Oh why is Live so much slower on OSX vs Bootcamp'd XP

sweetjesus · Post by **sweetjesus** » Thu Aug 30, 2007 6:01 am

sorry i dont have useful info to share on this thread, but i can confirm that bollox is indeed the british slang for ones crown jewels.

timothyallan · Post by **timothyallan** » Thu Aug 30, 2007 6:17 am

I'm on a Macbook Pro running bootcamp, yes it's in beta, yes it works fine. In fact, it runs Live faster than OSX

ilia · Post by **ilia** » Thu Aug 30, 2007 7:18 am

Daurix wrote:
Tarekith wrote:In my experience, the XP one craps out early though when the CPU meter gets up there. Where as the OSX one will let you have a higher CPU before the audio drops. About the same 5-15% difference too.
Good point yeah, same here.

See, I wish we had this kind of info. When I was buying my new laptop -- two months ago -- the relative performance was one of the deciding factors -- I tend to load my CPU to the max no matter how much power I have, so if I were to run XP bootcamped on a Mac anyway, I figured I might as well save and get a PC. If indeed the actual performance is comparable and the difference is only in the meter, that may have changed my choice. Which CPU do you guys have?

forge · Post by **forge** » Thu Aug 30, 2007 9:34 am

ilia wrote:
Daurix wrote:
Tarekith wrote:In my experience, the XP one craps out early though when the CPU meter gets up there. Where as the OSX one will let you have a higher CPU before the audio drops. About the same 5-15% difference too.
Good point yeah, same here.
See, I wish we had this kind of info. When I was buying my new laptop -- two months ago -- the relative performance was one of the deciding factors -- I tend to load my CPU to the max no matter how much power I have, so if I were to run XP bootcamped on a Mac anyway, I figured I might as well save and get a PC. If indeed the actual performance is comparable and the difference is only in the meter, that may have changed my choice. Which CPU do you guys have?

I was going to make a similar point but then I read Tim's post again and he said he got 16 reverbs in XP compared to 12 in OSX - I would say that's pretty significant

you dont have to be loyal to an OS - just load whichever one you need for the job at hand - if you need mac apps like logic or whatever, then load OSX, if you want Live I think based in this info I would seriously think about loading XP

I have vista and OSX dual boot on my HP laptop - I havent had time to do a comparison but I will soon to give a comparison the other way round

I have a feeling it will be closer because I would imagine the reasons OSX isnt as slick as XP would be similar to Vista - such as graphics etc

an OS should be invisible when you are using your computer for something specific like audio

tw1nstates · Post by **tw1nstates** » Thu Aug 30, 2007 10:05 am

Thanks for the energy saving heads up. Stuff like that is invaluable!

Bollocks are indeed testicles (or Crown jewels!)

Yes i am a recent convert, however the problems i have been facing will not beat me

Cheers
TS

timothyallan · Post by **timothyallan** » Thu Aug 30, 2007 10:24 am

Give it a shot yourself.. make sure buffer sizes etc are exactly the same, and see how many verbs you can run before it crackles in OSX, then reboot into XP and try again.

www.timothyallan.com/timstest.als

sweetjesus · Post by **sweetjesus** » Thu Aug 30, 2007 10:46 am

i cant wait for quad core laptops.

i havent been able to max out my quad desktop with a single track ive produced over the last 3 months.

forge · Post by **forge** » Thu Aug 30, 2007 10:58 am

I was about to get all disappointed but then I looked at your specs

mine is an HP core duo 1.73GHz and I got up to 10 reverbs, then it got slightly unstable and on 11 it started getting shitty

this is with a FW 410 set to 512samples under vista

now I'll reboot and try it in OSX86

forge · Post by **forge** » Thu Aug 30, 2007 11:53 am

well now...this is very, very interesting

I just rebooted in OSX86 and loaded up Live 6.0.7 - also with the FW410, also on 512samples - and I would have to say there was NO DISCERNABLE DIFFERENCE!

this makes me think it is a driver issue - I cant see from the reply page what interface you used but maybe the XP drivers are just better for that i/f?

timothyallan · Post by **timothyallan** » Thu Aug 30, 2007 12:01 pm

that is interesting! I was using a motu 828mkII.

However, you aren't on a MacbookPro, wonder if that's got something to do with it?

Edit: it wasn't just crackles for me... both CPU meters were showing around 80's

forge · Post by **forge** » Thu Aug 30, 2007 12:12 pm

timothyallan wrote:that is interesting! I was using a motu 828mkII.

However, you aren't on a MacbookPro, wonder if that's got something to do with it?

Edit: it wasn't just crackles for me... both CPU meters were showing around 80's

same - around 80%

ACtually I think the OSX one may have showed slightly less but the sound was the same

I really would have thought it would be worse for me under osx86 though - I'm still not cinvinced it's that sold

but running that same project produced more or less the same results

b0unce · Post by **b0unce** » Thu Aug 30, 2007 1:26 pm

bootcamp is still in beta, and will it always be in 'beta' for OSX 10.4 users ?
Will the finished bootcamp only come with leopard, OSX 10.5 ? leopard promises better use of multi-threads, so performance boosts are promised...perhaps that will trickle down to bootcamp somehow

anyways, we got guys doing 'conclusive' performance tests involving bootcamp which is in beta or OSX86 ...which is like some kind of open source piracy/hack.

Just keep that in mind for now.

if you want to know which is the better OS for ableton LIVE performance right now, it makes more sense to me to either [a] compare XP on pc to OSX on mac

look at the bigger picture...i.e You can get a PC with XP and all the pros and cons that come with it, and run a crack of osx and most likely warez the software for it, because as far as I know there are no OSX developers supporting osx86 [a pirated OS]...is that true or false?
or you can get a MAC with osx and all the pros and cons that come with it, and also use a beta of bootcamp to run XP legitimately and with support, but with 12 high quality reverbs instead of 16 [with room for improvement]

or you can have your cake and eat it too and then complain about the lack of cake... something to that affect

Machinesworking · Post by **Machinesworking** » Thu Aug 30, 2007 1:31 pm

forge wrote:
same - around 80%

ACtually I think the OSX one may have showed slightly less but the sound was the same

I really would have thought it would be worse for me under osx86 though - I'm still not cinvinced it's that sold

but running that same project produced more or less the same results

Why wouldn't it? besides running the OS, either OSX or Windows is simply running Live, when they are running Live, with no background services running.... internet, virus, or other nonsense, then it should be roughly the same. My guess is XP would be slightly more CPU friendly, but only slightly, but Vista is about as heavy handed GUI wise as OSX so.....

sqook · Post by **sqook** » Thu Aug 30, 2007 1:35 pm

bonnaventure wrote: Also, is Boot camp out of public beta? I was under the impression that an XP install could be dangerous due to heating and such.... I haven't been keeping up with the news, so my info could be off.

Bootcamp will go to "stable" status when leopard is released... which is currently scheduled for "whenever". As for XP and cooling, it runs at about the same temperature as OSX... that is, hot as hell, but not dangerous.

b0unce · Post by **b0unce** » Thu Aug 30, 2007 1:38 pm

so will there be an osx 10.4 version of bootcamp ? or will 10.4 users just keep using the last bootcamp beta ?