difference CPU-usage reported in Live and real usage

olafmol · Post by **olafmol** » Wed Jan 12, 2005 10:30 am

Hello,

i noticed that Live4 reports entire different CPU usage in the program itself, compared to what the taskmanager in windows XP reports. Live4 often peaks to 98 or 99% CPU usage in the taskmanager, but Live4 still reports f.e. 40% CPU usage...

how can this be explained?

cheers, Olaf

Macrostructure · Post by **Macrostructure** » Fri Jan 14, 2005 5:06 pm

Hello,this subject just runs and runs, have a look at the 'Ableton stonewall on CPU usage' thread. There is no answer at the moment, some people get it, others don't.

vince watson · Post by **vince watson** » Fri Jan 14, 2005 7:35 pm

the answer is simple when talking about firewire...

The actual driver for the firewire interfaces uses massive cpu, and its impossible for live to pick up on this.
Hence the 20-60% difference in cpu...
If you use the Activity Monitor in osx, you will notice that the cpu usage of live is roughly about the same, as it states on the live reader on your liveset.

other than firewire, im not sure where the problem lies......

olafmol · Post by **olafmol** » Sat Jan 15, 2005 2:25 pm

this is not a firewire thing, as i don't use firewire audio .... but all programs exhibit this behaviour, the difference is that Live seems to have a much higher and "instable" CPU overhead on top of the audio/VST hosting than other apps like f.e. Reason ... if you minimise the Live window you will notice that the CPU load decreases for several percentages, so screen redraws obviously have something to do with this too

Olaf

myztmuzic · Post by **myztmuzic** » Mon Jan 17, 2005 10:34 am

Nope - it's not a firewire-thing! I run mLAN2 on a Firestation, and that protocol really grabs all available bandwith on the 1394-bus. And i got no cpu-spike longer, but i had the prob before i updated to Live 4.0.3-4.0.5b4, and that were when they released the "Affinity-check" - for HT-computers that helped a lot!

Regs,
Jo

vince watson · Post by **vince watson** » Mon Jan 17, 2005 12:23 pm

as i said in the other topic, im not sure what the problem is on the pc's, but on mac its the firewire!

Macrostructure · Post by **Macrostructure** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 5:56 pm

Have a look at this thread...and excuse my bad language in it, I got very angry with a bigoted person...

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... =stonewall

computo · Post by **computo** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 6:15 pm

Well. quite a forum....

Here's my diagnosis....

I had very similar problems, and it was all caused by a bad ram chip.

I use a mac, but the same issues probably carry over no matter what system, when dealing with shitty ram.

I recommend trying a different ram chip... or try taking one of your chips out, and run your stuff...if things look the same, i think you found a problem.

Anubis · Post by **Anubis** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 7:43 pm

Thank you for this post. Yes I run task manager along with Live and have noticed this discrepancy. So much so, that I'm uneasy not seeing task manager running alongside Live (via dual monitor), just to play it safe. Look at task manager while rendering to disk and you can get an overview of which parts of your project are more CPU-intensive.

olafmol · Post by **olafmol** » Mon Jan 24, 2005 8:43 am

computo wrote:Well. quite a forum....

Here's my diagnosis....

I had very similar problems, and it was all caused by a bad ram chip.

I use a mac, but the same issues probably carry over no matter what system, when dealing with shitty ram.

I recommend trying a different ram chip... or try taking one of your chips out, and run your stuff...if things look the same, i think you found a problem.

it's not RAM, my RAM is tested and 100% correct, and also, other programs behave much more stable with their CPU load

Olaf

Frank Hoffmann · Post by **Frank Hoffmann** » Mon Jan 24, 2005 9:21 am

The Live CPU meter does only display the audio load of the engine and not the overall CPU useage of Live. There are many other threads involved, which run in lower priority. So basically it is only an indicator for how much audio power is left.

Best,
Frank

olafmol · Post by **olafmol** » Mon Jan 24, 2005 9:28 am

Frank Hoffmann wrote:The Live CPU meter does only display the audio load of the engine and not the overall CPU useage of Live. There are many other threads involved, which run in lower priority. So basically it is only an indicator for how much audio power is left.

Best,
Frank

so audio CPU load has always priority over the other threads? tnx!

Frank Hoffmann · Post by **Frank Hoffmann** » Mon Jan 24, 2005 9:31 am

olafmol wrote: so audio CPU load has always priority over the other threads? tnx!

Yes, that is the idea.

Frank

Macrostructure · Post by **Macrostructure** » Mon Jan 24, 2005 11:11 am

But c'mon people, the real issue is that Live 4.x chews up a real CPU load of +90% over and above the audio-only load compared to +5% for Live 3.x

ms

olafmol · Post by **olafmol** » Mon Jan 24, 2005 11:15 am

Macrostructure wrote:But c'mon people, the real issue is that Live 4.x chews up a real CPU load of +90% over and above the audio-only load compared to +5% for Live 3.x

ms

that's not happening with me, CPU load is of course heavily dependend on how many and what plugins you're using at what samplerate and latency. I was just wondering why the taskmananger CPU load was different from the displayed CPU load in live itself.

Olaf