suggestions from S|C

[bosone]

i asked S|C about building a new PC with i5 oe i7 core and chipset 1366 or 1155.
their answer:

as long as you can turn off some useless BIOS settings,
any PC should be fine.


Your audio PC:

For an audio PC (with little ASIO latency) you have to do some adjustments,
because Core i7, i5, i3 PCs can have ASIO clicks even with little CPU usage
and 25ms latency. At least you should deactivate the following settings
in your PC BIOS :

Intel EIST
Intel C State
C1E Support
Overspeed Protection
Hyperthreading
Execute Bit Support
Set Limit CPUID MaxVal to 3 (maybe not so important)
Intel Virtual Tech
Intel VT-d Tech

In addition the energy save settings of your operating system should be set to maximum.

[erminardi]

switch off Hyperthreading?!?!?
and your CPU turns back into a Pentium II...

[garyb]

not true. hyperthreading is not all that people think. why do people expect a VIRTUAL core to perform like an ACTUAL core? the difference in real world performance(as opposed to possible performance) is minimal. that said, hyperthreading usually CAN be left on.

[jksuperstar]

If you assigned the S|C threads to a particular processor (a real one, not virtual/hyperthreaded), I think you could also be ok, too.

Hyperthreading tries to take advantage of unused parts of the processor (integer math processor, floating point math, etc). IF the real core isn't using those parts, THEN the virtual core can use them. If you have the SonicCore processes running on a virtual core, while the real core that's associated with it is very busy, then your SonicCore stuff gets to sit & wait until the components needed are available. That's the way it is, and it's horrible for real time things like audio processing. If you wanted it on, I'd give all your important stuff an affinity to real cores, and leave the rest to fight as hyperthreads. Otherwise, turning it off makes your system more deterministic, even if that's counter intuitive and sounds like it makes things slower.

[garyb]

yes, exactly.

i've tried machines with and without hyperthreading, and saw no great advantage either way. without is stable in more instances, so that's what i usually do, but if a machine runs correctly with it, that's great too...

[dawman]

Even Kontakt has a switch built into it's GUI for disabling Hyperhtreading during Standalone use. Why offer that unless they too realize it's marketing purposes.
As a matter of fact 2 x dual core P35's under Windows 7 @ 32bit will give one better performance than the fastest i7 w/ 8GB's of fast RAM in x64.
We were all scammed to continue buying more disposable products........
I am happy, but a wiser man.
Next time these dirtbags bend over for Microsoft I will wait 4 years instead of 2......

[erminardi]

thanks to all (even S|C, of course) for these interesting infos and clarifications.
keep in mind!

[next to nothing]

switch off Hyperthreading?!?!?
and your CPU turns back into a Pentium II...

More correct, it turns your i7 into an i5

[erminardi]

or into an iPhone...

[valis]

C1e, C6 & EIST (p-states) aren't a bad idea for first gen nehelem needed to run at peak performance, and turbo would be something you'd probably disable in that case as well to keep cpu spikes at bay. Hyperthreading most likely has a potential for conflicting with Scope's native code processing (async) when run alongside a DAW, as there will be a good deal of unshared code that the OS & Cpu may try to parallelize.

Remember when "Standard PC" was the recommended norm? If your machine isn't working properly there's a list in the first post of this thread that will remove the majority of things that cause problems and hopefully get things stable. Is this the same as saying you MUST do all of these things? No!