Ableton Forum

These type of fixes (i.e. don't run your graphics card in full acceleration mode, turn off all the extra frills as rikhyray mentioned) are good things to apply to ANY graphic card, ATI, Matrox, Nvidia or whoever else.

What gives you extra speed playing HALO 4 or whatever can be a hindrance to DAW computing. I have an Nvidia 9400m graphics chipset in my Dell XPS and it works really well with the above fixes for DAW work.

Checking for updated drivers is a good idea too, because the most recent Nvidia 9400m drivers definately perform better than the ones loaded on the machine when I got it. I had to basically disable hardware acceleration completely on that to prevent huge DPC spikes, now I only have to take it one notch off full hardware acceleration to get great performance.

glad you have a soluion

Yeah, I am surprised this is not so boldly suggested at the "windows optimization for audio" type sites. It usually is suggested for problems when using the mouse (zipper noise or pops while moving mouse), so I ignored it since I specifically noticed problems when I didn't even touch the mouse. Most of these sites suggest checking for IRQ conflicts or driver versions before looking at the "hardware acceleration" slider. That was an easy check and it took about 5 mins to confirm what level I could get rid of repeatable pops. And it is much less invasive than trying to solve IRQ issues or driver version problems. (Most computers use the automatic issuing of IRQ assignments anyway).

Anyway leedsquietmam seemed to know about this too.

Thanks for all your suggestions.