7.4 RTAS Usage meter higher than normal! Any thought's? HELP

[TREXROCK]

Hello I've been running 7.3 flawlessly for a while now. Just went to 7.4 last night and opened up existing sessions and the RTAS usage meter(this is new isn't it? before was just cpu usage?) is at half and in 7.3 the cpu usage was under a quarter. Had about 14 plug ins open.
So now that there are split meter's one for elastic time and RTAS are they reading differently? what's up? Or does 7.4 just take alot more processing to operate? if so i may go back as i'd rather have asccess to more RTAS then elastic audio.

HP a1440n
Intel 820 Viiv dual core processor, 2.8ghz, i945p chipset
3gb ram
dedicated 250gb sata HD

[sriks]

Hi,
I upgraded to the Digi003 this year [7.3]

For the first month Pro tools software had many issues and thanks to those CS releases [cs5] which seemed to have fixed issues. Still I do get some random errors of access violations etc.

As I was thinking to upgrade to the 7.4, I saw that I will be charged $49 for the upgrade. This is quite ridiculous. I guess 7.3 had many errors I say this because DigiDesign has never released 3CSs at quick succession.

My Boxes are P-Dual Cores with 4g ram + 200 acres of space, running XP [Home Edition]
Everything is fine except for the random access violation error, my observation it that this happens when I connect USB devices like card reader or external hdds. Reading above comment, I guess I should not upgrade, I better off living with random access violations errors.

Thanks.

[sunburst79]

7.4 is a bit of a CPU hog and EA cannot be turned off since its more or less "Embedded" in PT.

Sriks.. There is a known issue with PT and Card readers. If the device is USB unplug it or you can disable each of the card readers drives in Device Manager. Delete all of the Digidesign Databases and reboot and reluanch Pro Tools. This may help.

[sriks]

thanks - Sunburst79

That's what I do, but it does get tedious during fast production cycle.
I use the Motif ES + sampler, I transfer wav files to motif sampler using a build in multi card reader drive,after each mix down I was forced to reboot the box to transfer files.

but thank god, last month, I got one more PC that came with a SD card reader slot, which is now mapped via network to protools box, I transfer files via network, then delete the network mapping.

With such known issues - Digi charges for an upgrade? why?