Load percentage....

[Jeff Scott]

Hey folks...trying to find out if this is "normal"

I've using my laptop to host SAW as of late. It's an Intel Core i7 /2.4Ghz / 12 gig RAM/ Win 8.0 machine. It's got a 750Gb standard Hardrive and a 500Gb SSD drive . I was reluctant to use this for quite a while as it is my Work Computer, but the Plugins and VSTi's I use will no longer run on Win XP. I reconfigured a Win 7 Pro Desktop but the MB maxed out at 4 Gig RAM and I found that wasn't working too well with the Slate and Waves plugins I use.

In order to provide some separation between "Work" and "Play"....I've put all my Session files and VSTi Sound Libraries on a stand alone USB Hardrive. That's made things nice and clean.

However....running a 15 Track count session with some SAW native EQ and say 8 or 9 instances of Slate / Waves plugins has run the Load indicator up to 88 to 95%. The session shuts down with data Buffer overload warnings.

This morning I imported the Session files onto my Laptop SSD drive, fired it up and the Load ran at 30 to 35%. I could even load in a further handful of CPU hungry Slate Waves plugins and the load bumped up only 2 or 3 % per instance....not the 10 to 20% per instance as when the tracks where pulled from the External USB Hardrive.

Is this usual behavior? I assume the USB transfer rate is slowing things down.

I mean...I'm happy with the performance now. I'll keep my working sessions on the Laptop and enjoy the speed and extra CPU head room. I'm trying to understand how SAW reacts to the USB Drive or how it responds to the loads imposed on it.

[Bob L]

You might try loading the session onto the internal harddrive (not the SSD) and see how that loads up... with the heavy use of the vst plugins, the extra load of the usb transfers may be taking you over the top. (USB does eat up CPU time). The internal drive (like the SSD) will not load the cpu directly as the disk controller services most of the drive handling.

You might also want to try setting the single cpu option in SAW and see if there is any performance difference. Also use the Realtime Priority option as well.

Bob L

[Jeff Scott]

Will do Bob... I was using the Real Time Priority but I'll try loading from the C drive as well.

...and the single CPU...

Question for you...the SSD is an internal Drive.......my D: drive...are you saying that there is a difference in how the computer loads from drives other than the main C: drive?

[Bob L]

No... I'm suggesting that if the playback performance of the internal normal hard drive gives you good load performance that I would edit sessions there rather than on the SSD... remember there are write limits on an SSD drive.

In my opinion you would want to work the SSD as little as possible.

Bob L

[Jeff Scott]

Ok....got it ...thanks.

[Richard Rupert]

I've mentioned this on the forum several times before, but I think it's salient to this question: I have an aging Core 2 Duo machine running XP, and I very often record to an external USB drive. (Sorry, I can't remember the specific CPU model, but it's one that Bob recommended early in the Core 2 days, I'm using an Asus MB with 4 gig of ram). I've recorded upwards of 50 tracks on this machine with some Waves and iZotope plugins. Nectar does run the CPU load up considerably, but the machine chugs along. I don't know how I can get away with this, but I've been doing it for years. For what it's worth, this is my story and I'm stickin' to it.