Well I finally managed to get all the parts needed to add a second Xeon E5520 CPU inside my Dell Precision T5500 Workstation.

I am not pleased with the results and am certain it must be either due to one or combination of:

low memory (just 4Gig across two CPU's.. it can max out at 72Gig!) I have only 2Gig for each CPU.

Bad thermal paste work? I used Arctic Silver C2.

Poor Bios setting adjustments? I have tried HyperThread On and Off and it does not seem to help either way. There are a slew of other settings.. most of them active.


My goal was to get this to render without falling on it's face in FL 11.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHPfnwFFhzc&feature=share&list=PL1A7C859621AE72EF&index=10

Menagerie by Seamless.. when it gets to 2:30(FL track time)my PC falls on it's face.. it didnt seem to be as bad with just one CPU in.. it's like it's worse now than before. I also get scratchy artifacts in the audio too.

I just would have thought my Dual Xeon system would handle it easily.. I wonder what Seamless used to render that song.




Any advice on what to try and/or do to get this going better?

 

What is your audio buffer set at?

 

I reverted back to one CPU for now..
the buffer says 512smp 12ms


hmm.. looks like a slider in the ASIO config can move over.. maybe I will try something here..

I tried various settings with the buffer size.. the highest I could go was 2048/47ms

seems the higher settings would work better, but I'd still stutter at 2:30 and on in that massive amount of FM fx.

Seems it does the same thing with one CPU or two.. and also seems to do better with just one CPU.. (I'm getting a little worn out going back and forth to test!)


I did noticed that when I export it as a WAV file that it renders fine.. it's only when I try to play it live in FL that it will stutter... just seems I should do without any glitching with a 2nd CPU.. cant figure out what I've done wrong


screenshot of the Windows Experience Index with 2 CPU's

 

can i just say i can play this fine with no stuttering and render it out with an i5 (only hits 8 percent on my cpu load)

 

It might sound like a crazy question but do you have an ATI (PCI) Gfx card?

 

Hey Synth,

What is your Mixer interpolation Method used for the sample Channels:

Low Quality
2-point linear
6-point Hermite

Average Quality
16-point sinc
24-point sinc
32-point sinc

High Quality
64-point sinc
128-point sinc
256-point sinc
512-point sinc

the more higher the damage to the CPU's

You can find this setting in your Audio Setting under Mixer: Resampling

 

Get more ram...

 

thats why I keep thinking something isnt right here. I mean, Dual i7 class CPU's?? Surely it can perform better..

its an Nvidia Quadro FX 3800 PCIe card, I think..

see pic attached below

I kinda thought maybe it is a RAM issue..

but I have also thought perhaps it is a disk access issue.. I only have a 5.9 Disk Access Rating as seen in the prev. pic I attached.



thanks for your suggestions guys.. any bit helps.

 

I had a similar problem with a Scarlett 2i2 soundcard two years ago and it was related to it's internal drivers or i can't really explain, but it was doing sort of random cpu spikes only in my DAW, but when i was playing music on a player or Youtube, everything went just fine, so i sent it back and they replaced it for me and everything worked fine in my daw then. I don't try to blame your sound card, but at least do you have another one to see if there's any difference in your computer's behaving or a friend who can borrow you his usb soundcard just for a quick test? You'll never now

EDIT: Also till you fix the problem (i saw the screenshot with your settings now), the "triple buffer" setting should give you a boost(at the cost of latency) but at least you can work with it, if it goes smoothly the whole track with no spikes.

 

have you updated your device drivers at all before reinstalling the cpu always the culprit.
i had to delete and change my drivers when upgrading my gpu from a 660 to an amd r9290x

mainly your intel chipset driveers you need to worry about you possibly have to reinstall them so your p.c can read them both properlly.

 

I found the problem.. take a look at the pics

I have been fooling around with doing capture video of my screen while FL plays.. but I've been having issues with getting audio to record in the capture app.. I can either hear the sound while it plays, but can't record it, or NOT HEAR it play.. but it will record in the Capture app.

When the VB-Audio HiFi Cable is active in my ASIO config, I get glitching.. turn it off and all is good.
The pic shows VB-Audio off.


Guess I need more advice on how to capture my monitor video and audio from FL (or any other DAW).
Here's where I was asking for help with capture apps.. I ended up getting Camstudio

http://audiosex.pro/index.php?/topic/9935-what-kind-of-pc-screen-capture-app-does-this/



so now Menagerie can play correctly.. but it still looks like the CPU usage is a bit high at average 50% usage..

I did look for updated chipset drivers.. could not find anything more recent than this..

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?lang=eng&DwnldID=18180

I downloaded and installed them.. not any difference that I can tell.


might take a look at the disk performance pic too.. seems there's some really huge and clipped out spikes in there.
The main drive is a 250Gig Seagate 7200rpm Barracuda.. if that makes any difference.
I can up a pic of the cores performances.. but none of them spiked out at all during the parts that glitched on me..
Memory performance only hit about 50% duty. (sorry, no pic).



All of you are very kind and patient to help me out with this.. it's times like these where the resources found on this forum really shines through. Good guys on here, that's for sure!

 

it may also be down to the fact that your cpu is a lot older than mine aswell why your getting a cpu hit larger than my i5
my i5 is an ivy bridge chip which has been overclocked to 4.5ghz and your reads at 2.26 ghz.
plus also i am running off a 500 gig samsung 840 evo solid state drive and have got 32 gigs of 2100 mhz g-skill ripjaw low leytency ram and a top of the range gpu with 4 gig of gddr5 graphics ram in that aswell

 

your problem is asio 4 all really you got 2 xenon's in a rig and you still not got a proper audio interface with good low latency performance drivers.

then a second thing is check your power settings turn it to high performance so the computer is not trying to park cores or drop the cpu clock speed to save electricity as that can cause audio dropouts and glitches with audio drivers.

leave hyperthreading on and disable c-states speed step power savings in bios

 

would using a firewire audio interface in a M Audio Ozonic be better than the onboard audio?
I have it here, but have not done a permanent connection yet..

 

I still don't know what kind of soundcard you use, the onboard one or a pro one?(because if you have a dedicated pro soundcard it can make a huge difference against the onboard one) Also check the power settings as Audioplg said and make sure its set on HighPerformance plan and also on Computer's Properties, on Advanced System Settings and set the Performance settings on the "Advanced" tab, the "Adjust for best performance of:" and check the "Background Services" box. Also we can't know for sure about your Hard Drive yet if it has something to do with your problems or not, but there might be chances.. who knows..
Anyway, please, if you have a friend with a external usb interface, ask him to visit you and test his interface on your computer and see if there's any differences. The more different tests you do, the more you come closer in your chase for solving the problem.

 

Right now I have the Dell factory soundcard on the MB as a audio interface.

I also have an M Audio Ozonic w/FireWire interface 4in 4out.
I have not permanently installed it since it must be turned on at boot... Every time I shut it off, I must restart my PC when I want to use it again..
I use a Akai MPK61 for a main key controller.. space is tight to use both.


I will round up cables and get the Ozonic hooked up to see if it will improve... that and figure out how to config the capture and audio synch ordeal.

Thanks for all the help!

 

well I finally got the M-Audio Ozonic hooked up.

after some frustrating episodes, I got it working OK with FL studio, it plays the Menagerie song OK...


but now the problem is that I cannot listen to say.. WinAmp or any videos playing in a browser, like on YouTube.

I have FL closed.. no other audio apps running.. and yet no matter what I do, the Ozonic wont play back the audio.
I can see in the Windows mixer the audio is playing, it just wont let me hear it.

I am so freaking frustrated right now.. seems nothing is going right.



attached is a pic of some M audio asio settings, etc.
anyone have any idea what I'm doing wrong? I thought I had all the proper drivers.. why is it some things are audible and others not??