Big difference in Live CPU bar usage,same setup,2 laptops

[stalker_on]

I have Ableton Live 9 suite running on 2 computers, same VST there, Omnisphere, Kontakt. on using exactly the same instrument in the same Live Set, I have:

- laptop sony vaio i3, 6gb RAM, windows7, 15% ableton bar CPU usage

- laptop dell inspiron i7, 8gb RAM, windows8, 40% ableton bar CPU usage

remember, same ableton, same live set, same vst instrument etc

tested this with 2 different sound cards, the 'better' laptop has higher cpu usage with both, so it's not a sound card issue. both windows are set-up the same, for performance... and optimized

don't tell me it's windows8...

to avoid any confusion: in my windows task manager all is going well, CPU is ok and not spiked at the least on the dell laptop, usage is about 10%....
what I was talking about was the CPU usage meter inside Ableton Live, that bar that fills up with yellow in the right hand corner. that is 40% ! while in task manager, dell laptop, my cpu usage is 10%

used same buffer and audio card (focusrite) on both...

then I made a live set with 10-12 tracsk with vst instruments

dell: cpu 2.2ghz with 8 cores, 20-25% in windows task manager, around 100% in ableton metering cpu bar. even got over and some crackles

sony vaio: cpu 2.4ghz, 4 cores, around 25-30 in windows task manager, around 75-80% in ableton metering bar, holding up

in a bigger nr. of tracks differences tend to be less big, but still more than large to affect performance. also, if ableton is multicore and spreads processor power better on more tracks rather than few, why does the 4 core system win out with such a considerable difference in its favor?

conclusion: in windows task manager about the same, in ableton different ball game.
is there someone from ableton around here to clear this up maybe? or should I just try with windows7 and think that you need less cores for ableton performance?

any ideas, please?

[page]

Just bought a Dell Inspiron 15 7000 series Core i7 system and I had the same problem out of the box. The CPU load was all over the place, horrible performance. I found that disabling Intel SpeedStep in the BIOS fixed the issue.

- At startup when the Dell logo shows push the F2 key
- on the Advanced tab select Intel SpeedStep and set to Disabled.
- go to Save Changes and exit

This immediately stopped the CPU spiking in Ableton on my system!

I use a USB audio interface so I made a few other changes that helped too. I set the power plan options to never sleep or save power for hard disks and USB devices. In device manager double click the USB Root Hubs, click on power management tab and uncheck the option to Allow device to be disabled to save power.
Of course this will chew battery life, so stay plugged in when using Live.

Also recommend that you use Airplane mode when using Live, this reduces random glitches caused by the WiFi device.

[totepady]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgOV21oi06Q


I know that this video is about FlStudio but the same rule applies to Ableton and over here it's very well explained.

[Stromkraft]

Just bought a Dell Inspiron 15 7000 series Core i7 system and I had the same problem out of the box. The CPU load was all over the place, horrible performance.

What about performance if you use another DAW on your machine?

[Stromkraft]

I know that this video is about FlStudio but the same rule applies to Ableton and over here it's very well explained.

I think I have to disagree this fact can be unquestionably applied directly to Live. It's possible Fl Studio support multicore differently. For instance there is no mention of the fact that you can use up one core for one track as you can in Live, which gives you audio glitches and crackles even with unused cores.

[yur2die4]

What are the benchmarks for the processors of each of your computers?