Force RealTime Priority Class Crash

[Craig Allen]

I've been having problems with the Force RealTime Priority Class option recently. I was using a VSTi (DMI Hammer) and everytime I open it and try to make an adjustment, the computer would completely lock up - only a hard reset would fix it. Of course, unselecting that option fixes the problem. It works fine on with Force High Priority Class selected. I don't know what exactly can be done, but I thought I'd pass it on.

[Bob L]

That's what can happen with that option... it all depends what the other system components and plugins might be doing with their code.

Bob L

[Craig Allen]

Would you recommend using the High Priority option or just leave them both off? So far, it hasn't caused any crashes, but I haven't done any type of analysis to see if I've gained anything.

[Jay Q]

Would you recommend using the High Priority option or just leave them both off? So far, it hasn't caused any crashes, but I haven't done any type of analysis to see if I've gained anything.I know you're asking Bob, Craig, but I know a bit about this. Setting process priorities to Realtime in Windows is risky business. I wouldn't set anything with the possible exception of mouse/keyboard software to Realtime. High priority is probably safe if you're running a bare-bones system, but your plugins may still cause problems. At least with High priority, the SAW process can still be superceded by system processes with Realtime priority. If you're just running SAW, High priority is at least worth a shot.

Jay

[Bob L]

It is risky business which is why I made it an option once I put the code in place.

Doing it in the Task Manager seems to be more risky... hopefully, the code I modified in the app itself would make it a little more stable... but it still can be a problem if anything is unstable and SS locks.

So... use it at your own risk... but with a stable setup, it has proven here on some test systems to make the difference of low latency performance where there was none before.

Even on my live rig, when trying to demonstrate MWS scrubbing on a demo video, my screen zoom utility would cause very bad spitting and glitching and was unuseable... the realtime priority got SS above the hardware overlay hooks that the zoom utility depends on and stopped the glitching, allowing me to keep the low latency for the demonstration of VST synths and scrubbing.

Bob L