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Hey, all...i have been a lurker for some time, and, I dont think there is enough hours in the day to be spent learning from you guys here. I have always had answers to my questions by doing searches from previous people like me, but, i am stuck with this one.

I recently upgraded my MOBO from a jetway with a via chipset to an ASUS with an intel chipset. I have a P4 3.2 chip with 3 gigs of ddr 400 Ram, 2 X 160 gig IDE harddisks, running nuendo 3.1 and various plugs, and apps, UAD-1, with most of their plugs

while, my system, is way more stable, and effeicnent with this new setup I do have one problem. My CPU spikes up and down alot. for example, when i load up a track, it could be at like 10%, and then when i start playing the track, it will jump all over the place.

any ideas? i have optimized the system, and started from scratch with the new mobo, reformatted the main programs disk, and did fresh installs of everything. This is the only problem, i didnt have with the old setup. please help.

Comments

anonymous Tue, 12/27/2005 - 17:18

thanks for the tips so far. i only had this system, hooked up to the net, for about half a day, while updating software. i am wondering if in that time, some ad ware got in there. i will look into it.

any other tips? should i disable, my network card? if i am not going to be using it?

its just that it makes things very unstable when, these spikes are happening. but, considering, i am only on day 3 with the new system, i know it will take time to work out the bugs.

cheers...let me know, if anything else, you can think of guys.!!!

RemyRAD Tue, 12/27/2005 - 19:16

Yes well, if you are running Windows XP Pro, go to your control panels, go to system. DoubleClick system. Then go to Advanced. Select "performance settings" and then click the box that says "adjust for best performance". This will slightly change the appearance and eliminate all of the fading in and fading out of menus and other stupid crap which robs your computer of CPU power and resources. Turn off any other stupid and/or downloaded programs that appear in the lower right hand corner near your clock.

For doing audio effectively your computer needs to concentrate on all its resources towards audio and not be distracted by any other stupid crap running in the background which also includes virus protection, automatic defragmenters, all that stuff. You may even want to eliminate your network card or tell the software to disable it if you're not going to utilize the same machine on the Internet and just for recording audio only.

I recommend having separate machine's, one for Internet purposes, one for audio purposes, one for video purposes. Even though you can have a single machine do it all, frequently everything else gets in the way of what you are trying to accomplish. A difficult lesson to learn as a human, just imagine if you were a stupid computer??

WARNING! WARNING!
(I'm just trying to sound like the robot on lost in space)
Remy Ann David

anonymous Wed, 12/28/2005 - 05:53

ah good advice as always from the team but i reckon those spikes are part of the deal! Sadly you can't expect your CPU to sit at 99% load and just stay there, trouble free. On my old P4 i often had to make do with 70% - 80% mean CPU use because of the spikes... which did often seem to occur 'randomly' but often coincided with song events. Certain plugins were spikier than others. What kind of mean figure are you getting?

(Dual 2GHz G5 runs multiple aplications and probably even copies files whilst running logic smoooooth)

anonymous Wed, 12/28/2005 - 12:26

i guess, i should have been more specific. i have a good bit of expeirnce, with optimizing, and this is about my 6th main studio system. so, adjusting for best preformance, is something, i am already on. and, this is a completly internet free, dedicated DAW.

i dont expect the cpu to be very low all the time, but, most of my tracks, loaded up with vsti's and effects only sits around 25% but, when, these jumps and spikes occur, it make things really unstable. almost unusable.

thanks guys.

Chris

anonymous Sun, 01/01/2006 - 00:47

an update. it turns out that my motu 828MKII was defective, and the source of these cpu spikes. what happened, was, it konked out, and, stopped working. i took it back to my music store and they sent it away and gave me a presonus firepod, and i have to say things are running way better, way better, i can actually unfreeze my vsts and they run glitch free, something i could not do with the motu. must have been defictive.

cheers