Thanks Remy... I actually just did a test on a 3rd computer. Just had to replace my home computer because my old one crapped out. I got a Gateway i5 processor with 8gb of ram. Just brought in one of the cams and turned it on. Went right into the red on this computer too. So I guess a webcam in high res is using a lot of resources... I pulled up the task manager and the physical memory is at 33% after shutting down a couple adobe programs and the latency is still spiking high and even when it's not spiking it's in the red on this one at all times. I don't hear any popping. That seems to only occur when I'm listening through the usb mixer. But it goes as high as 24k on the DPC Latency test, so I'm assuming that's not good... How do I turn off disc caching? And if I do that, will it hurt things if I'm recording audio and video on my computer while broadcasting?

Thanks!

I am still running windows XP SP 2. If you have a new rig, you are probably running Windows 7. Though this may be similar?

From control panels, you go to system. From system you go from the general tab and select the Advanced tab choose performance tab and then settings. From settings Select best performance. And then go to the Advanced tab. From there, you will see Performance scheduling, and you will choose Background services. Then you'll see and select system cache. Below that you'll see virtual memory. Then you'll select change. From there, you'll see that Windows has selected a dynamic memory with large and small numbers. You don't want that. You'll select custom size, then select zero for both. Then you'll select set.

You'll also see recommendations for how much memory should be set for virtual memory. You can go back and punch the same number into both and then select set again. This will change your dynamic memory to a single fixed value which can also be helpful.

The only caveat here is when you select for best performance, the look of Windows will change. You won't have all that cool crap happening with things zooming in and fading out. They're only trying to emulate a Macintosh operating system and they've turned everything into a cartoon. I liked cartoons when I was a kid but today it's only the Simpsons or maybe King of the Hill?

My propane doesn't work anymore on my RV. I'm all electric now.
Mx. Remy Ann David

Hey kilerb....back over here I see...howdy
One thing maybe you don't fully understand is the fact that with a computer and digital camera chips (webcams). You don't have to be "broadcasting", or "streaming" or do anything other than have the camera on for the computer to stream the data from the CCD image chip into RAM where the CPU buffers and then processes that data either onto a HDD or caching it as it fills up with image data. That's how they work. That how you "see" an image on your screen!...It has nothing to do with "broadcasting" or saving it (recording) or streaming it onto the internet. When it's turned on the CPU starts to buffer and cache the data in RAM. As soon as that buffer space fills up the CPU starts dumping the data out the back end. FIFO (First In First Out). The OS assigns the page space of the RAM. It's not unlimited. You only have 8Gb, 2 of that is reserved for your OS (Win7).

A typical data packet that is sampled from the imaging chip is 6Mb/sec. So HD could be twice that. All of that 6Mbps has to go into RAM which is the only "real-time" memory the CPU can use. Then once it's in there if it needs to it will route that data to a HDD for saving if that's what you want to do. But it all goes into RAM first....everything in your entire system does.
Now the CPU also has to go and get data for all of the OS routines (processes), your application, and anything else that stored on your HDD and put that in RAM so it can run that stuff. The CPU uses controller chips to switch that data back and forth from one to the other...HDD to RAM, RAM to CPU, CPU to RAM, RAM to HDD all while it's executing and putting stuff onto your screen, watching your mouse is located, streaming audio and running your applications.

So video puts a huge strain on your system....3 video cams yeah defintely. The CPU is plenty fast, the RAM is plenty fast, SATA drives are pretty fast (still a litlle slow) But when you start to try and run too many processes from the OS or an application and capture data from 3 cams in HD your going to have to strip down the OS (processes) and remove anything you can think of that isn't related to that task.

Your CPU has to switch and do all of those things with enough RAM page space to not create a bottleneck. What your seeing is something interrupting for that spit nanosecond and that is when you see those glitches.

There are so many processes and services running in the background (some are manual, some are automatic) that you'll never know when one of those processes or service request the attention of the CPU and BAMM right in the middle of monitoring your camera you get a glitch. That "Viper" site that Huesph suggested needs to be implemented to the bare bones settings. Multiple hardware drivers are killers on throughput...they slow everything done because they are hardware related and have to be executed before the CPU can move on......glitch...it goes on and on form there.

You have start from the beginning and dedicate this machine to do nothing but video and audio and strip it down to the bare essentials if you ever expect this to work. Adding RAM can only help. The OS uses 2Gb of RAM so you really only have 6Gb to work with and that may just be the marginal level. I could easily see 2Gb of buffer space per camera.
I would be really surprised if you added another 8Gb if that doesn't solve your problem.
But before you do that you need to streamline that computer.
P.S. I'm not looking for a reward....:cool: