new laptop is lagging behind 4-year old desktop....why?

[arafel]

all Macbook i7 processors are dual-core only to date...

So your laptop has only Half the cores of your Desktop.

Live has to keep each track (all audio/ plugins, etc) on the same core for processing...
So if you have even just a single track with a few cpu-heavy plugins, it might be maxing out just one of the cores and cause dropouts or glitch.
It is possible to max out just one core while the other is doing nothing.

Check your Activity Monitor (utilities i think) to watch your CPU, et al..

There is a forum post somewhere about distributing your cpu load properly in Live....

[arafel]

http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php? ... e&start=15
IMHO

There are more threads about this... one from Henke somewhere too.

Good luck.

[Smellhound]

I ran the performance test using Live 821, all with the same sound card (RME Fireface UC, updated drivers) and here are the results:

PC desktop (XP, Core 2 Quad @ 2.4 Ghz, 4 GB): 26%
Macbook Pro (Win 7, i7 @ 2.67 Ghz, 8 GB): 61% (with spikes that go much higher)
Macbook Pro (OS X side, same specs): 36%

...I don't really know anything about power management, CPU throttling, etc. I also ran a regular CPU speed test, and the laptop was about 10% faster (which isn't as much as I expected but still OK). Considering the Performance Test is only 36% on the OSX side vs. 61% on Win7, most of the problem must be related to Win7 and/or Boot Camp. Sucks because I know 99% of you are just going to say "switch to mac". Any Win7 tips would be greatly appreciated!

[Donnie]

...I don't really know anything about power management, CPU throttling, etc.

Depending on how its configured sometimes power management settings will makes things run at a reduced rate when you switch to battery power, and will stay that way even after you plug it in (until you manually change it back.) Take a few min and check you power management settings to make sure this is not the case. Make sure 'battery power' doesn't reduce things like processor speed, and make sure your current power settings are not running at a reduced capacity (possibly as a result of your machine switching to battery power at some point previously.)

[davepermen]

your i7 is a dualcore, so it's essentially an i5 with a slightly higher clock (5%). it's clocked around the same as your desktop, too. => it's about half as fast (yeah, core iX are faster per clock than core2, but only up to 5-10% in special cases)

so what you see is expected. about half the performance.

[#1thelark]

Imho Macbook Pros are not worth the money at the moment... dunno if it's true, but this looks really devastating compared to the i7 MB Pro:

17%

( 8 Tracks, full on test with ASIO4ALL)

Dell Studio Laptop 1458

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 Q740 @ 1.73GHz

6gb Ram

7200 Disk

[Smellhound]

I checked the power settings. The CPU max is set to stay at 100% when on battery power.

your i7 is a dualcore, so it's essentially an i5 with a slightly higher clock (5%). it's clocked around the same as your desktop, too. => it's about half as fast (yeah, core iX are faster per clock than core2, but only up to 5-10% in special cases)

so what you see is expected. about half the performance.

This explains why it's slower than my desktop but not why there is such a huge difference between OS X (36%) and Win7 (61%+) on the same computer. I still need to figure out why Win7 is causing that lag.

[oxygen23]

I ran the performance test using Live 821, all with the same sound card (RME Fireface UC, updated drivers) and here are the results:

PC desktop (XP, Core 2 Quad @ 2.4 Ghz, 4 GB): 26%
Macbook Pro (Win 7, i7 @ 2.67 Ghz, 8 GB): 61% (with spikes that go much higher)
Macbook Pro (OS X side, same specs): 36%

...I don't really know anything about power management, CPU throttling, etc. I also ran a regular CPU speed test, and the laptop was about 10% faster (which isn't as much as I expected but still OK). Considering the Performance Test is only 36% on the OSX side vs. 61% on Win7, most of the problem must be related to Win7 and/or Boot Camp. Sucks because I know 99% of you are just going to say "switch to mac". Any Win7 tips would be greatly appreciated!

It is definitely Boot camp..

It is well known that Apple's boot camp software is problematic for music production and latency-depending tasks..
It has a latency problems because of some elements of boot camp application itself..To solve the problem, you need to:

1. You need to turn-off (kill process) boot camp application in task manager (bootcamp.exe or similar).
2. Then turn-off your wi-fi, because broadcom drivers are causing latency spikes
3. Turn off gpu frequency control manually for nvidia graphic to fixed performance level..More info on how to do this is well explained in RME forums http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=4320&p=2


After you done all of this, then you can check your latency with DPC Latency Checker (http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml)

Hope it helps


Greetz

[davepermen]

I checked the power settings. The CPU max is set to stay at 100% when on battery power.

your i7 is a dualcore, so it's essentially an i5 with a slightly higher clock (5%). it's clocked around the same as your desktop, too. => it's about half as fast (yeah, core iX are faster per clock than core2, but only up to 5-10% in special cases)

so what you see is expected. about half the performance.

This explains why it's slower than my desktop but not why there is such a huge difference between OS X (36%) and Win7 (61%+) on the same computer. I still need to figure out why Win7 is causing that lag.

as oxigen23 said: most likely a bootcamp issue. try setting your latency ridiculously high on both soundcard and usb/firewire bus (if possible) and check if this changes anything. it does on my systems, usb-latency much more than sound-latency, actually.

[Smellhound]

It is definitely Boot camp..

It is well known that Apple's boot camp software is problematic for music production and latency-depending tasks..
It has a latency problems because of some elements of boot camp application itself..To solve the problem, you need to:

1. You need to turn-off (kill process) boot camp application in task manager (bootcamp.exe or similar).
2. Then turn-off your wi-fi, because broadcom drivers are causing latency spikes
3. Turn off gpu frequency control manually for nvidia graphic to fixed performance level..More info on how to do this is well explained in RME forums http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=4320&p=2


After you done all of this, then you can check your latency with DPC Latency Checker (http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml)

Hope it helps


Greetz

This sounds like a bummer because I thought I had thoroughly researched it-- everyone said Boot Camp runs like a charm. Big thanks for the information though...I'll check it out & see if anything improves!

[oxygen23]

It is definitely Boot camp..

It is well known that Apple's boot camp software is problematic for music production and latency-depending tasks..
It has a latency problems because of some elements of boot camp application itself..To solve the problem, you need to:

1. You need to turn-off (kill process) boot camp application in task manager (bootcamp.exe or similar).
2. Then turn-off your wi-fi, because broadcom drivers are causing latency spikes
3. Turn off gpu frequency control manually for nvidia graphic to fixed performance level..More info on how to do this is well explained in RME forums http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=4320&p=2


After you done all of this, then you can check your latency with DPC Latency Checker (http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml)

Hope it helps


Greetz

This sounds like a bummer because I thought I had thoroughly researched it-- everyone said Boot Camp runs like a charm. Big thanks for the information though...I'll check it out & see if anything improves!

Hehe..Check this http://lmgtfy.com/?q=bootcamp+latency+problems


I hope you'll fix that, buddy

(Anyway, I would rather run Live in OSX than Windows, but that's another story )

[H20nly]

Not sure if this has been considered yet, but perhaps power management settings are making it run at a reduced capacity?

thats the first thing that popped in my head too...


If Boot Camp is the issue, what about Parallels? I heard (just yesterday) that version 6 works really well... in a business environment, not sure for muzak

[Smellhound]

Hehe..Check this http://lmgtfy.com/?q=bootcamp+latency+problems


I hope you'll fix that, buddy

(Anyway, I would rather run Live in OSX than Windows, but that's another story )

Well...it's easier to know what exactly to search for in retrospect. I was just looking for general software/hardware incompatibility issues (of which I'm sure Apple & Microsoft really play down when they arise), not thinking that the one thing that IS a problem is latency. I'm probably going to end up just trying to transition to OSX (very reluctantly).

***Sidenote: Is it even possible to get a mac with a 4-core i7?