# K4 large fluctuating CPU spikes??!



## Ed (Dec 27, 2010)

For apparently no reason at all I am now getting extremely large fluctuating CPU spikes with K4 (latest version) since yesterday. 

But it was working the day before??

Even with nothing loaded! 

I don't get it!


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## chimuelo (Dec 27, 2010)

If you are on an i7 / X58 you can smooth the spikes by disabling the Spread Spectrum in your BIOS.
It comes enabled by default because it was designed to reduce electro magnetic interferrance from HDD's inside a chassis/case when closely stacked.

I think it's another scientific bunch of crap as my drives are in an enclosed 4 in 3 RAID Cage, and I noticed no change during streaming, etc. But I sure did see Kontakts' spikes disappear after disabling it.

Below is my live standalone multi which is small to most guys here, but I can bury the sustain pedal with layers of LASS and Pianos, Horns, etc. with zero pops or clicks at 64 samples.


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## Ed (Dec 27, 2010)

Hi chimuelo,

I forgot to mention I'm on WinXP.


Its an old system, was planning to upgrade very soon, but it was working a lot better than this a few days ago!


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## JohnG (Dec 27, 2010)

is it K4 player or the full version?


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## Ed (Dec 27, 2010)

JohnG @ Mon Dec 27 said:


> is it K4 player or the full version?



Hey John, its the full version.

Its manageable with a few things open and bouncing offline, but its really annoying.


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## Ed (Jan 4, 2011)

bump in case anyone else has any ideas...


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## germancomponist (Jan 4, 2011)

Same problems here...., I hate it!!!


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## Compy (Jan 31, 2011)

Hi - I've no solution to offer, but I do use K4 on XP with i7 860 and just for ref don't see any unexpected idle spiking. 

Something to try, at least to rule out another possible cause, is to check your DPC latency - Head to here http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml for more info. If K4 was working fine yesterday, and now isn't, maybe something else has changed. The DPC latency checker will show you if your machine is experiencing delays caused by something running a deferred procedure call for too long, or whether that's not your problem. The nature of the graph as you'll see when you run it will give you some insights as well: If there is an issue, and you can see it's cyclical in nature every x milliseconds or whatever, then a good start point is to look at services/running apps that poll something. If it's infrequent, then see if it seems to match other activity on your system.

Hope that's of some use.
Paul


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## Sforzando (Jan 31, 2011)

Is your Quickload Enabled? 
If it is, disable it to see if that's what causing the problem.


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