PC Performance issues, need a new PC?

I just recently bought Maschine and am running into performance issues when trying to play the demo projects, my CPU gets completely eaten up (runs at 90-100% the whole time) and unless I jack my latency way up I get severe audio break-up.

I've got a pretty old PC (about 6-7 yrs now!):
P4, WIN XP SP 3, 2.6 Ghz, 3 GB RAM, using ASIO audio driver with the E-MU 0404 USB audio interface.

I've switched my power settings to always on and have turned off hyper threading as suggested in previous threads, still no love though. I also run Live 7 off this PC, to be truthful it seems to perform better than maschine for me, it hogs much more memory but less CPU, although I still run into problems with it sometimes and need to freeze tracks.

So any other suggestions as to tweaks I can attempt or is a new computer inevitable?

If going with a new computer any suggestions? I am considering a laptop but am a little reluctant as I'm not sure if it will be able to handle Live, Maschine plus my other plug-ins.

 

Welcome =)

A P4 of that age is equivalent to a 1.6 GHz modern processor, so yeah- a new machine would help.

Something you might try, though- remove a stick of RAM, if your mainboard has an even amount of slots or if you're using mismatched RAM.

ew

 

Thanks for the response, fiddled around some more but I'm afraid I'm finally going to have to bite the bullet and upgrade to a new computer. I found my existing computer can almost handle things without the controller attached (it must add in some extra processing when attached) but what is the fun is that! Guess I can't complain after getting 7 years out of my current computer.

I know people on here probably aren't PC experts but any thoughts from anyone on laptop vs desktop? I run Live 7, and mostly some plug-ins from IK Multimedia (SampleTank, Sonic Synth, Miroslav, etc) and of course now Maschine.

I like the idea of being more portable but I'd hate to get a new machine and still have performance issues, I'm looking at the Dell Studio XPS 13 (http://www1.ca.dell.com/ca/en/home/Laptops/laptop-studio-xps-13/pd.aspx?refid=laptop-studio-xps-13&s=dhs&cs=cadhs1&ref=lthp) if I went with a laptop.

 

had the same problem , new pc completely solved it. i bought a pretty fast quadcore with l2 cache for around 450 euro and can now run live 8 plus several instances of machine, without bothering the cpu more than 11-25 %.(64 buffer!)
laptop or pc .....budged question...., the power of the dell should be ok

 

maschine can be quite a glutton if you're into complex stuff with many automations... but it's been a very stable glutton so far, so I'm not complaining

 

Just went through this myself...

...although what drove the decision for me was running VST plug-in's with Ableton Live. Ran into latency issues and maxed my CPU. I spent a lot of time thinking about how I planned to use the software (Studio vs. Live) and realized that I'm going to spending a lot more time in the studio. Given the upgrade/add-on flexibility and the prices vs. performance costs are clearly in the desktop camp, I decided to build out my own system. (NewEgg is really a great resource for doing this). When I do live shows, I'll not be running plug-ins with Ableton. I do hope to integrate Maschine into my live shows...a really good reason (excuse) to upgrade the laptop then, huh?

I built out a quad i7 (that looks like 8 cores to the OS) with 6 gig ram, 2 terrabytes running win7. My average cpu never goes about 20% while running live, machine and Kore 2.

 

that sounds very live to me no offense.

building a powerful i7-based system is relatively cheap nowadays - it's less than half of what you have to pay for a maxed macbook pro (and about a third of a maxed ibm thinkpad). but the capability to fiddle around with everything on stage is something I'm willing to spend extra money on. I guess that depends on everyone's individual approach, but I need to be able to spontaneously hit a few notes, cycle through waveforms and so on.

oh yes. since I first used maschine on stage, I can't imagine my livesets without it anymore. the combo maschine + apc40 is a killer if used correctly

btw: are you running the 64bit version? with 6 GB RAM I assume you are, but it doesn't hurt to ask as I am aiming for win7 64bit on my next laptop (except when I end up being a supercool trendsetting hipster person and buy a macbook) and have no experience with the system yet.

 

@tranqui...yes. I'm running win7 on 4 systems (2 x86 laptops and 2 x64 workstations). Ableton works fine on all of them. Had to do some tuning to work through latency issues on my studio workstation, but the USB drivers seem to be fairly stable (firewire was another story).

 

Thanks for all the responses from everyone, spent the past week getting a quadcore machine up and running... man maschine, ableton, everything runs like a dream now... shoulda' upgraded awhile back!

 

Nothing like being able to throw HW at a problem...glad to hear, Nico44. Maschine-on!

 

yeah, I figured I'd contact RME first before I waste time on experiments but thanks a lot for your input.

 

Having some performance issues as well. My machine should do it, and i followed the instructions on the NI homepage for optimizing a xp machine for sound creation. but nonetheless my cpu often jumps to around 95% and then drops back to about 30%. My machine is a 2.4GHz Core Duo wt. 2 Gigs of RAM - shouldn't that be sufficient for Machine?
I'm just asking because i don't want to clean up/optimize or reinstall my whole pc with no use at all.

 

What you're seeing is speedstepping. Set your power scheme in Windows to always on (XP)/max performance (Vista).

ew

 

I already did that. But i read from your answer that my computer should have sufficent capacitiy to perform well. So i have to search for a way to get it work faster

 

Check and see if you can disable speedstepping in your BIOS.

ew

 

Wasn't able to do it in the BIOS, but found a little systemtool called SpeedswitchXP that does the job. And it really helps.

Thank ew.

Nice little onomatopoetic games

Maschine still is at the system limits often. But now the CPU rise is more linear and i can handle it.

 

Here i am again. Trying to integrate Maschine to my new Live set. The Laptop is still the same - 2.4 GHz Core Duo, 2Gig RAM. It's about 3 years old.

When i use Maschine as a plug-in in Live 8 i have a CPU Load of 35% whith no sound playing at all. Is Maschine really that hungry?

 

It could be, depending on what's loaded into it. An empty instance of Maschine loaded into a new Live project runs about 4% on my system.

ew

 

Yep, i just found a running Delay on Maschine that had a 99% feedback. But nonetheless i can't get Maschine to run inside Live without massive Audio Dropouts - even with my AUDIO 8 set to high latency.

Looks like it's time to spend som more money...