood that ACPI is better if you have a modern mobo, I am convinced that Pro Tools doesn't like it. My, and several others' systems wouldn't ever have gotten up and running without the Standard PC install (my mobo is less than 3 months old and the features it contains for an intel based system are plentiful). The 32k disk allocation is common practice for anyone doing hard-drive intensive work. I haven't really seen it improve performance, but it can cut down on frequent fragmentation and I guess lead to better stability versus the alternative in the long run. IMO, virtual memory is a band-aid fix to a technological prob. Get enough ram to disable it, and you'll have a much more stable system that relies on fast ram rather than slow disk read/writes. Despite some slight disagreements here, I must say thank you very much for digging up that descriptive link to windows services. I absolutely hate tweaking without understanding, and this should help out a great deal. Perhaps Allen could link to it as well?

Tele,
I am in total agreement.

Thanks for the replies fellas. I hope the info you cats posted will help some of us out with our recent performance and stability probs. However, I'd really like to see some of your scores on intel 002 or 002r systems w/ 6.1 so I can get a real comparison on performance. Are these middle of the road, poor, or great results I'm getting on this new version of PT? If they stink for a system like mine, what did those people do differently?

Also, does anyone know of a place with a list of known bugs? I'd be interested to see if some of the things I've experienced, yet aren't too annoying, are listed. If there isn't one, perhaps we should start a thread about confirmed bugs in the various versions, and known workarounds. No more horrible duc-searches turning up empty b/c of the bad engine. I could attach the thread to digi's bug report form from time to time.

BTW, giving the system clock highest irq priority really stabilized my system. I'm glad to have seen that tweak, as I've not seen it in all my years as an engineer. Thanks Allen for posting that site.

[nikki-k]

Hi! ACPI is not fully supported on MANY of the current motherboards. I have a P4T533-C that does not FULLY support it. However, my ASUS P4C800 Delux does, and I tried XP installed both ways. Performance ws similar, maybe slightly in favor of utilizing ACPI. Some audio hardware manufacturers that suggested doing the Standard PC install have now rewritten their suggestions to reflect the opposite.

As far as VM goes- in general when using PT only, with enough RAM installed, yesh- turn it off. However, certain audio/midi apps require VM to be on. I currently have 4 IDE drives in my case (2 on primary, one on secondary with DVD-R, and the audio drive on the SATA/PATA Promise controller), and case temp has not been a problem ever. CPU stays around 37-45c, case temp stays nice n low. However, I do totally agree- VM *shouldn't* be required in this day and age.

[tele_player]

hmmm, I think I posted my 6.1/002/P4-2.0G results on another thread around here yesterday, about 21 tracks IIRC, using PC133 ram. Offhand, I'd say your performance sounds about right.

And I definitely think a good buglist would be very useful. DUC searching and AnswerBase lookups don't quite make it.

How did you change IRQ priority on the system clock?

[Chris Cavell]

Nikki,
My Mobo has full apci/acpi/apic? support, but PT wouldn't run with it turned on. Don't know why, but it wouldn't? ACPI is supposed to help out alot with IRQ conflicts, but it didn't work for me and alot of other cats. Maybe 6.1 is different. I'll try it out next time I need to reinstall. Thanks for posting some of your specs, how's that 800fsb treating you? How's your performance?

Tele,
Thanks for spotting your specs. Glad to see my system isn't running shabbily now. Follow that link on allen's page, repeated above, on how to perform IRQ scheduling in the registry. On an ACPI install, IIRC, it's easy to do this through the control panel, but I could be wrong. I think there might be a way to do it through the device manager on a Standard PC installation, but i'm not sure how. I'll experiment a bit and see what I come up with. It really did stabilize my system. It was crashing randomly and frequently over the past couple of weeks, but it's steady as a bullet now!

[Lalaman]

Have you considered that at least with Via chipsets ACPI ( whether on or off ) has to have been selected in BIOS before XP installation? If I remember that correctly XP wouldn´t detect that option right and just switching in BIOS or Windows after installation shouldn´t be sufficient.
Don´t know if that would be still with the latest boards, but it could be worth checking out about this one on Vias website.