CPU Overload w/ MBP i7 2.4Ghz & 16GB Ram

[dolla45]

I tried searching the forum and could not find an answer that worked for me, so i apologize for a redundant post.

I am running PT 10.3.6 on my late 2011 MBP i7 with 16 gigs of ram.

Inside my sessions i have purchased a bunch of waves bundles, fabfilter, and autotune evo besides the standard avid plug ins.

when mixing a session i cut buffer to 1024 and leave the # of cores alone at 4 out of 8 and 85%. no matter what and how many stems i have, without plug ins, i receive the cpu overload error asking me to increase my HW buffer size or reduce plug ins. the issue is only my cpu native meter gets all crazy jumping from 30 to 65 and everything in between (meter jumps from yellow to red to yellow). neither of the other two line items cpu and disk usage move above 5%. what is going wrong?

i've trashed my prefs, restarted, cut off my bluetooth, and other network connections besides wifi. the only thing plugged up to my computer is the iLok and usb 2.0 external drive which is formatted for mac. again, the disk usage meter hardly shows up on the meter.

i am lost and i need help! my tower that runs 8.0 doesn't have this issue but the point of me buying 10 was so that i could work from home!

thanks guys!!

oh i did just install PT 11 trial on the same mbp to try it out. should i erase that?

[Chief Technician]

Originally Posted by dolla45

oh i did just install PT 11 trial on the same mbp to try it out. should i erase that?

That is unlikely to be causing this problem.

[dolla45]

Well it was just a trial so I uninstalled it anyway but I can't find a solution. I had an intel core 2 duo machine and tho it was slow I never had this issue as I do with this newer machine. I don't have anything else running while pt10 is up.

Anyone?

[dr_daw]

Are your sessions on that USB 2 drive? Perhaps it's the drive giving you grief. Does it happen on ALL sessions?

[dolla45]

Yes they are all on that drive. It's a 750gb external. But the problem is a CPU native overload. My disk usage meter never goes above 5%. Not even the CPU meter below the native one ever spikes.

[dolla45]

Bump

[RegenerationMix]

Hi, I have a similar setup.

put your core number to 7 at 99%. 512 samples to 1024 samples.

Waves plugs are CPU hogs. always have been. Use them sparsely.

The USB drive will give you problems. USB 2 is not fast enough regardless the drive itself is 7200 rpm or the size of the drive. You need a firewire drive at minimum. USB 2 will only function with windows based pro tools and a PC. It will not work well with macs. thats just how it is and how it has been. I believe Avid has recommended against USB drives for Macs in the past unless its the new USB3 which is not in the 2011 macbook pros.

Chris

[dolla45]

Thanks so much Chris! I will grab a FireWire enclosure today and see if that helps. I didn't think it was an issue because my disk usage never went above 5% and I was getting a CPU native error. Hopefully this helps because I'm not using a lot of waves plug ins in this session but there are a lot of stems.

[RegenerationMix]

You have to think of your CPU as a juggler. It juggles the OS, the software, timing, the tracks, the routing, the graphic display, the audio playback, the read, the write and the save, etc etc etc. That USB2 port not being fast enough to keep up will make your CPU struggle to juggle and keep everything running together. One port is basically clogged up and not running at full blast. you will get errors since that one chain link is not on the same level as the rest of your chain. Your system is only as good as the weakest link.

Get a firewire enclosure. The firewire port on the 2011 MBP is firewire 800. Some connections will be Firewire 400, so you may need a 800>400 firewire cable. Firewire 400 is much much faster than USB2 which is why the 002 and 003 are firewire units and not USB like the mbox stuff. Firewire 800 is even faster. USB3 is faster still. Thunderbolt is the fastest so far.


Chris

[Darryl Ramm]

There is some key information missing here, What actual drive make/model/spec are you using? You may be wasting your time if its not a 7200 rpm or faster drive, or an SSD.

Also what exact plugins are you using/how many instances when you have problems? At what session sample rate? How many total tracks? And what are *all* the playback dialog settings?

A USB2 drive if it is the correct audio drive specs ought to be able to handle many sessions. It would not be my first choice but just being USB2 itself may not be the problem. there are lots of problems with USB2 external hard drives caused by the cheap, nasty drives vendors put in those enclosures (e.g. What WD do with many of their crappy Caviar Green drives) moving one of those drives to another enclosure would likely be a waste of time. So what exact disk are you using?

Are all the plugins up to date? have you tried to identify if particular plugins are causing problems?