Pro tools 10 CPU 90/100 % , What's wrong?

[Wilfriedd]

SEE ATTACHED


Hello all , i was running an old computer ( Quad core , Q9690) with 8 gb Ram on Win 7 x64.

All my bigger projects were almost freezing (around 95% CPU) even if i chose 4 core processors ( 4 THREADS actually) .
So i decided to buy a new computer with Windows 10 ( But since some of my plugins are discontinued and don't support Win 10 , i installed Win 7 x64 on another disk)

This computer is a brand new i9 - 10980h processor , 8 cores and 16 thread and 64 gb Ram . I was expecting better performances.

I did a test by opening a project which reached 80% CPU on my old computer ...
Well , now i can't even hit play , it has a strange behaviour , stuck to 100% CPU then going down suddenly to 75 , then rising to 80 , then 100% really quickly.

I verified in the options that all my threads was involved , and yes they are .

It's using 16 threads at max ( CPU LIMIT) 95 % .

So i decided to reduce this number to 8 , and then to 4 (like my old computer) . Here with 4 threads , it stays at 85% and barely play the songs ( Playback errors ..) . But when i go up with 16 threads , it's worse .

When i chose for example 40% for processor limit , Cpu is staying at 45% but with a RED BAR , that means if you hit play , you will suffer some nu errors .

I don't really know what's going on !! it's crazy!!!! Please help !!

SEE ATTACHED

[Darryl Ramm]

How about starting at "Help us help you" up the top of each DUC web page, and post a SiSoft Sandra report for your computer. Standard optimization and troubleshooting steps are there. You probably should have looked at troubleshooting on your old system.

You should be doing basic troubleshooting including excluding (temporarily removing the .aaxplugin files from the plugin folder) all third party plugins when you suspect CPU issue. And putting .aaxplugin files back in batches trying to triangulate on the bad plugin(s). With CPUY problems *always* assume plugins are likely to be the the problem and exclude them early on. You could have done that on the old system before upgrading. Do those old plugins even claim to be compatible with Pro Tools 10 on Windows 7?

What sample rate, what IO buffer size are you running at?

Corrupt sessions can also cause run away CPU use... what happens when you start with an new totally empty session? (not a template or copy of another session). And plugin denormalization issues can also cause run away CPU use, including with the transport stopped. Back in the day DVERB and Sansamp were notorious for that, but many suffered from it. You can search for demoralization on DUC for an explanation. But you can fish for problem plugins by looking for plugins that are getting a very low/no signal level, try removing suspect plugins from the inserts, and/or sticking a dither plugin in front of the suspect plugin.

There are CPU priority and affinity settings folks are worrying about with recent Pro Tools on Windows 10 but your issues are likely to be more fundamental plugin problems.

[Wilfriedd]

Thank you for the reply. I'm sending the Sandra report below .

What i meant is that nothing except the computer ( Cpu and ram) changed .

I've installed the same Win 7 x64 version , and all my projects are in a special hard drive . Plus the same plugins were saved in a special folder and reinstalled on this same system. That's why i don't understand .

I already looked for some faulty plugins , desactivating and reactivating. Behaviour is correct , it's only like i have a cheaper CPU (which is the opposite).

Here is the SANDRA :

SiSoftware Sandra

ID
Host Name : DjRalphBB-PC
Workgroup : WORKGROUP

Computer
Model : OEM
Serial Number : To Be Fille***********
Chassis : Desktop
Mainboard : SYWZ S210H Series
Serial Number : To Be Fille***********
BIOS : AMI (OEM) 5.17 11/11/2020
Intel vPro : 14.0.45.1389
Total Memory : 63.88GB SO-DIMM DDR4

Processors
Processor : Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-10880H CPU @ 2.30GHz (8C 16T 3.1GHz/5.1GHz, 2.8GHz/4.7GHz IMC, 8x 256kB L2, 16MB L3)
Socket/Slot : FC BGA1440

Chipset
Memory Controller : Intel Core10H (Cometlake-H 8C) Mobile Host Bridge/DRAM Registers 100MHz, 2x 32GB SO-DIMM DDR4 2.67GHz 128-bit, Integrated Graphics

Memory Module(s)
Memory Module : 7F7F7F7F7F7F7FFB/Micron GSA16G4SCL196P-26 16GB SO-DIMM DDR4 1Rx8 PC4-21300SO DDR4-2666 (19-19-19-44 4-63-21-7)
Memory Module : 7F7F7F7F7F7F7FFB/Micron GSA16G4SCL196P-26 16GB SO-DIMM DDR4 1Rx8 PC4-21300SO DDR4-2666 (19-19-19-44 4-63-21-7)

Video System
Monitor/Panel : AOC International F22
(1920x1080, 21.1")

Graphics Processor

Storage Devices
Disk : NVMe Micron MTFDHBA1T (1TB, NVMe)
Disk : Seagate ST4000LM024-2AN17V (4TB, USB/SATA300/600, 2.5", 5526rpm)
Disk : Seagate ST5000LM000-2AN170 (5TB, USB/SATA600, 2.5", 5526rpm, SED)
Disk : Seagate ST4000DM004-2CV104 (4TB, USB/SATA600, 3.5", 5425rpm)
Disk : Seagate ST2000DM001-1CH164 (2TB, USB/SATA300/600, 3.5", 7200rpm)
Disk : WD 10EAVS External (1TB, USB)
Disk : WDC WD10EADS-00M2B0 (1TB, USB/SATA300, 3.5", 32MB Cache)

Logical Storage Devices
Hard Disk (D:) : 128GB (NTFS, 4kB) @ NVMe Micron MTFDHBA1T (1TB, NVMe)
OS (E:) : 425GB (NTFS, 4kB) @ NVMe Micron MTFDHBA1T (1TB, NVMe)
OS WIN7 (C:) : 400GB (NTFS, 4kB) @ NVMe Micron MTFDHBA1T (1TB, NVMe)
SAUVE BB 2 (F:) : 4TB (NTFS, 4kB) @ Seagate ST4000LM024-2AN17V (4TB, USB/SATA300/600, 2.5", 5526rpm)
Ralph 5 TO (G:) : 5TB (NTFS, 4kB) @ Seagate ST5000LM000-2AN170 (5TB, USB/SATA600, 2.5", 5526rpm, SED)
DISK 2021 (H:) : 4TB (NTFS, 4kB) @ Seagate ST4000DM004-2CV104 (4TB, USB/SATA600, 3.5", 5425rpm)
NINIE DISK (I:) : 2TB (NTFS, 512bytes) @ Seagate ST2000DM001-1CH164 (2TB, USB/SATA300/600, 3.5", 7200rpm)
Sauve 2 (K:) : 932GB (NTFS, 4kB) @ WDC WD10EADS-00M2B0 (1TB, USB/SATA300, 3.5", 32MB Cache)
Hard Disk : 497MB (NTFS, 4kB) @ NVMe Micron MTFDHBA1T (1TB, NVMe)

Peripherals
LPC Hub Controller #1 : Intel Pont ISA standard PCI
Audio Device : Intel Core (Comet Lake) PCH cAVS
Audio Codec : Realtek Semi 0235
Disk Controller : Intel Core (Comet Lake) PCH Shared SRAM
Disk Controller : Intel Contrôleur Serial ATA standard AHCI*1.0
Disk Controller : Micron Contrôleur NVM Express standard
USB Controller #1 : Intel Core (Comet Lake) USB 3.1 xHCI Host Controller
SMBus/i2c Controller #1 : Intel ICH SMBus

Printers and Faxes
Printer : Microsoft XPS Document Writer (600x600, Colour)
Fax : Microsoft Shared Fax Driver (200x200)

Network Services
Network Adapter : Intel(R) I211 Gigabit Network Connection (Ethernet)
Network Adapter : P‚riph‚rique Bluetooth (r‚seau personnel) (Ethernet)
Wireless Adapter : Realtek 8821AE Wireless LAN 802.11ac PCI-E NIC (802.11n (HT), AES-CCMP, 150Mbps)

Operating System
Windows System : Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 6.1.7601 (Service Pack 1)
Platform Compliance : x64

Performance Enhancing Tips
Warning 2513 : TPM not detected. Some security features are unavailable.
Warning 225 : CPU is not a production version but ES/QS.
Tip 2 : Double-click tip or press Enter while a tip is selected for more information about the tip.

[Darryl Ramm]

OK so that's a NUC like system with laptop CPU and memory. I have no idea how good this will be for Pro Tools, lots will come down to cooling. Sandra is not reporting memory properly, that may be a Sandra bug, or maybe not a good sign the PC is OK. Are the DIMMs on motherboard approved compatibility list? Also some underspec (for Pro Tools audio) drives.

But still it is most likely to be faulty plugins, denormalization, or corrupt sessions. You had a system with problems and you upgraded it to more powerful hardware... that hardware behaving differently/consuming more resources does not mean it's the hardware necessarily at fault.

You need to work through careful troubleshooting to work out what is going on. If you remove *all* AAX and RTAS plugin files what happens? I can't remember if PT 10 does the automatic restore magic for plugins like later version do. But just move all plugins out of the both plugin folders and if needed (if they don't get automatically reinstalled when Pro Tools starts) manually reinstall the base Pro Tools 10 plugins, and nothing else. Test starting with new empty session... what happens? Make big bold change early on to find something that works as expected. If you can't get a vanilla setup working with the PC then it may be a hardware issue and you should think about getting rid of the PC. But I doubt that is an issue

You have got a range of drives there, including a crappy WD green external drive and a slow Seagate drive to an NVMe SSD used as a boot drive. it's not clear what drive you are running sessions from, but just to exclude that I would be putting any test sessions on the fast NVMe boot drive (just stick them on the boot partition, that's going to be much faster than anything else you have).

Don't keep playing with #CPU settings, just set that to the number of physical cores -1. That might not be optimal but it may help with any hyper threading issues with some plugins, and you might try disabling hyperthreading all together to tune things future, but for now you need to find the causes of gross problems you are seeing.

[Wilfriedd]

Hello

Yeah i downloaded a legacy version of SANDRA ,now it's ok

I'm using NINIE DISK (I:) : 2TB (NTFS, 512bytes) @ Seagate ST2000DM001-1CH164 (2TB, USB/SATA300/600, 3.5", 7200rpm) for my projects .

I tried to copy all my files on the NVMe drive , and still the same .

When i remove all plugins , the CPU goes down to 0% . So we could say that it's all plugins, but again , with a big session like mine , the CPU behaviour is normal.

What's not is having some low performances with a much powerful computer .

when you say number of physical cores -1 , is it 8 cores -1 or 16 threads (as shown in Pro tools) -1 .

i reinstalled Pro tools native plugins , and moving the others plugins in another folder.

There isn't really a plugin that causes the CPU to become crazy. this one is gradually rising like it should , when more plugins are loaded.

Also i have not the option on BIOS to disable hyperthreading Darryl ,
will try to follow again all you said.

Thank you , will let you know

[EGS]

Do ALL of the AVID recommend system optimizations. Don't skip any!

[JFreak]

Moving session does not solve anything, unless Sace Copy In or move files to fast drive(s) too. But that workspace trick prevents record/playback to slow drives (which may be a catalyst for moving files to fast drives)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Wilfriedd]

thank you for all the tricks , i will try that.

All my files are already on the NVMe disk , but i moved them to this disk...
so at first , there were on an external disk.

had Just put the slow drives in Transfer mode ( T T / T T / T T)

[albee1952]

BTW, expecting "better performance" is wishful thinking as you are killing your own performance by running an old 32 bit program(Pro Tools 10) on a slick new 64 bit machine. The old software can't take advantage of more than around 3.2GB of your RAM and probably runs slower due to the OS not being optimized for running 32 bit programs. When I moved from PT10 to PT11(which is a 64 bit program), I did see a solid performance boost(of course, each major PT upgrade seems to require more power to execute all the new features)