cpu spikes !

i´m getting cpu spikes all over the place with this plug in.
i think it hasn´t always been like this. but now it is like that....

projects running at half cpu with EP 1.5 are spink, stuttering, spitting - unusable

 

I'm not a Mac user, however, I was having CPU spikes with several plug-ins. AP, EP, and Pro-53. Two computers; Pentium 4 HT, and AMD Dual-Core. Turned out to be a problem with the dual-processor configuration. I disabled the dual-processor in both computers and no more problems. I also don't find any performance hit with the dual processor disabled. It seems not all software takes advantage of it anyway.

After some research, I found there are many programs using high end audio that have trouble with dual-processors. This is found with many high end computer games. I believe until the software companies address this, or the CPU companies write better drivers for the dual processor scheme, (that's what I've read) the solution is to just disable it for now.

Anyway, it worked for me. You may have to do some research on how to do it with a Mac. Perhaps someone on this forum can give you that info or even some other solution.

Good luck!

 

If your 828's FW and not the USB version, Apple's released a FireWire patch that might get rid of the problem. It mostly deals with no output whatsoever, but I've heard of other problems being fixed by running the patch as well.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305924

There's a better solution than disabling dual processor support.
Run this MS patch;

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=896256

ew

 

Unfortunately, that doesn't work for me. By turning off the Hyper-Threading feature in the CMOS, The problem goes away completely. In the AMD dual-core, I use the affinity setting to tell it to just use one core. No problems.

BTW, this info came from the NI techs.

 

So? I've had disagreements with the tech staff before, and will probably have them in the future...

I'll agree with them about HT but not about your AMD. I use an overclocked 4600x2 myself; the difference with some audio apps after the patch is like night and day.

ew

 

So we are in agreement with the HT processor. I will look into the AMD situation. Setting the "affinity" made this computer (the one used live) work where it was unusable before. I don't like to tinker with it too much while it's working.

If this patch works, will I see much difference in how it operates?

Geoelectro

 

Depends on what you have installed. For example; with mine I saw the CPU usage of USB audio interfaces cut by half. With Virsyn's TERA, any patches using the terrain filter (two 16 pole filters with morphing between the two) saw their CPU usage cut by the same amount. I can run loads up into the 90% range with my hosts (Sonar and Live) at my usual latencies (I usually use 4 ms for both) before running into crackles and the like. Minor things like that...

ew

 

OK. I tried the Patch for the AMD dual Core processor this weekend and unfortunately no help. The only way I get glitch free audio is by disabling one core. By using the affinity command, I can set the single core operation to just one program...Kore, while the rest of the operation system is running on both cores.

I only mentioned this as a possible test for ninstrum to try to see if a dual core processor was causing his problem. Once I discovered this and did some research, it seems to be a problem with many high end games as well. They too seem to agree to disable one processor on the offending program. I can only say it works for me for now, until a better solution comes along.

I'll keep watching...
George

 

?

You shouldn't even have to do that. I 've never had to set affinity for any program.

The Kore controller driver was the main beneficiary of that patch. There's fairly high CPU usage on some machines using a dual core compared to a single core, and mine was about twice where I figured it should be. Running the patch brought it in line with where I thought it should be (between 2-6% of one core when running audio through it).

ew

 

In my case, with no MIDI going in and no audio going out, just idling, the CPU percent meter in Kore will suddenly jump up to 100% and higher! If I do play it during this CPU spike, the sound is distorted and erratic. As soon as this phenom stops, all is well...until it does it again. I did everything I knew to make this a music only computer with no other duties.

Since it does it on two completely different computers I had no idea what it was or what to do. The NI tech team suggested turning off one core...perhaps as a last resort, since we tried everything else. As soon as I did that, the sound was now perfect. I no longer have to wonder if it will mess up during a performance. That's all I wanted and that's what really counts. I'm open to any other fix that's out there as long as I get the results I need.
Geoelectro

 

You've got other issues there. The first place where I'd look if I were you are your "optimizations".

There's only four optimizations I recommend for a Windows box;

1) Set your page file to a fixed size (1.5 x your physical RAM), and move it off your OS drive/partition if possible
2) Change processor scheduling (Control panel/system/advanced/advanced) to background services
3) Turn off indexing on all drives
4) Turn off any power conservation or power management schemes

ew