# OSX vs Windows 10 - OMG



## meradium (May 8, 2017)

Hey guys,

so I finally went ahead and gave Windows 10 a try to see how things would run with Cubase 9.

_My results are simply staggering. I see an performance increase of at least 6.5x. There is even more headroom but I stopped early because it got too pathetic to watch._ *UPDATE: *Performance increased after applying a proper ssdt (due to my overclock) to OSX. Kontakt/Cubase setting is now almost identical but Win still has a slight edge. VEP6/Cubase difference remains however.

RME Babyface @48khz, buffer 256

VEP6 + Cubase in tandem:

OSX + VEP (5x 30 Kontakt 8c VST with a single OT Brass legato trumpet patch) + Cubase 9: CPU is at around 60-80%, ASIO is relatively unstable at around 60-75%.

Win 10 + same VEP setup + Cubase: CPU is around 25%, ASIO is very (!) stable at +-10%.

In both I had ASIO guard disabled for VEP.

This is now Cubase with lots of individual instrument tracks:

OSX: 128 instances of Kontakt with the same legato patch.
Single instance selected: CPU around 25%. ASIO is ~7-10% slightly flickering.
All 128 selected: CPU around 40%. ASIO ~35-40%.

Win: identical setup...
Single: CPU 15-20%. ASIO +-5% very stable.
All: CPU 35%. ASIO ~30%.


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## MarcelM (May 8, 2017)

in fact my hackintosh/osx performs about the same compared to windows 10.

but i have an idea where your problem is, because when i first build it performance wasnt so good.

you have to build an ssdt and dsdt yourself for your hackintosh. after i did this i got a performance boost under osx.

there are lots of things to tweak and all those generic installers for osx are not good. sure they work, but not with the maximum performance.


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## Puzzlefactory (May 8, 2017)

Personally I can't stand Windows for music stuff. The amount of hours I've wasted hunting down individual drivers for various components is mind numbing.

I know it's a cliche to say "macs just work" but that's honestly been my experience.

I'll use widows as a VEPro slave machine, but not as a host or main machine.


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## EvilDragon (May 8, 2017)

Puzzlefactory said:


> The amount of hours I've wasted hunting down individual drivers for various components is mind numbing.



And yet, it's been the complete opposite here. Never had any problems with "driver hunting", W10 just found what was necessary for all my components (apart from my RME, of course) and it was good to go. Performance is great, too.


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## Puzzlefactory (May 8, 2017)

Well I did say "personally" and "been my experience"...


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## MarcelM (May 8, 2017)

explorer > finder

my personal experience.

and i agree with evil dragon. windows 10 is really good about hardware and drivers. no issues here.

whatever, its good to have both


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## meradium (May 8, 2017)

Heroix said:


> in fact my hackintosh/osx performs about the same compared to windows 10.
> 
> but i have an idea where your problem is, because when i first build it performance wasnt so good.
> 
> ...



Good point. I have not yet done that. Might give it a try. Typicall performance benchmark like Geekbench 4 gives roughly the same score on either setup.

But then again real time audio is a bit more sensitive. But I would not expect to see such a huuuuuuge difference in overall performance (not necessarily ASIO related)...


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## meradium (May 8, 2017)

Puzzlefactory said:


> Personally I can't stand Windows for music stuff. The amount of hours I've wasted hunting down individual drivers for various components is mind numbing.
> 
> I know it's a cliche to say "macs just work" but that's honestly been my experience.
> 
> I'll use widows as a VEPro slave machine, but not as a host or main machine.



Well, it took me 30min and everything was up and running. GUI much more fluid, and performance just way higher. Now, the performance topic might related to the Hackingtosh thing... GUI performance seems to be a very known bottleneck for Cubase on osx nicely documented on Steinberg's forum...


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## sazema (May 8, 2017)

No issues with OSX, no issues with W10. On good configurations everything is ok.


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## storyteller (May 8, 2017)

In all fairness, any a/b comparison should be done with a proper mac that dual boots with windows and not the other way around. Not saying one may not have a performance increase over the other, but it would be nice if posts took this into account before drawing conclusions that others may take as fact. Please do not take this as condescending - just trying to help keep a solid foundation of truth with the community.


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## meradium (May 8, 2017)

sorry guys.

Applying the dsdt tweak did indeed improve performance on the Kontakt only inside Cubase test case. But ASIO is nowhere near. Windows seems to also handle the multiprocessing much better when running VEP6 and Cubase in tandem. Doing so not only kills my Hackingtosh but also my Macbook Pro (even with only a very moderate load).

Trust me, I hate this quite a lot since I generally prefer OSX over Windows for various reasons.

But we had the same arguments already in other threads with proper Apple trashcans.


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## meradium (May 8, 2017)

sazema said:


> No issues with OSX, no issues with W10. On good configurations everything is ok.



May I ask what your setup and typical use-case is? (Kontakt only inside Cubase, Cubase +VEP in tandem, how many cores)

Using my custom osx has been blazing fast as long as I do not run heavily multithreaded applications like Cubase and VEP6 in tandem. This is where things get dodgy. Win on the other hand does not seem to care at all.


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## MarcelM (May 8, 2017)

meradium said:


> sorry guys.
> 
> Applying the dsdt tweak did indeed improve performance on the Kontakt only inside Cubase test case. But ASIO is nowhere near. Windows seems to also handle the multiprocessing much better when running VEP6 and Cubase in tandem. Doing so not only kills my Hackingtosh but also my Macbook Pro (even with only a very moderate load).
> 
> ...



hmm not sure what else could be wrong, but on my hackintosh cubase really performs quite similar. studio one performs worse, but thats a known fact that it doesnt run smooth on osx i guess.

you should also generate an ssdt between. 

good luck


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## Shad0wLandsUK (May 8, 2017)

Heroix said:


> in fact my hackintosh/osx performs about the same compared to windows 10.
> 
> but i have an idea where your problem is, because when i first build it performance wasnt so good.
> 
> ...


Ahh I remember the days, built 4 hackintoshes here 

I even got to the point where I used a windows tool with a friend and through chatting online we both worked on baking kexts into my UEFI ROM for my ASUS Motherboard!! Native OS X boot and driver support from the BIOS


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## sazema (May 8, 2017)

meradium said:


> May I ask what your setup and typical use-case is? (Kontakt only inside Cubase, Cubase +VEP in tandem, how many cores)
> 
> Using my custom osx has been blazing fast as long as I do not run heavily multithreaded applications like Cubase and VEP6 in tandem. This is where things get dodgy. Win on the other hand does not seem to care at all.



I have Mac mini for development purposes (don't tell my boss )
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD388LL/A/mac-mini-23ghz-quad-core-intel-core-i7
With exception of added 16Gb or RAM and additional HDD, I explained as I need power for PHP and Ruby 
I have Logic and VEpro also, so I'm using sample resources from my Windows machine through lan and I can do vice versa also. I tend to do most of works on Windows machine with Reaper indeed but occasionally I love to mess with Logic too.
Windows machine is i7 7700 16Gb machine, SSD powered. Mostly Kontakt.


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## kitekrazy (May 8, 2017)

Puzzlefactory said:


> Personally I can't stand Windows for music stuff. The amount of hours I've wasted hunting down individual drivers for various components is mind numbing.
> 
> I know it's a cliche to say "macs just work" but that's honestly been my experience.
> 
> I'll use widows as a VEPro slave machine, but not as a host or main machine.



Windows 10 has great legacy support. I'm still using a lot of M-Audio stuff with Windows 7 drivers. I've never had to hunt drivers except for experimenting with Linux. A long time Windows user learns to archive drivers so no search is necessary.


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## Nick Batzdorf (May 8, 2017)

So if Windows is 6X more powerful, why would anyone use a Mac?


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## blinkofani (May 8, 2017)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> So if Windows is 6X more powerful, why would anyone use a Mac?


Logic?


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## benatural (May 8, 2017)

meradium said:


> My results are simply staggering



Welcome


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## Nick Batzdorf (May 8, 2017)

blinkofani said:


> Logic?



Absolutely, but you also have to wonder whether there's a small chance something's wrong with the comparison.


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## meradium (May 8, 2017)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Absolutely, but you also have to wonder whether there's a small chance something's wrong with the comparison.



What's more wrong than comparing a mac with a boot camped windows? Too me that pretty much makes no difference.

I will run another test with reaper... We will see if that one is off as well.

There are quite a few posts out there with similar results comparing the trashcans with a stock windows build.

My problem at this point is still running VEP6 and Cubase in parallel without disabling the multiprocessing on Cubase. So far I can only see that Win seems to be better at managing this. I am trying to get the most out of a single machine setup.

Right now I could forgive the by now small difference in a plain Kontakt (multiprocessing off)/Cubase (multiprocessing on) setting. With the SSDS (that's what I did, made a mistake earlier) both setups are able to handle similar #s of instances. But I hate the crazy huge project files this type of workflow creates plus the wait to load and save (!!!) anything. That's simply a waste of resources.

If someone has a solution for that I could actually stick to the OSX setup.

I could also try one last time going with 10.12... But then my Adobe software goes right out the window because they decided to cripple their support to make people join their renting model... So not really an option...


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## Nick Batzdorf (May 8, 2017)

Cubase may well run better on PCs, but does it make sense that suddenly one user out of tens of millions discovers a startling new secret: Windows 10 is six times as fast as MacOS?

I'm just a little skeptical!


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## JPQ (May 8, 2017)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Cubase may well run better on PCs, but does it make sense that suddenly one user out of tens of millions discovers a startling new secret: Windows 10 is six times as fast as MacOS?
> 
> I'm just a little skeptical!


Same here. even more when is tested in Hackintosh which is not offically supported. Btw both platforms have own points i bet.


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## meradium (May 9, 2017)

Updated the description. 6x was definitely too high and due to my overclock which did not get properly picked up by the OS.

Unfortunately, VEP6 difference remains however.


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## robgb (May 15, 2017)

Puzzlefactory said:


> Personally I can't stand Windows for music stuff. The amount of hours I've wasted hunting down individual drivers for various components is mind numbing.


BINGO.


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## Mishabou (May 16, 2017)

meradium said:


> Hey guys,
> 
> so I finally went ahead and gave Windows 10 a try to see how things would run with Cubase 9.
> 
> ...



I did a similar test a while back a found no difference, well not enough to care, between Mac and PC running CB9, DP9, PT12 with VEP pro 6.

Both rig was identical:

Mac (OS 10.11.6)
nMP, 12 cores E5 Xeon @ 2.7 Ghz, 64 GB ram, SSD for OS and VI libraries on SSD via Black Magic dock.

PC was an HP Z820 (Win 7 pro)
Exact same CPU, 12 cores Xeon E5 @ 2.7, 64 GB ram, SSD for OS and VI libraries are on SSD via Black Magic dock (via HP thunderbolt card)

No special treatment, it was basically plug and play on both rig. I was running the same 700-800 patches template in all DAW connected to 8 instances of VEP pro 6, on the same machine. The CPU meter in all DAW and VEP pro was basically the same.


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