Best Optimization For Windows7 Core I7 PC

[JustinTapp]

Hello all . . .

I was wondering what the best optimizations were for a core I7 PC under Windows7 64bit. I have a pretty fast PC:

Core I7 2.6ghz (Asus P6T Deluxe) with 12Gb of Corsair Dominator running in triple-channel mode. I have a 130GB SSD as my system drive a Seagate Cheetah as my sample drive, and a regular 7200 WestDig as my audio drive. My video card is an ATI 5770
I am running Windows 7 64bit witha UAD 2 solo, and a UAD 1 PCIe.

I can do a lot with this system but I get "Out of CPU" errors quite frequently. This si frustrating in that my CPU is never shown going anywhere near 50% when many of these occur. I also get a lot of "Access Violations". Why is this? How fast does a native system have to be to never encounter errors such as these?

Is this a virtual memory issue? Can I allocate more memory to pro tools (I have tons of it) . . . are there some tweaks I am missing . . . or is this just a "Get Pro Tools HD if you want rock solid performance" kinda issue?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Justin

[Hotcrazyfruit]

Originally Posted by JustinTapp

Hello all . . .

I was wondering what the best optimizations were for a core I7 PC under Windows7 64bit. I have a pretty fast PC:

Core I7 2.6ghz (Asus P6T Deluxe) with 12Gb of Corsair Dominator running in triple-channel mode. I have a 130GB SSD as my system drive a Seagate Cheetah as my sample drive, and a regular 7200 WestDig as my audio drive. My video card is an ATI 5770
I am running Windows 7 64bit witha UAD 2 solo, and a UAD 1 PCIe.

I can do a lot with this system but I get "Out of CPU" errors quite frequently. This si frustrating in that my CPU is never shown going anywhere near 50% when many of these occur. I also get a lot of "Access Violations". Why is this? How fast does a native system have to be to never encounter errors such as these?

Is this a virtual memory issue? Can I allocate more memory to pro tools (I have tons of it) . . . are there some tweaks I am missing . . . or is this just a "Get Pro Tools HD if you want rock solid performance" kinda issue?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Justin

http://avid.custkb.com/avid/app/self...p?DocId=349411


Gotta love the search.

[JustinTapp]

Thanks. . .

Ok, most of those things I have already done. I guess what I am looking for is someone with experiences similar to mine to tell me how they solved their issues, or whether or not they are solvable. Is it expected for a system as robust as mine to have access violation errors (ever, occasionally, frequently)? How does virtual memory allocation in Windows 7 64 effect Pro tools operation? I am looking for anecdotal information relating to my issues.

Again, any help would be appreciated.

[Cloud_9]

Originally Posted by JustinTapp

Thanks. . .

Ok, most of those things I have already done. I guess what I am looking for is someone with experiences similar to mine to tell me how they solved their issues, or whether or not they are solvable. Is it expected for a system as robust as mine to have access violation errors (ever, occasionally, frequently)? How does virtual memory allocation in Windows 7 64 effect Pro tools operation? I am looking for anecdotal information relating to my issues.

Again, any help would be appreciated.

You should generate a sandra report. Also, verify the i7 sticky thread under PT LE for Windows based systems. I know your on PT9, but many of the tweaks apply as well.

I believe SSD's have not been qualified just yet, but again its all speculation until we see how your configured.

You should be running smooth with your systems capabilities, perhaps its just a matter of configuration. Also, what interface are you using?

[AlainZagar]

Justin

I feel your pain.

I've got a similar system to yours and I occasionally get out of CPU errors but less now after I did the basic optimizations and a few others that I discovered along the way. When I get the out of CPU errors now, it's indeed random and a lot less frequent.

BTW - I also had the same errors before upgrading to Win7-64 and PT9.

Speed and power doesn't equate to better behavior with Pro-Tools. Goes against common sense but that's the way it is.

I've been meaning to capture in a list the things that I've done to tune my system so your post gave me the perfect excuse.

Here's a list of things you can do just to ensure that your system isn't being hijacked by some system process or Windows "feature".

1) As Cloud_9 mentioned, the optimizations are a must. You should do them all including disabling the network interface. I'll explain that later.

2) In the BIOS, disable the Turbo boost feature. This will screw up your analog processing.

3) In the BIOS disable advanced "C" states if you can. These enable parts of the motherboard to go to sleep when idle. C1 is minimum and C2 - C4.... etc are increasing levels of aggressive power management. If you disable this then the chance of some random system component going to sleep are minimized.

4) Learn to use a tool called Procmon from Mark Russinovich. It will show you if you have some rogue software hitting your hard drives, page file.
The web site is http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/s...s/default.aspx

I was able to determine that a network printer driver was writing to the registry 100 times a second. This is what finally convinced me to disable the network interfaces and start them up only when I need to connect on-line.

5) Disable your anti-virus. You don't really need it if you're offline anyway.

6) if procmon found some application or utility that was loading down your system even when you weren't touching Protools, then consider if you can live without the app or feature. Things like Gadgets - just disable them.

7) This is in the optimization sticky - remove useless things like background images on your desktop. Adjust your system for performance and not for looks.

8) Ensure that your plugins are all up to date. Same for drivers for things like your audio interface.

9) turn off system restore and invest in some other better backup and restore solution tool like Acronis true image. Then practice and make sure you know how to use it.

10) turn off indexing of your drives

11) look inside your task scheduler type run taskschd.msc
you would be amazed at how much stuff runs at apparently random times with Windows 7. If you find things like software updaters in there then consider disabling them. For example, Microsoft schedules an update check everyday at 2am and when you log in for the games that got installed with Windows 7. Who the hell wants that? Windows backup notification runs at 10am everyday and lets you know if you've done a recent backup. You really have to see this to believe it.

12) with 12 gigs of RAM you may be able to run perfectly well without a pagefile. That's something I learned from watching a Mark Russinovich web presentation.

13) Visit the ElderGeek and look for services that you can safely disable.
http://www.theeldergeek.com/forum/in...p?showforum=56
I was able to disable 52 services that were totally not required on a music production workstation.

14) disable onboard audio if you've got any. Most of us have way better sound capabilities and there is really no advantage to having more hardware enabled than you need on the mother board. Especially not another sound card.

15) defrag your physical hard drives often. Not everyday but at least once every two weeks.

16) You had SSD installed so you may not want to do this next step.

Caution!
This part is really tricky and you may want to skip it. Install and configure "Advanced Host Controller Interface" AHCI mode and driver for your hard drives. There is plenty of debate on whether this really works or not. It works. It's also really hard to install after the fact. You should have installed this when you installed Windows 7. There is a noticeable performance boost, especially when you're clicking around and accessing random files, starting apps etc. Installing this after the fact can blue screen you for good so don't undertake this unless you have solid backup and restore options available to you.

I'm sure there's other things I've done but these are the big ones and they took the most time to do.

If Microsoft ever "fixes" Windows 7 and brings back hardware profiles, then you'll be able to configure your machine to have a split personality, one for day to day computing and another dedicated to music production. For now you have to kind of take away all the glitter and disable the items that your don't really need.


Hope this helps.

Alain

[JustinTapp]

Now we're talking . . .

Thank you very much.

I consitently get -9128 errors when I open a big plugin window (like Guitar Rig for instance) at lower buffer speeds (64, 128) . . . I will try these tips and see if I can reproduce these over-runs.

Thanks again!

Justin

[eddie1261]

This is the kind of stuff that makes me say "You have to be kidding. I need to go through ALL of that to make a piece of software work that should work right out of the box?" This is ridiculous.

I guess I will just go back to Sonar.

[Bob Olhsson]

It works fine here using nothing but the high performance power settings.

[mikeyman]

not sure it will help but make sure your cores are not parked.See the you tube video on ''core parking''

[albee1952]

Originally Posted by mikeyman

not sure it will help but make sure your cores are not parked.See the you tube video on ''core parking''

A big +1 to checking core parking

Add this to the list of BIOS tweaks; disable floppy drive(drive A:)

Re these 2, I must offer my own 2 cents in blue:

14) disable onboard audio if you've got any. Most of us have way better sound capabilities and there is really no advantage to having more hardware enabled than you need on the mother board. Especially not another sound card. I have never done this and always use the onboard audio as the default for all non-PT audio. Currently, I feed the mobo's optical SPDIF output to a Presonus Central Station and never had an issue.

15) defrag your physical hard drives often. Not everyday but at least once every two weeks. I've been running PT for almost 10 years and have not defragged any of my drives in several years. My system drives are rarely very old as I constantly rotate between a few drives, cloning and updating so that I always have the previous config available by a quick drive swap. Audio drives generally have any important sessions backed up to externals or DVD-R(usually both) and defragging doesn't seem to offer anything(again, this is my 2 cents only). NEVER allow any drive to get more than 80-85% full.