 Tips for better PC performance. |
Halph-Price 
Zombie Algorithm
Registration Date: 22-12-2004
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Optimize playback / Improve performance
1. Defragment your system hard drive often. This will make for smoother playback and reduced latency.
2. If you only have 1 hard drive, partition it into 2 drives: 1 for the operating system and programs, and one strictly for audio files.
3. Be wary of defragmenting drives that contain strictly audio files. You may actually experience a drop in performance when these files are defragmented. However, it is a good idea to defragment the drive that contains the operating system.
4. You can greatly improve your DAW system by adding another hard drive that is used solely for audio files.
5. By default, Windows 2000/XP logs the I/O traffic of your hard drive. It doesn't do anything except use up system resources. To disable it, go to the run menu and type diskperf -n and hit enter.(Note that there is a space before the minus sign).
http://www.musicxp.net/
- tunning tips http://www.musicxp.net/tuning_tips.php
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01-07-2007 00:28 |
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BattleDrone
2161... the future.
Registration Date: 30-12-2005
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If I may add to this:
when using XP or Vista... switch of all fancy shit to prevent glitches when you open a window or something. The fewer visual shit, the better.
Add extra memory for performance boost.
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01-07-2007 10:56 |
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Halph-Price
Zombie Algorithm
Registration Date: 22-12-2004
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disable the windows recovery too. it can save virus that will affect you forever. and it takes up memory, and it eats up preformance. have one saved from wheny uo install and that's all you need.
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01-07-2007 16:21 |
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Shinyuri
myspace.com/shinyuribeats
Registration Date: 05-01-2007
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| quote: |
Originally posted by BattleDrone
If I may add to this:
when using XP or Vista... switch of all fancy shit to prevent glitches when you open a window or something. The fewer visual shit, the better.
Add extra memory for performance boost. |
yeh - bout the memory, people tell me that getting 4 gigs of memory dont really make a difference compared with 2. is that right with music?
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01-07-2007 18:05 |
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Halph-Price
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by memory do you mean Random Access Memory? (RAM)
Xp i don't think it detects more than a few gigs of ram.
but ram is one of the lesser noticable upgrades. but you'll notice it with recording more. it determins how many tracks for how long.
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01-07-2007 19:39 |
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thechronic
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I believe it is not worthwhile to have more than 3GB of memory on a Windows XP system.
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01-07-2007 20:17 |
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cynik
Cp6uja
Registration Date: 15-03-2005
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| quote: |
Originally posted by thechronic
I believe it is not worthwhile to have more than 3GB of memory on a Windows XP system. |
ts
reminds me of once bill gates said, circa '88
"I believe 640k will be enough memory for everyone"
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01-07-2007 21:01 |
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Halph-Price
Zombie Algorithm
Registration Date: 22-12-2004
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he was right. most of the memory you use now is filled with pictures and music. most programs, given enough optomizations, can be condensed to only a few lines.
check out the preview for Spore the game. he talks about the concept of programming and how it use to be self-generating code, comapred to info packed.
most programs are made to not be self-generating, but if they were yuo could run it off a palm pilot. it runs one line, builds another and stores it inr am and then it excutes builds anotehr line adn builds it in ram.
that's what they use to do, now t's just a big block of lines to run adn it goes through them all. it frees up ram for graphics and sound. not so rediculious. but anyways.
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01-07-2007 21:11 |
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cynik
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01-07-2007 21:55 |
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Paracyte
Crazy Bouncin Sinusoid
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02-07-2007 01:17 |
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BattleDrone
2161... the future.
Registration Date: 30-12-2005
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| quote: |
Originally posted by Shinyuri
yeh - bout the memory, people tell me that getting 4 gigs of memory dont really make a difference compared with 2. is that right with music? |
From 4 gigs and up you should go for a 64 bit OS (as a 32 bit OS can't handle more than 4 gigs of ram), which is a nono if you want to run commercial software. When I said that I was pointing at people who are still running at less that 1GB of RAM. If you go from let's say 512MB to 1GB the difference is huge. If you go from 2 to 4GB you'll hardly notice it unless you got 27 firewalls 38 antivirus progs and all kinds of other TSR shit (located on the right side of your taskbar, resident in memory) running. So here's another piece of advice. Avoid al kinds of messengers, Skypes, ... to be constantly loaded on your machine. They'll communicate over the web and eat memory and CPU while you need it.
Run a Windows Process analyser and chuck some shit out, but beware, if you kick out too much you might damage your windows environment. handle with care link to a Windows Process analyser use at own risk.
3GB of ram would still do fine, although it is a weird amount of memory (multiples of 2 work best), but I'd not go for more than 2 right now. If you can't run your shit in that mem you need a fatter CPU (or bunch of CPU's today).
You could also lower some rendering options in your DAW or some VSTi's while composing and switch them back to normal when rendering a final mp3/wav from your track. But this is very DAW dependant and you'll need to check what can/can't be done yourself.
A lot of the excesive memory usage nowadays is caused by Windows needing tons of stuff to be preloaded and the other programs all needing a shitload of DLL's (or some frameworks) which will all be put fully in memory, even if you need a single instruction from a DLL.
@halph price: No I was not talking about Random Acces Memory here, I ment punched card storage 
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02-07-2007 09:37 |
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Shinyuri
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nice one, so its not really worth the extra cash then to fork out on more memory. yeh so about that bit with getting two sticks which are the same. i have one which is 512 and the other which is 2gig. should i just chuck the 512 or keep it in there? whats gonna b fastest. btw they are not the same make.
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02-07-2007 13:47 |
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BattleDrone
2161... the future.
Registration Date: 30-12-2005
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You could experiment with both, but that can cause nasty crashes. I'dd suggest to just use 2Gig. If 2,5 doesn't work.
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02-07-2007 14:43 |
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@1$-)
unregistered
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switch all the windows sound scheme off, no desktop picture, turn all the graphics options off, set the processor scheduling to backround services (asio runs in the backround i think youll find) etc etc etc etc
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02-07-2007 19:33 |
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cynik
Cp6uja
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| quote: |
Originally posted by Halph-Price
| quote: |
Originally posted by cynik
youre talking nonsense
take reaktor, it has zero graphics and still manages to take lots of ram without anything loaded in it |
I am not going to argue about reaktor. i have only used reaktor 5, so i assume that reaktor is the earlier text based verson? for commodor or atari, or something... |
lol nice one.
ofcourse reaktor 5, not quite graphic intense innit? its the architecture of the programs themselves, to justify huge amounts of ram modules out there, the software must be pushed towards consuming more memory.
youre absolutely right about the second drive thing.
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03-07-2007 19:13 |
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wTrouble
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Registration Date: 01-06-2005
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There's heaps you can do...
The two hard drive thing Halph is talking about is good, but go one step better and make a dual boot machine - I've got one boot for DAW and one for all the other pish I sometimes use.
On the DAW boot, kill all the services you don't need (there's a lot) and do all the tweaks on xpmusic.net or whatever it's called
Admittedly, a raw, stripped down DAW can be a bit frustrating sometimes as you can't jump on the net or print etc, but its well worth it. No net, no need for antivirus or any other nonsense sucking cpu.
Then you can get into RAID and striping your hard drives, but that's a whole other story...
All the info is on the net, but I've got some guide documents kicking about if anybody wants them...
Peace
wT
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09-11-2007 16:50 |
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Saikonutta
not helpful ^^
Registration Date: 09-11-2006
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i want to add something about the RAM:
if you buy 1g of RAM and your motherboard supports dual channel memory mode, you can double your memory allocation reaction time...
so, if you are working with samplers that use RAM memory for "processing" the samples (like kontakt when activated), buy two pieces (R/DIMM's) of 512MB and put them in dual channel mode (check out your motherboard and cpu manual for support)
it's faster than 1 DIMM of 1GB in single channel mode.
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09-11-2007 22:41 |
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