Diagnose and Optimization of Windows performance

Timur · Post by **Timur** » Mon Mar 10, 2008 3:49 pm

No, I enjoy having knowledge and control over my system and not being a helpless puppy when problems occur.

ewistrand · Post by **ewistrand** » Mon Mar 10, 2008 3:55 pm

Timur wrote:My advice is to turn on Windows XP's energy-managment tray-icon and switch to "Desktop" when working on audio (if you're using a power-plug instead of batteries), this will turn off dynamic clocking and clock the CPU to max.

Not true- set to "Desktop", speedstepping still comes into play. Set it to "always on"...

ew

Timur · Post by **Timur** » Mon Mar 10, 2008 8:51 pm

It does work with Desktop on my AMD X2, maybe Intel's Speedstepping drivers work different. Use Always on then if you're using Core2Duo.

crazybreaks · Post by **crazybreaks** » Mon Mar 10, 2008 10:14 pm

Can I just add to this thread... you can mess around with IRQ settings which can be helpful.. you can mess around with CPU priorities (never helped me)... you can do an awful lots of things with checking stats when you miss the most obvious of PC problems (Especially in PC laptop setups where you are fixed with what you got).... 3d hardware acceleration. If you've analysed all the stuff with the tools mentioned here and are still having mysterious crackling sounds + anomalies + performance issues... right click on desktop and select "properties"... goto settings... advanced... troubleshoot.. disable "write combining" (v imp) and turn down the hardware acceleration to off... recheck for anomalies... if they've gone your graphics card's 3d acceleration was to blame... now slowly turn back up the hardware acceleration step by step to see what setting suits your system best for audio work. You can mess around with IRQ settings, cpu settings and tools mentioned here galore but if your issue is related to your graphics card and 3d acceleration... none of the tips mentioned here will help at all. I am surprised more people don't mention this fix... it's turned 2 unusable pcs (1 laptop + 1 desktop) of mine with horrible latency/stability problems into zero latency rock solid machines (admittedly I also did some other meticulous system tweaking but the biggest impact by far was turning down hardware acceleration settings in windows... and I just turn them back up for gaming... so simple and yet mentioned in so few places on the web!). Cheers.

Timur · Post by **Timur** » Tue Mar 11, 2008 6:43 am

You are right about 3D accelleration, but making sure that the PCI Latency of your graphic-card is not higher than 64 (or even 32) or (using a PCI Express graphic-card) should solve those issues better than turning down accelleration (see PCI Latency Tool or Double Dawg in the first post of this thread, this also works on Notebooks).

longjohns · Post by **longjohns** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 3:11 am

FWIW I have never noticed a difference in performance from using DoubleDawg

although it sounds nice in print

Timur · Post by **Timur** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 7:40 am

Double Dawg and PCI Latency tool only make a difference if you experienced PCI Latency related problems before. This setting is a "MAX" setting, so most of the time the hardware should release the PCI bus earlier than what is set here. Unfortunately AGP graphic-cards' drivers tend to set this to 248 even if it's usually set to 32 or 64 in your BIOS. Every driver can chose their own setting, but most keep to what you set in Bios.

This is not an issue with PCI Express, since those use their very own lanes/connections anyway instead of sharing them with other interfaces. And even with AGP it will not necessarily be a problem unless your graphic-card hogs the bus (which happens more in 3D than in 2D, but some of those accelleration options could also lead to that).

KU · Post by KU » Mon Mar 31, 2008 4:46 am

Timur wrote: ... And even with AGP it will not necessarily be a problem unless your graphic-card hogs the bus (which happens more in 3D than in 2D, but some of those accelleration options could also lead to that).

the Matrox 2D card like the P650 work very well in audio workstations with AGP - they don't hog the bus.

Timur · Post by **Timur** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 8:29 am

It's a driver thing anyway. AGP uses the PCI Latency setting which can be controlled via PCI Latency Tool and Double Dawg. As long as the graphic-cards PCI Latency setting is set to 32 or 64 you shouldn't have much of a problem anyway. The explanation is that the PCI Latency setting is a maximum setting. That means that a given PCI device (including AGP) cannot hog the PCI bug any longer than X clock-cycles (with X being the setting the BIOS/driver/you chose for a given device). Only one PCI device can use the PCI bus at any time and this defines how long they may use it maximally before another device is allowed to use it. Most PCI devices don't use all of those cycles anyway, they are done with their task earlier, but especially graphic-cards may hog the bus for a long time if they are allowed to.

atomheels · Post by **atomheels** » Thu Apr 03, 2008 5:23 pm

Hi,

A very useful thread!

I have a question relating to this:

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... highlight=

which I started yesterday. I am getting a big nasty spike every 15 seconds and cannot work out what it is. As mentioned in above, when looking at process monitor I seem to get a load of 'NAME NOT FOUND' results when the RegOpenKey operation is called.

I am am well out of my depth in trying to figure out how to fix or if it's even the problem. What do you think my next step should be? Any help much appreciated.

Cheers,

LT

Timur · Post by **Timur** » Sat May 31, 2008 7:29 am

time to bump so that everyone can share the love...

capo-wear-i · Post by **capo-wear-i** » Sat May 31, 2008 6:07 pm

crazybreaks wrote:Can I just add to this thread... you can mess around with IRQ settings which can be helpful.. you can mess around with CPU priorities (never helped me)... you can do an awful lots of things with checking stats when you miss the most obvious of PC problems (Especially in PC laptop setups where you are fixed with what you got).... 3d hardware acceleration. If you've analysed all the stuff with the tools mentioned here and are still having mysterious crackling sounds + anomalies + performance issues... right click on desktop and select "properties"... goto settings... advanced... troubleshoot.. disable "write combining" (v imp) and turn down the hardware acceleration to off... recheck for anomalies... if they've gone your graphics card's 3d acceleration was to blame... now slowly turn back up the hardware acceleration step by step to see what setting suits your system best for audio work. You can mess around with IRQ settings, cpu settings and tools mentioned here galore but if your issue is related to your graphics card and 3d acceleration... none of the tips mentioned here will help at all. I am surprised more people don't mention this fix... it's turned 2 unusable pcs (1 laptop + 1 desktop) of mine with horrible latency/stability problems into zero latency rock solid machines (admittedly I also did some other meticulous system tweaking but the biggest impact by far was turning down hardware acceleration settings in windows... and I just turn them back up for gaming... so simple and yet mentioned in so few places on the web!). Cheers.

This is exactly what happened with a Dell D800 laptop we use - disabling graphics accelration in windows XP removed the big spikes that were occuring in DPC latency checker.

Parametex · Post by **Parametex** » Mon Jun 09, 2008 9:32 pm

Hi Timur and other fellas,

I tried to do everything in my power to make my machine work better but no way Jose!

My machine is a quadcore 2.4 PC with all the nice stuff. Lotsa mem, easy gfx card and even a pcie FW card with TI chipset to properly work with my RME FF400 card.

But alas, no.

I have to keep MAXIMUN latencies (1024 samples) in fireface400 card to be able to work with it. If I reduce the latency and add some pressure to the cpu (plugs, vstis) I start getting a cracking sound. Its hard to believe its connected to the FF bus as I'm all the time playing back only stereo to the FF400.

The pcie card is in IRQ 23 or something and if motherboards FW is in irq 17.

I have ASUS mobo and I'm thinking that is it an only way to buy a new one with better irq system ...

Any help super appreciated ...

Cheers

Timur · Post by **Timur** » Mon Jun 09, 2008 10:38 pm

What Windows are you using XP or Vista? What results does the DPC Latency Checker report (screenshot)?

carriero · Post by **carriero** » Mon Jun 09, 2008 10:42 pm

Parametex, Try turning multiprocessor support off under the CPU tab in Preferences. It's a shame to have to do this on a quad machine, but it might get you down to a usable latency setting. Mine went from 1024 to 512 with that switch.