# I swapped my NVIDIA card for an AMD RADEON and now my DAW is running much better



## quantum7 (May 10, 2018)

Before building a new PC due to problems that I assumed were motherboard related, I thought it would be worth buying an AMD Radeon garphics card, an RX 570 to be exact. I've been using it for 36 hours now and have only had 1 single audio crackle.....in comparison with multiple crackles and pops every hour with the NVIDIA graphics card. Of course I need to test this out for at least a good week to make sure, but so far it may have been that lousy NVIDIA card all along that was giving me problems.


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## Nathanael Iversen (May 10, 2018)

Thinking of doing this myself. I had much better performance with the Intel motherboard graphics, but needed more ports. My NVIDIA 1060 TI is decent, but the system is just not as smooth - there are spikes every once in a while. Thanks for the report.


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## Zhao Shen (May 10, 2018)

Don't GPUs have pretty much no effect on audio performance? Unless you're speaking in terms of unintended compatibility issues, in which case it still sounds a bit too anecdotal to draw conclusions from. To offer my equally anecdotal experience, I get no crackles with my Nvidia GPU.


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## ChazC (May 10, 2018)

I was having a lot of spikes and very high usage readings in Cubase & Nuendo with an HD4650; swapped it out for an r5 230 and have had much better DAW performance since, even in Pro Tools.


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## Killiard (May 11, 2018)

Yeah, there was another thread recently that touched on this. 
While running the latency monitor app, the nvidia driver seems to turn up to be the culprit. It just seems to be very poor drivers on NVIDIA’s part.


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## Nathanael Iversen (May 11, 2018)

Zhao Shen said:


> Don't GPUs have pretty much no effect on audio performance?



GPU's have nothing to do with audio processing. They do talk to the CPU though. If they do this through poor drivers, the CPU has to pay attention to them too much. This means the CPU is not available for audio at that time. If the buffers empty, this means drop outs. So, GPU's don't process audio, but video drivers can cause audio dropouts..


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## Kony (May 11, 2018)

Zhao Shen said:


> To offer my equally anecdotal experience, I get no crackles with my Nvidia GPU.


Same here


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## MarcelM (May 11, 2018)

its true that nvidia drivers give higher dpc latency, but also with an nvidia card you shouldnt get any crackles on win7/10. there are alot of other things which can cause this. energy saving, network driver, speedstepping etc.

in fact you can optimize your system with any configuration and dont get any crackles or pops. its just a bit of work.


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## Nathanael Iversen (Nov 7, 2018)

I just changed from an Nvidia GTX1060 to a Radeon RX560. Lower CPU usage and substantially lower, and stable DPC latency. Win 10/Cubase user here. I can report that I am MUCH better off on an AMD card than Nvidia. I do not game at all, but do drive a 4k monitor and 1080p touchscreen from the card. Both cards run at idle from a GPU load perspective, and the fans don't even run. But AMD's drivers are a much better fit into my system.


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## erica-grace (Nov 20, 2018)

Hi 

What brand Radeon RX 570 did you guys get? Gigabyte, MSI....?

Thanks!


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## HelixK (Nov 20, 2018)

Does the RX 570 support 3x 4K monitors at once?


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## EvilDragon (Nov 21, 2018)

Zhao Shen said:


> Don't GPUs have pretty much no effect on audio performance?



GPU drivers do. nVidia is notorious for high DPC latency caused by their drivers.


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## Nathanael Iversen (Nov 21, 2018)

erica-grace said:


> Hi
> 
> What brand Radeon RX 570 did you guys get? Gigabyte, MSI....?
> 
> Thanks!


https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0716ZH99H (This one!) Nothing fancy. By gamer standards it is a lower mid-range card. For media composition, it is massive overkill. But I essentially bought low DPC latency drivers, not graphics performance. The fans never run on my card. Refreshing a DAW screen is not even work for this card.


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## kitekrazy (Nov 21, 2018)

Interesting. I don't like Radeon cards because of their power consumption compared to nVidia.


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## Nathanael Iversen (Nov 21, 2018)

kitekrazy said:


> Interesting. I don't like Radeon cards because of their power consumption compared to nVidia.


I'm afraid I don't understand. In a DAW, these cards are idle. Barely running. Their performance under full load is unimportant - a DAW system will never go there. (unless you game on your DAW). The power draw difference at idle has to be inconsequential compared to what else is in the studio. Driver latency is way more important than 5 or 10W here or there isn't it? 

You made me curious. The idle power draw of the Radeon 570 is about 16-17W. The idle power draw of a GTX1060 is about 10W on a desktop with dual monitors just sitting idle (which is pretty much a DAW). 

In relative terms, this is a HUGE difference. But we aren't talking a 160% increase at 200W. It's at 10w. Literally 6-7W. A USB hub. Less than half of an LED light bulb. I consider this ignorable.

I don't game. So I have no opinion on that. For a DAW, I don't think power consumption is worth thinking about.


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## JohnG (Nov 21, 2018)

There is misinformation in this thread. Short version: your choice of card can have a big impact on your audio performance.

I'm with @EvilDragon who wrote:


EvilDragon said:


> GPU drivers do [have an impact on audio performance]. nVidia is notorious for high DPC latency caused by their drivers.


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## Nathanael Iversen (Nov 21, 2018)

JohnG said:


> There is misinformation in this thread. Short version: your choice of card can have a big impact on your audio performance.
> 
> I'm with @EvilDragon who wrote:


This has been my experience. My Cubase rig is substantially happier with a Radeon card. My systems are always fully tuned. It wasn't system tuning. It was the card. $140 for better drivers is cheap given the footprint of the studio.


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## jononotbono (Nov 21, 2018)

The fact I have an Nvidia 1060 in my Mac Pro 5,1 is likely the reason I have experience really laggy behaviour with Cubase. I’m going to go ATI next but not sure what card as I’ve always had Nvidia.


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## JohnG (Nov 21, 2018)

jononotbono said:


> The fact I have an Nvidia 1060 in my Mac Pro 5,1 is likely the reason I have experience really laggy behaviour with Cubase. I’m going to go ATI next but not sure what card as I’ve always had Nvidia.



Using built-in video ports on the motherboard of two PCs has worked much better. I am using one MSI AMD Radeon HD 6450 with a 2GB cache on one computer, which also has worked better than Nvidia.

No knock on Nvidia as graphics cards -- they are fine, just driver problems with audio, so best avoided.


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## EvilDragon (Nov 21, 2018)

Somebody told me that when you install nVidia drivers, you should be extra careful about exactly what you install along with them, instead of just clicking through the installer. Never ever ever install nVidia Experience and shit like that - just hogs your system.


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## jononotbono (Nov 21, 2018)

JohnG said:


> Using built-in video ports on the motherboard of two PCs has worked much better. I am using one MSI AMD Radeon HD 6450 with a 2GB cache on one computer, which also has worked better than Nvidia.
> 
> No knock on Nvidia as graphics cards -- they are fine, just driver problems with audio, so best avoided.



I didn't think Nvidia cards were bad for PC (for audio) but if they are, I'm definitely steering away from them for my next purchase.

I need to find a Radeon that will happily run 4k. Possibly 2 cards as I have 5 screens in the Music Lab and currently in my Mac Pro 5,1 I'm using an Nvidia 1060 and the old GT120.


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## Nathanael Iversen (Nov 21, 2018)

My story. I had great performance from the Intel on-board graphics for years. Ran my 4k display without any issues at all, with DPC latency constant at a shockingly low 6-7us. But when I added the 24" touchscreen, I needed another port. We hadn't had this whole video card discussion yet, and I picked nVidia kind of randomly, knowing that any card with the right ports would be massive overkill from a GPU perspective. 

The GTX1060 had DPC latency in the 120-150us range right out of the gate - which never changed. The system was always usable, but I'd have pops or clicks every few minutes. Something in that driver periodically demands attention in a very greedy way. When John G posted a few months ago about his experience, I thought, "I wonder if I could get back some of my real-time performance."

When I finally looked into it between projects, I was surprised that $140 would be all it would take, so that was an instant purchase. And sure enough, my results were exactly what he and Evil Dragon have suggested. My teenage son got a free upgrade to his gaming rig, and we were both happy.

If you can use Intel on-board graphics, they are great! Easily run 4k screens for a DAW, cost nothing, and perform very well. If you are running a big multi-monitor rig, my experience is that I get better overall system performance with an AMD graphics card.


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## Nathanael Iversen (Nov 21, 2018)

jononotbono said:


> I didn't think Nvidia cards were bad for PC (for audio) but if they are, I'm definitely steering away from them for my next purchase.
> 
> I need to find a Radeon that will happily run 4k. Possibly 2 cards as I have 5 screens in the Music Lab and currently in my Mac Pro 5,1 I'm using an Nvidia 1060 and the old GT120.


Here's how to do it.

1. Any modern 3D graphics card from any vendor will laugh at anything your DAW rig thinks of doing. 4k, 8k it just doesn't matter. We use 2D applications. They are trivial to compute compared to what these cards are capable of.
2. You do need ports that are sufficient in quantity and interface for the screens you drive

In the AMD line, the 570 is the first card that supports three interfaces. With HDMI 2.0, and a pair of DVI 1.4, it was a straight cable swap for me. 

If you need four interfaces you will have to spring for the 580/590 at 2x the price, but spending that premium will not gain you any performance for DAW work. The 590 has five physical ports on the back. I don't know if the old-school d-shell DVI port shares with one of the newer DVI ports (ie. is it a 4 port card with an extra PHY interface? or is it a true 5 port card).

If you want high port density cards, you can look at the Radeon Pro cards. They have 4-5 ports - all capable of 4k resolution. You don't need a monster card. We aren't doing scientific rendering or such.


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## jononotbono (Nov 21, 2018)

Nathanael Iversen said:


> My story. I had great performance from the Intel on-board graphics for years. Ran my 4k display without any issues at all, with DPC latency constant at a shockingly low 6-7us. But when I added the 24" touchscreen, I needed another port. We hadn't had this whole video card discussion yet, and I picked nVidia kind of randomly, knowing that any card with the right ports would be massive overkill from a GPU perspective.
> 
> The GTX1060 had DPC latency in the 120-150us range right out of the gate - which never changed. The system was always usable, but I'd have pops or clicks every few minutes. Something in that driver periodically demands attention in a very greedy way. When John G posted a few months ago about his experience, I thought, "I wonder if I could get back some of my real-time performance."
> 
> ...



You


Nathanael Iversen said:


> Here's how to do it.
> 
> 1. Any modern 3D graphics card from any vendor will laugh at anything your DAW rig thinks of doing. 4k, 8k it just doesn't matter. We use 2D applications. They are trivial to compute compared to what these cards are capable of.
> 2. You do need ports that are sufficient in quantity and interface for the screens you drive
> ...



Is it a good idea to divide the number of screens over two cards instead of having them all connected to one? I'm looking at the AMD site and it just isn't making a lot of sense compared to the Nvidia site. In fact, if so many people hadn't said that Radeon is the way to go for Cubase etc I would continue to steer away from AMD just purely based on what their website looks like. I know, how shallow! haha


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## Nathanael Iversen (Nov 21, 2018)

EvilDragon said:


> Somebody told me that when you install nVidia drivers, you should be extra careful about exactly what you install along with them, instead of just clicking through the installer. Never ever ever install nVidia Experience and shit like that - just hogs your system.


I did the same thing installing the AMD stuff. Just the driver please, and no, I don't want the HDMI audio driver. The last thing I want is sound coming out of some crappy monitor speaker! In one of my previous builds, I improved DPC latency by uninstalling all the monitor HDMI audio drivers, and so have a general practice of not installing or disabling them.

When uninstalling video card drivers you want to use "DDU" - the Driver Delete Utility. It will completely remove either AMD or nVidia drivers and all associated registry keys, etc. I did this before switching.


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## Will Blackburn (Nov 21, 2018)

Pretty sure i had an ATI in my old Carillon back in the early 2000's and performance was rock solid. My more recent carillon has always had the bog standard Nvidia card in it. I was getting a ton of problems out of the box and latencymon said it was Nvidia related but after a million various tweaks in Bios/Nvidia/Win7 the issues have disappeared mostly. Can't really pinpoint the exact cause but i suspect a big part of it is related to c states/hyperthreading etc.


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## Nathanael Iversen (Nov 21, 2018)

jononotbono said:


> You
> 
> Is it a good idea to divide the number of screens over two cards instead of having them all connected to one? I'm looking at the AMD site and it just isn't making a lot of sense compared to the Nvidia site. In fact, if so many people hadn't said that Radeon is the way to go for Cubase etc I would continue to steer away from AMD just purely based on what their website looks like. I know, how shallow! haha



It doesn't matter. You just need a way to drive each of the monitors you have. You will need an x8 PCI slot for any graphics card, so depending what else you have in the system.... 

Or you can buy a 6 port Radeon Pro card. Which will also be massive overkill from a performance perspective, but it gets you 6 connectors. Whether there are Mac drivers, I have no idea. I got off Mac many years ago.

Remember, no one buys these cards by looking at AMD or nVidia websites. They are made for gamers. Neither AMD nor nVidia care in the slightest about media composition. Their core audience reads reviews on Tom's Hardware and Anandtech or similar sites. That's where all the detailed specs, pictures, etc live. The manufacturer sites are only for drivers, IMHO. You will notice that the AMD site has prominent links to ASUS, MSI, etc cards. nVidia is the same way. The gaming industry runs off of information from "independent" test sites that publish nit picky details about performance in games. 

In media composition, this is all about the composers helping composers deal. None of this is published anywhere. It isn't tested by the gaming sites. It's just what people have learned by spending money on more than one thing that purports to do the same job and finding out that it is a lot better with one card family than the other.


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## EvilDragon (Nov 21, 2018)

I think instead of using 4 monitors people should probably check out something like this, perhaps?

Do you really need 4x 4K monitors? Or is real estate all you're looking for? This is 4 1080p monitors in one. Can use multiple clients, yes (4x1080p), but you can also use one single cable from your onboard Intel GPU (if your CPU has one) and voila!

Bonus point: no bezels!


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## Nathanael Iversen (Nov 21, 2018)

I'd never tolerate 4 monitors! That's enough screen space to block out the sun, and certainly my audio monitors!


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## EvilDragon (Nov 21, 2018)

Screen of that size is supposed to be mounted on the wall behind the monitors. Shouldn't be a problem


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## erica-grace (Nov 21, 2018)

JohnG said:


> There is misinformation in this thread.



Where, if you don't mind?


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## jononotbono (Nov 21, 2018)

EvilDragon said:


> Do you really need 4x 4K monitors?



I don't have 4 x 4k monitors. I have 1 x 4k Monitor, The others are 1080p and 2.5k 
I like my set up. 



Nathanael Iversen said:


> and certainly my audio monitors!



Speakers all good here man! 






Thanks for your advice. Very useful about Radeon. I shall shop around for the best price etc


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## AllanH (Nov 21, 2018)

On additional thought: Many graphics cards decode DVD/Blueray video and as such may come with an associated audio driver or even silicon for audio. It's key to get those drives turned off and preferably not installed. This is common, in my experience, on cards with HDMI out, as HDMI carries audio.


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## EvilDragon (Nov 22, 2018)

jononotbono said:


> Speakers all good here man!



They're not at your ear level, which is not really that good :/


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## jononotbono (Nov 22, 2018)

EvilDragon said:


> They're not at your ear level, which is not really that good :/



They are angled downwards and tweeters point directly towards my listening position (my ear height) at the centre of an equilateral triangle. They are fine man.


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## EvilDragon (Nov 22, 2018)

Alright if you say so. I'd never want speakers to come at me from higher up, but that's just me I suppose 

Suggestion - check out some coaxial speakers. Then both the tweeter and the woofer come from the same direction, which tremendously improves stereo image and spatiality, instead of them being offset vertically like on regular speakers. I'm pretty happy with my Equator D5mk2, but seems like Equator went belly up so no dice on them. I read very good things about Fluid Audio FX8 from a lot of people - seems like tremendous bang for buck, and you get a really powerful 8" monitor that goes down to 35 Hz quite nicely. Will be a nice upgrade from D5mk2 once I figure out how to place them (since they _are_ decently bigger than Equators).

The way you have it set up now I'm not exactly sure if some part of the sound radiating from the woofers isn't ending up absorbed by the LCDs (which would be ok if it were second or third reflections, but not initial ones).


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## JT3_Jon (Nov 22, 2018)

Reading this thread and I had no idea! Thank you so much for everyones informed information! Not to hijack, but I have a question in regards to this issue and graphic card performance w/ DAWS on the mac platform. I'm running a 2013 mac pro with 2ea 2k monitors, running a nvidia gtx 680. With this setup, I often need to run large projects at really high latency in order to not get drop outs, and I'm now wondering if switching to a AMD RX 570 4GB RAM might allow me to run at lower latency, or even run more plugins/VI's? Would hate to drop close to $200 only to find out it doesn't help performance at all. Thoughts?


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## peksi (Nov 28, 2018)

As directed by Scan computers there are versions of NVidia drivers that are better at real-time usage. You may try this version: https://www.nvidia.co.uk/content/Dr...bit-international-whql.exe&lang=uk&type=TITAN


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## peksi (Nov 28, 2018)

Looks promising. Did a clean install of the Nvidia driver in my previous comment and installed only the graphics driver. After firing up Cubase I could not get any CPU spikes in a few minute test where I did several real time audio exports. Before driver downgrade audio export used to fail 3 out of 4 times due to CPU spikes.

Can carefully recommend this procedure but still need to do actual work with DAW and see how it pans out in long term.


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## JT3_Jon (Dec 5, 2018)

So I purchased an AMD card to test if its better than the Nvidia in my 2012 Mac pro. Any advice on how to properly test this? I plan on just opening some large projects and see if I can run them at lower latency, but wondering if there might be a more scientific approach?

Running a 2012 "cheese grater" mac pro, OS 10.12.6


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## 666Orlando (Dec 7, 2018)

JT3_Jon said:


> So I purchased an AMD card to test if its better than the Nvidia in my 2012 Mac pro. Any advice on how to properly test this? I plan on just opening some large projects and see if I can run them at lower latency, but wondering if there might be a more scientific approach?


Have you got any results yet?


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## JT3_Jon (Dec 8, 2018)

666Orlando said:


> Have you got any results yet?


So far it looks like nothing has improved for me, but I'm wondering if there are better ways to test as my old projects were pretty heavy and who knows where the bottle neck occurs. I made a new thread here with my specific question here: https://vi-control.net/community/th...running-much-better.71482/page-2#post-4317696


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## jononotbono (Jan 27, 2019)

I'm thinking about buying a Radeon RX580 8gb card to finally get rid on my GTX1060 that's in my Mac Pro 5,1 Anyone got experience with this card?
Looks good, max digital resolution is 4k and supports 4 monitors. Oh, and more importantly, Metal so I can prolong the use of the 5,1 tower for a bit more.


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## chillbot (Jan 27, 2019)

We just bought two of them for the studio. The one in my computer seems solid... no issues so far, running 4 x 32" monitors. Ask @Jdiggity1 when he gets back from NAMM.


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## jononotbono (Jan 27, 2019)

chillbot said:


> We just bought two of them for the studio. The one in my computer seems solid... no issues so far, running 4 x 32" monitors. Ask @Jdiggity1 when he gets back from NAMM.



So good to know! Thanks!


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## Killiard (Jan 27, 2019)

I've been thinking about getting one of these for my PC. The Sapphire Nitro+ RX580 seems to get spoken of well. Late last year AMD brought out the RX590 too, it's about £50 more and has about 10% better performance than the 580. But for DAW use it wont make a difference really.


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## Jdiggity1 (Jan 27, 2019)

As @chillbot said, we recently swapped our NVIDIA cards for Radeon.
His machine was using a GTX1060, mine has a 1050Ti. I was experience performance spikes in Cubase with that card, which are now gone with the Radeon. So that's excellent.
I did however have issues with the latest AMD driver/software (v19) and had to roll back to v17, which appears to be stable and has no issues.
We're both using XFX RX580s.

We're on windows though. If that makes a difference.


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## chillbot (Jan 27, 2019)

I can tell you that it is indeed possible to mirror the main display on three separate monitors with the Radeon, but I couldn't tell you how to do it.


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## Przemek K. (Jan 30, 2019)

I also did swap my nvidia card for Radeon RX570 4Gb . So far it works, however I still need to test it with a more heavy project.


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## ironbut (Feb 13, 2019)

A question for fellow nvidia card/mac pro users.
If you use a 3rd party gpu, can you use the Retina settings in Prefs with a 4K monitor?


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## Fredeke (Feb 14, 2019)

Zhao Shen said:


> Don't GPUs have pretty much no effect on audio performance? Unless you're speaking in terms of unintended compatibility issues, in which case it still sounds a bit too anecdotal to draw conclusions from. To offer my equally anecdotal experience, I get no crackles with my Nvidia GPU.


NVidia drivers are known to cause compatibilty issues. At least, that's what I've heard, several times.


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## URL (Feb 14, 2019)

No problem here with Nvidia cards and their drivers.
I have 1500 tracks active in my template and I can run aprox 50 stereo channels in 128 with a lot of pluggins, and in 256 so much more. Yes I use Pc slaves.


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## Fredeke (Feb 14, 2019)

URL said:


> No problem here with Nvidia cards and their drivers.
> I have 1500 tracks active in my template and I can run aprox 50 stereo channels in 128 with a lot of pluggins, and in 256 so much more. Yes I use Pc slaves.


Then either I'm wrong or you are lucky.
I don't know, I'm no expert. Just passing the rumour along, fwiw.

As a matter of fact, I've got one computer equipped with NVidia and another sporting an ATI, and the ATI is the one which gave me trouble. Changed it for another ATI model, and everything went fine.

But finger pointing at brands aside, I've learnt to suspect the graphic adapter to be the cause of seemingly unrelated problems that don't seem to make sense (like erratic external MIDI behaviour with every software on every possible interface, every other day - to name just one example)... and I've been right more than once.

As it turns out, all brands are potential offenders.


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## URL (Feb 14, 2019)

Yeah maybe Im lucky but there is so much that can make bad noise in your daw, I use the latest driver from Nvidia and always update win 10. I only Install the graphic driver for the card and there are things to consider when optimize bios, wrong settings that easily can bring bad noise crackle and all that into your daw in the Pc world. So bad bios and bad drivers and wrong settings in Cubase if that is your daw, I have test a lot of different settings for my setup, but works great now. All depends on the hardware/drivers as we all know


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## Bansaw (Feb 14, 2019)

I am seeing online a few people having issues with upgrading to Mojave and having NVIDIA cards. Just a heads up.


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## Fredeke (Feb 14, 2019)

That's one reason why I went from laptop to tower (and from Mac to PC, incidentally) for the studio: it's easier to replace a piece of troublesome hardware. Like a video card, for instance.


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## ironbut (Feb 14, 2019)

I've had my GTX1070 for over a year and no issues so far. IIRC I think it was with Windows and Cubase that I'd read about issues with the drivers.
That was a while ago (High Sierra here).


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## Nick Batzdorf (Feb 14, 2019)

Bansaw said:


> I am seeing online a few people having issues with upgrading to Mojave and having NVIDIA cards. Just a heads up.



I don't know how relevant this is to PCs, but I read it this morning:

https://appleinsider.com/articles/1...t-was-abandoned-in-macos-mojave-and-heres-why


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## ironbut (Feb 14, 2019)

Bummer.
Probably a good time to sell this card and grab an RX580.


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## jononotbono (Feb 14, 2019)

I really wish I had bought an RX580 a long time ago. My 5,1 Mac Pro is performing so much better (with Cubase) than when I had an Nvidia 1060 in it.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Feb 14, 2019)

jononotbono said:


> I really wish I had bought an RX580 a long time ago. My 5,1 Mac Pro is performing so much better (with Cubase) than when I had an Nvidia 1060 in it.



I have an RX560 in my 5,1, and it works perfectly. It's the MSI version Apple recommends on their site, and also the cheapest of the bunch (yes, I'm cheap):

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208898


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## synthetic (Feb 17, 2019)

Important info for video cards, Mac Pros, and Mohave. Need to jump through a few hoops. 

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mp5-1-what-you-have-to-do-to-upgrade-to-mojave.2142418/


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## Nick Batzdorf (Feb 17, 2019)

synthetic said:


> Important info for video cards, Mac Pros, and Mohave. Need to jump through a few hoops.



There's not much to it, but yes, it's very important!

The hoops just consist of updating to High Sierra with the original card in first. That's so the installer can update the firmware, which it needs to do to support the new card. I was about to say it does that automatically, but actually I think you have to hold down the Power button until you hear a chime. The installer walks you through it.

Then you put in the new card and update to Mojave. The update was uneventful when I did it.


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## URL (Feb 19, 2019)

I forgot to say that I used the 64bit floating resolution In Cubase when testing Gpu and VEP.
In 32 bit floating mode it's endless of tracks... in 128 cache on Rme

edit: Pc/Win 10 setup


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## Nick Batzdorf (Feb 20, 2019)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> hat's so the installer can update the firmware, which it needs to do to support the new card.



Actually, it turns out I may be wrong - the software to drive the monitor is part of the OS. Whether it needs the firmware as well, who knows.


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## JohnG (Feb 20, 2019)

this looks scary. Still sitting tight with Sierra...


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## Nick Batzdorf (Feb 20, 2019)

I'm not saying you should update if you don't want to, John, because the differences are just little things like Dark Mode - which I like - and being able to edit graphics from the Desktop without opening Preview.

But I can tell you there's absolutely nothing scary about it.

You update to High Sierra, put in a video card from the list Apple says will work, then update to to Mojave.

And Bob's your uncle.


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## synthetic (Feb 20, 2019)

Yeah, it's a pretty major update. Two firmware updates, and I needed to swap my monitor and video card. I made sure I had no pressing work for a few days just in case of disaster, and I wish I had someone to hold my hand while doing it.

I didn't have any problems but you want to follow the directions carefully. Turn off Filevault because that's not supported in Mac Pros anymore. It says you won't see an Apple logo and progress bar anymore when starting up, but I saw them. Long black screen, grey screen/progress bar show up briefly, then the computer starts up.

Also, you want to check for 32-bit apps that won't work anymore. Although many of them did actually work for me, like Excel 2011. Still, to be safe you can open System Report, look at Applications, sort by 32-bit, and check for updates on those apps.


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## JohnG (Feb 20, 2019)

I have a long job with a lot of music to write; about 40 minutes in and I don't want to mess with it.

Maybe next year.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Feb 20, 2019)

synthetic said:


> Two firmware updates, and I needed to swap my monitor and video card. I made sure I had no pressing work for a few days just in case of disaster, and I wish I had someone to hold my hand while doing it.



Jeff, the Metal-supporting video card requirement is well known, but why did you have to swap your monitor?

Maybe I should have been scared? I guess the firmware updates could have been bad if they'd gone wrong, but it really didn't seem like a big deal. As I said, you just hold down the power button until it chimes - or something equally simple - and then let go while it updates.

You're right about Filevault, but does anyone use it? It encrypts your startup drive, and I wouldn't want that.

I too get the end of the progress bar. That didn't surprise me, because I had an RX460 a couple of years ago for a while as part of an experiment using a 4K TV (I went back to the 30" Cinema Display and returned the card).

Anyway, of course I wouldn't recommend the update to John in the middle of a project. But while you do have to follow the instructions, they're not very complicated. I'm glad I did it, because I like Mojave.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Feb 20, 2019)

Also, Mojave still supports 32-it applications. It's the next version that won't; if I need to update, that'll probably be on another computer, or at least a different startup drive.

Mojave gives you a warning about a different random 32-bit program that will soon not work every time you start up. You can see which programs are 32-bit in About This Mac. Under Software there's an item for Legacy Software.

(Is it just me, or is that a really annoying euphemism for "open your wallet, chump?")


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## synthetic (Mar 3, 2019)

If you had a 4k monitor and newer video card you had to downgrade before you could upgrade. I just followed the directions. And 32-bit apps are actually working fine for me in Mohave for some reason. Office 2011 apps still launch.


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## Manaberry (Dec 16, 2019)

Hi there.

I installed a brand new AMD RX5700, and since then, everything is unstable.

I've mouse freezes, audio cracks, and pops (even as very low cpu usage), Cubase crashes a couple of times a day (never happened before)
I'm using 2 WQHD displays and 1 4K display, all on DisplayPort.

It was supposed to be better... wtf is happening? AMD GPU owners, what driver version are you running?

(I'm going to get a new AI this week. Maybe it will help on the sability)


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## Przemek K. (Dec 16, 2019)

Manaberry said:


> Hi there.
> 
> I installed a brand new AMD RX5700, and since then, everything is unstable.
> 
> ...



Sorry to hear you are having problems . I'm running a AMD RX570 on an older driver version: Adrenalin 2019 19.1.1. Running stable here.

There is a new Adrenalin 2020 version which was released a few days ago, maybe you could try this one.


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## Manaberry (Dec 16, 2019)

Przemek K. said:


> Sorry to hear you are having problems . I'm running a AMD RX570 on an older driver version: Adrenalin 2019 19.1.1. Running stable here.
> 
> There is a new Adrenalin 2020 version which was released a few days ago, maybe you could try this one.



I've tried 19.11.3 (got serious flickers/black screen), 19.12.1 and 19.12.2. I feel betrayed at some point..


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## Przemek K. (Dec 16, 2019)

Hmm, maybe its not a driver issue but a hardware related one. Could be the graphics card (dp port) or the display ports. Did you try connecting at least one display to hdmi od dp, to test if it works at least with one display without errors?


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## Manaberry (Dec 16, 2019)

The flickers/black screen was well known by AMD and that was fixed with recent drivers but yep, I will try HDMI on a just one display and see. Thanks for your time! Will let you know


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## Przemek K. (Dec 16, 2019)

Manaberry said:


> The flickers/black screen was well known by AMD and that was fixed with recent drivers but yep, I will try HDMI on a just one display and see. Thanks for your time! Will let you know



I hope it will work out for you


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## Manaberry (Dec 17, 2019)

Przemek K. said:


> I hope it will work out for you



I've tried with a NVIDIA GPU (2080Ti), there is no real-time spikes like with the AMD RX5700.
I assume AMD is no longer having good drivers for audio.


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## Technostica (Dec 17, 2019)

Nathanael Iversen said:


> I'm afraid I don't understand. In a DAW, these cards are idle. Barely running. Their performance under full load is unimportant - a DAW system will never go there. (unless you game on your DAW). The power draw difference at idle has to be inconsequential compared to what else is in the studio. Driver latency is way more important than 5 or 10W here or there isn't it?
> 
> You made me curious. The idle power draw of the Radeon 570 is about 16-17W. The idle power draw of a GTX1060 is about 10W on a desktop with dual monitors just sitting idle (which is pretty much a DAW).
> 
> ...


If you are running multiple monitors then Radeons are consuming more power and in some cases close to 40W.
Techpowerup show this metric.


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## StefanoM (Dec 17, 2019)

About NVIDIA cards I usually don't use the normal driver. I do a clean installation with this Studio Driver : https://www.nvidia.it/Download/driverResults.aspx/149158/it


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## kitekrazy (Dec 17, 2019)

Przemek K. said:


> Sorry to hear you are having problems . I'm running a AMD RX570 on an older driver version: Adrenalin 2019 19.1.1. Running stable here.
> 
> There is a new Adrenalin 2020 version which was released a few days ago, maybe you could try this one.



Seems like there's a difference in model numbers? He's using a 5700 which is a different model than the 570.


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## Manaberry (Dec 17, 2019)

That's not the same model yes.


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## Manaberry (Dec 19, 2019)

Quick update: The very last driver (released yesterday) didn't help. 
My new Audio Interface, however, helps a lot with sound stability but now AMD drivers seem to cause the crash of Kontakt (and its 250 instances in VEP). Absolutely impossible de work with this GPU.

Time to send it back.


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## Przemek K. (Dec 20, 2019)

kitekrazy said:


> Seems like there's a difference in model numbers? He's using a 5700 which is a different model than the 570.


Yes I know, I was just mentioning which card I'm using in case he would like to try a different one.
Besides, the RX Polaris cards are longer on the market so driver optimizations on them are better compared to the new Navi ones I guess.



> Manaberry said:
> 
> 
> > Quick update: The very last driver (released yesterday) didn't help.
> ...



Sorry to hear that. I hope you can get it up and running soon.


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## Manaberry (Dec 20, 2019)

Przemek K. said:


> Yes I know, I was just mentioning which card I'm using in case he would like to try a different one.
> Besides, the RX Polaris cards are longer on the market so driver optimizations on them are better compared to the new Navi ones I guess.
> 
> Sorry to hear that. I hope you can get it up and running soon.



Thanks!
I'm sending it back next week. I found out yesterday that the card also cause plugins' GUI freezes and then crash the whole session. I will try a 2060 or 1660 from Nvidia with Studio Driver instead.


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## Przemek K. (Dec 20, 2019)

Yeah, definitely try it. I was running an old nvidia gt9800 for years. It worked, but the dpc latency was higher than on the amd polaris card I use now. Well, the beauty of choice of having so much hardware options nowadays


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## Manaberry (Dec 20, 2019)

There are so many choices indeed! Right now DPC latency is very low with AMD but yeah, it crashes... The good thing is that we can do a msi routine modification to Nvidia GPU, which helps a lot to get quite low latency.


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## Nathanael Iversen (Dec 21, 2019)

Technostica said:


> If you are running multiple monitors then Radeons are consuming more power and in some cases close to 40W.
> Techpowerup show this metric.


This may well be the case. It isn't a concern. The fans don't run, and all my monitors work. The solar panels on my roof more than power the studio every day. I didn't even consider power consumption when shopping for a card. As soon as one decides, "not nVidia", then one has pretty much decided "yes, AMD". The rest is details.


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## Technostica (Dec 21, 2019)

Nathanael Iversen said:


> This may well be the case. It isn't a concern.


Clearly not for you but personally I look at power consumption for most components as part of my purchasing decision. #Greta


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## Manaberry (Dec 22, 2019)

36 hours with the NVIDIA GPU.

- No plugins GUI/Cubase freezes
- Just 2 crashes of Kontakt but I assume this is due to my CPU getting overwhelmed
- The crackles of my Apollo x6 just went away wtf


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## Fredeke (Dec 22, 2019)

quantum7 said:


> Before building a new PC due to problems that I assumed were motherboard related, I thought it would be worth buying an AMD Radeon garphics card, an RX 570 to be exact. I've been using it for 36 hours now and have only had 1 single audio crackle.....in comparison with multiple crackles and pops every hour with the NVIDIA graphics card. Of course I need to test this out for at least a good week to make sure, but so far it may have been that lousy NVIDIA card all along that was giving me problems.


That has been reported many times.
The opposite can happen too, but is less common.


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## bebopp (Jan 8, 2021)

Hi guys, after having experimented with Osc, now that's all up and working I'd like to add a touch screen to my Daw but the problem is that on my Asus z 390-A motherboard the 2 video outputs are already taken with two monitors.
So I'm thinking about adding a graphic card, but after reading all your posts I must admit that I fill a little terrified as I still have horrible memories of crackles on old computers, therefore I know what You're talking about. It could be a real nightmare...
So any advice will be welcome.
Thanks in advance

Mobo Asus z 390-A with inbuilt Intel UHD Graphics 630
CPU i9-9900K
RAM 32 Gb


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## DANIELE (Jan 8, 2021)

bebopp said:


> Hi guys, after having experimented with Osc, now that's all up and working I'd like to add a touch screen to my Daw but the problem is that on my Asus z 390-A motherboard the 2 video outputs are already taken with two monitors.
> So I'm thinking about adding a graphic card, but after reading all your posts I must admit that I fill a little terrified as I still have horrible memories of crackles on old computers, therefore I know what You're talking about. It could be a real nightmare...
> So any advice will be welcome.
> Thanks in advance
> ...


I have nVidia cards since I started composing music in a professional way and I never had an issue caused by it. Now I have an RTX 3090 and Reaper runs smooth as soap when it falls in the showers.


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