Reaktor (Razor) Performance OSX vs Win7

Hi All,
I recently purchased Razor and am using it combined with Reaktor Player 5.6 in OSX 10.6.8, on a Macbook 2.4Ghz C2D.

I'm a bit concerned about CPU usage in OSX, for example with 256 samples, I am getting 40% - 50% usage for 3 notes in the patch "Up Syndrome 1" - This is with low quality mode and the 3d effect off.

50% might not sound bad, but I'm trying to use it along with a Massive VST in Maschine...so it's grinding to a halt with 1 kit + Massive in Eco mode + Razor.

So I installed Windows 7 in bootcamp, along with ASIO4ALL.

Set to 64 samples, high quality and with 3d on...I'm getting 13% CPU usage in Windows 7 with 3 notes.

I'm starting to think that ASIO is a far better platform compared to Coreaudio, and that perhaps Windows is the best option as I can play about with CPU affinity. CPU affinity would make a big difference to Maschine as I can offload some of the VST work to my 2nd core.

Can anyone comment on my experiences?
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I also tested Massive in OSX, the patch "Analogica" is showing 10% in Win7 and 20 - 23% in OSX @ 64 samples in Win7 and 256 in OSX - high quality mode with 2 voices on both.

 

EDIT : Fixed...I moved AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext to another directory, deleted the extensions cache and rebooted...now getting similar performance in both OS.

So, it looks to have been a C2D Speedstep issue...I wish Apple would give more control over settings such as these.

Unfortunately, now my laptop won't wake from sleep...so I'll have to compromise!

 

nice! i would like to try also on my tower if something changes, do you have just moved the extension away from the extension folder and nohthing else ?
i know it's not suggested to mess up with system folder...

btw on mac performance are worst than on pc on the same machine, on my tests it looks osx uses 50% more cpu than windows, example 20% cpu on win became 30% on osx, can you confirm this also with that extension disabled ?

 

Hi Rickyeffe,
Yes, there was about 10-20% difference between the OS.

Are you using a Core 2 Duo system...this won't have any effect on the newer i3/5/7 systems.

I'll go into more detail as to how I achieved this...

First I enabled the root user (couldn't get sudo working for some reason)

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1528

Opened a terminal and used the following commands

su (to become root user)

mv /System/Library/Extensions/AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext / (moves but doesn't delete the driver)

rm /System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kext.caches/Startup/Extension.mkext (deletes the driver cache)

IF you have issues on rebooting, then I'd suggest booting into "single user" mode - basically text only version of OSX - by holding down command-s at boot.

You can then reverse the commands to move the kext back

su
mv /AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext /System/Library/Extensions/
rm /System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kext.caches/Startup/Extensions.mkext

ALTERNATIVELY...you could try using http://www.coolbook.se/CoolBook.html
but this costs money....

 

i have a newer mac, xeon with turbo boosts (that doesn't works on osx but it's another story) so you say it will not have effect, too bad, always searching for a way to get some more cpu power out from this turtle mac :/

thanks for the guide though, it may be useful for someone else...

 

Actually I'm not 100% if that is correct...it might work on your Xeon based system, but you'd probably see the same issue - no suspend.

I actually found another solution, VoodooPState.kext

I removed AppleIntelPowerManagement.kext, added VoodooPState.kext to the kext folder and and now able to change the CPU frequency using a menu with PStateMenu

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/lofiversion/index.php/t254061.html

Still no suspend though

TBH I think I'm wrong that the post above wouldn't work with your Xeon...I think it still uses the Intel kext for power management.

 

looking at my mac cpu frequency with cpuid it looks it never changes frequency, it's at around 2,93 Ghz all the time, when is idle, when all cpus are under load and when only 1 cpu is running, that means various things, first that no energy saving features are enabled (so it looks that energy saving kexts like AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement just does nothing), and second that turbo boost doesn't work at all (looking at my cpu specification on intel website it should go up to 3.2ghz when only 1 cpu is running), basically frequency is locked at its default value.
i'm scared messing with extensions as my primary partition is a nearly full disk with 650Gb of stuff, and even doing a time machine to restore if i mess it up will take an entire day, and also it looks that VoodooPState uses speedstep steps, so the maximum frequency i will reach should be 2,93. it would be nice if there was a way to "hack" it and force it to use his turbo boost value instead.
i searched a lot about the lack of turbo boost on macs, if i use bootcamp turbo boost works but not as expected, basically when there's some load on any cpu it jumps to 3.1ghz while in idle is at 2.93. on osx it just does nothing as i said. i'm still on 10.5.8, maybe on snow or lion they have finally implemented turbo boost ?

i have another disk and i'll try with lion to see if something has been improved...
but considering that also on windows it doesn't works as expected i believe they have to change something also into EFI and not only into the operating system, and i haven't seen any efi update for my mac yet...

sorry for ot.

 

I would recommend going with SL, Apple added a lot of power management changes - along with performance improvements.

Lion has a few issues with 64-bit Native Instrument, and the trackpad thing drives me nuts!

In conclusion, it's possible that our issues are just down to the fact that ASIO is better than Coreaudio these days...have a read of this

http://www.dawbench.com/win7-v-osx-1.htm

Maybe my next system will be a Dell

 

I would recommend going with SL, Apple added a lot of power management changes - along with performance improvements.

Lion has a few issues with 64-bit Native Instrument, and the trackpad thing drives me nuts!

In conclusion, it's possible that our issues are just down to the fact that ASIO is better than Coreaudio these days...have a read of this

http://www.dawbench.com/win7-v-osx-1.htm

Maybe my next system will be a Dell