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Latencymon and Graphics cards -- best for audio

Paul, I would suggest grabbing an AMD and see if it fixes your situation.

I did that and unloaded all the Nvidia stuff, and it did help a lot.

However, I still see issues with other stuff, like:

ndis.sys (on the PC whose card I replaced)

dxgkrnl.sys (on my winds/choir PC). I guess I can replace that computer's graphics card too.
 
That storport thing causes problems for me as well. I have searched a couple of times and not found a real solution for excising or bypassing it.
Is your OS installed on an M.2 NVME SSD? I tried booting mine from an HDD and that storport problem was gone. I assume a SATA SSD should do as well.

What I'm really curious about is does it actually affect my real-time performance? Because as I understand, the upper 2 bars represent the actual latency, the lower 2 diagnose the problem. So if my first 2 are well under 200, should I be good to go?
 
It's booting from a regular WD hard drive.

as far as interpreting every detail of Latencymon, honestly IDK @chrisphan

But I have reduced my buffer from 1024 to 512 on that PC which is a win. It's quite old now so not sure putting even $50 for a graphics card was smart or if I should just bite the bullet and get another computer altogether to house the samples on the ones that are giving trouble.

Next lifetime...
 
How much has it helped or not? What was your GPU timing before and after and over all latency, before and after as well?

The problem with ndis.sys and dxgkrnl.sys is that those are windows processes and not gpu related--if I am not mistaken. I cannot remember everything associated with those two things off the top of my head. I would need to do some digging, specifically for the gear you have as well. Unfortunately, tweaking the gpu may not do much with those, if anything. (I swear trying to fix these problems is like dealing with a russian nesting doll...)

You could try messing around with different drivers and patches, but as I am sure you are well aware, this is extremely time consuming and can sometimes only produce minimal improvements; at a certain point new gear is the best fix. I will be completely honest, this is something that I usually do by trial and error, step by step, with any computer I try to optimize. I usually keep a chart for each computer I build to keep track of all of this. Some things you can kind of go straight to and tweak expecting there to be a potential roadblock, but other than that, I am still amazed what has to be adjusted on certain computers. (I also hate when there is a problem, you tweak a process to then have to go back and undo this change to find the computer running better than it was before... how does this happen???) This is why I typically prefer to build everything I use, as it helps me trouble shoot down the road. I still have to use a specific Ethernet driver on my main pc and another one on my main slave. It took me forever to find the right ones, but I cannot touch them without causing horrendous issues.

I would say that if you got a reasonable improvement on performance, $50 is pretty nominal for a quality of life improvement. If you feel that it was not worth it, you could return the card if that is still an option, or keep it for a rainy-day.

Sometimes you just need new gear, and with something as mission critical as a master or slave rig, this is an area that I never feel is worth skimping on. At a certain point, it is unavoidable as much as we all despise it.

You could also potentially try getting an SSD for your OS drive and to host your DAW on. I saw that you boot from a mechanical drive. I'm a fan of the tried and true 850evo/pro. The nice thing is if you decide to build a new computer, you could always just pop that SSD over, so it would not be a complete waste of money.

If you keep having issues, is there anyway you could post a pic of the latencymon results or something with your rig setup? Unfortunately, I do not know how much digging I can do at the moment. I am currently in the midst of re-doing my template/studio before a job and trying to fix a thankfully not mission critical computer; I have been procrastinating on the computer for awhile.
 
Thanks @Piano Pete .

I think I'm at the end of my tether for this computer and, as you hypothesized, the only sure remedy would be to get new guts for it. Sadly, that means new RAM, mobo, and CPU, and that also means reinstalling or reauthorizing a ton of things, the prospect of which makes me want to curl into a ball and hide.

But having reduced my buffer from 1024 to 512 I am going to leave things where they are until I just can't stand it, or Bill Gates comes to my house with a New Great Thing that Solves All Musicians' Problems.

Your post makes eminent sense overall and thank you for taking the time to offer your advice.

Kind regards,

John
 
Interesting thread. I've just downloaded Latencymon and ran it to compare desktop use with DAW use and I've got an interesting result with a GTX 1070 (founders edition) card. It appears that my latency issues are Kernal and Directx related. But when running the DAW it seems to improve, you would think it'd do the opposite.

desktop.jpg

DAW.jpg

open
 
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That test is way too short, and latencymon should run without any other app running, so you can see whether the system runs clean in idle - which it should.
IMO Nvidia Quadro drivers are much better, we don't have DPC spikes with Pascal cards, although very incidental up to 600µs - which is no showstopper for a composer system. AMD drivers are slightly better regarding DPC but they can be a PITA with high resolutions and DP connections.
 
here's mine after 10 minutes:

i7-7820x, 2x 2tb m.2, 128gb ram, evga 1080 ti

finally getting good VI counts with good CPU - even in Studio One Pro 4.0.1

when i run Vienna Ensemble Pro 6 to local host my VIs, barely a CPU blip.

lovely.

dpc mon.JPG
 
What do you guys think of these reports?

I seem to be having some audio clicks and pops when using Cubase or any other audio applications, including playing movies, clips on YT, etc...
 

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What do you guys think of these reports?

I seem to be having some audio clicks and pops when using Cubase or any other audio applications, including playing movies, clips on YT, etc...
DPC Latency checker is not compatible with anything after Windows 7 , so ignore that tool.
Latencymon shows excellent results, although that spike at 524µs ideally would be a bit lower but nothing which should cause pops and clicks. Either something in the background is tampering with your system, like a weird BIOS bug regarding RAM speed settings I once detected, or simply wrong BIOS & Windows settings.
 
There's a utility that can help with NVIDIA on some systems. You run it as an admin and check it every driver update. It helped my system but didn’t fix it all. MSI utility v2.

I have a 970 With an i9.
 
I never use a card because I don’t use video on my DAW, strictly a monitor for editing, programming and performing. So on die GFX is simple and hassle free.

Upcoming build using an AMD 3700X will use ASPEED ADT2500 chip on motherboard for those tasks. 2D is plenty. The PCI 4.0 16x slot will get my meager PCI 3.0 1x Connector card for the DSP Rack.

ASRock definitely has some great options for RackMount builds.
This X570 Mini ITX should continue the tradition.
Been using their Server/Workstation boards with enthusiast chipsets for years.
Love their high quality PCB and life long parts. Not cheap but notch above consumer/gamer boards.



2BE4B957-76D4-4D0F-B1EB-2FE6B2F2126C.jpeg
 
Revisiting an old thread with a new quandary. Figure it would better to keep this contained rather than a new one:

@DAW PLUS

Been asked to build a few multi use systems for 3D modeling and Audio Production. The workload is fairly intensive in both fields. For audio computers, per my experience, I have stayed away from Nvidia, as I have yet to find a happy middle ground where I do not want to throw them out the window. This causes a dilemma, as NVIDIA kills it for 3D rendering. Do you have any clue how performance would be affected by using an AMD card for the display while keeping other NVIDIA cards onboard to be used purely for rending?

Unfortunately, I do not have any spare cards lying around to test this out. I'm curious to see what the affects of having both GPUs while having an AMD card as the main display. I tried convincing them to separate the build out into a render server and main computers, but they want each system to be self contained.
 
We don't really need graphics cards for the work we do if the CPU has an integrated GPU...

OTOH, if you're working with both audio and graphics (3D rendering and whatnot), then yeah, you'd need one. But if you're doing audio only, you don't need it really. I drive two 24" monitors from the iGPU of my i7-6700K without any hitch or DPC spiking.
I'm assembling parts for a new audio-production PC and am wondering what graphics card to choose -- or if I even need one. The CPU I'm looking at is an Intel Core i7-12700K (12-Core), which has a built-in Intel UHD Graphics 770 card. Can you speculate, is this adequate for DAW and VI use? Or do I need to add a dedicated graphics card? I have no idea -- and graphics cards range from less than $100 to $3,500 or more!
 
I would say that should be enough for starters, and then you can later see if some of graphics-heavy plugins (if you own them) might create some problems. But that's pretty rare.
 
There's a utility that can help with NVIDIA on some systems. You run it as an admin and check it every driver update. It helped my system but didn’t fix it all. MSI utility v2.

I have a 970 With an i9.
I now have a RTX 260. Still no major issues. Still using msiutility v2 after every nvidia driver update (because the properties get reset on every driver update).
 
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