Intel ARC effect on Cakewalk by Bandlab?

[Jim Stamper]

I have a 5 month old Intel NUC 11 Enthusiast mini-PC ... nice, quiet, small, powerful. The system is almost all Intel - CPU, Graphics, Intel Driver & Support Assistant, and there is also an NVidia graphics chipset. 

Now lately Intel has been trying to push a graphics update "Intel® Graphics DCH Driver for Windows® 10 & Windows 11" which includes an ARC management utility ... and things have gotten messy. I tried several times to install the update using Intel utilities and when that failed, I used Intel instructions from Intel Support to "manually" install it. All of this failed. And THEN the Windows Update utility came along and "updated" the Intel driver to an older version than I started with.

It's gotten bad enough that I have a support ticket open with Intel, which they've been working for about 2 weeks, with no resolution yet. They just keep asking me for more info, and it's starting to feel like I'm doing their QA testing.

Intel hasn't provided much clarity re the purpose of the DCH driver and the ARC utility. They seem to promote it for gaming performance.

All I really care about is have a stable Cakewalk environment! 

So ... does anyone have advice on this Intel graphics driver update and how it might help or hurt the running of CbB?

Thanks

Edited March 28, 2023 by Jim Stamper
typo

[JnTuneTech]

Hmm, Next Unit of Computing, indeed. -I don't have direct experience with your setup, but many years running Cakewalk on Intel, and lately Intel/NVidia combo systems, has led me to a few conclusions of late. -One - unless you have some monster multi-ganged monitor needs, -nothing that the NVidia gfx chipset offers seems to do anything for what Cakewalk requires, but in fact complicates things with additional software & updates that constantly want to interrupt music editing, if they are not shut down -in advance, and after every forced update (Microsoft updates NVidia drivers too), unless of course you shut off updates entirely and stay offline, which is pretty much tougher to do nowadays than dealing with the updates anymore... But I digress.

Two - I have had many of the gaming-specific aspects of modern systems & software components present complications with trouble-free use of Cakewalk, and really it comes as no surprise that would happen. Many aspects of gaming use, such as overclocking, high-speed peripheral and networking components, -some of which utilize sound & video  I/O (for in-game conferencing, etc.), can really interfere with mission-critical AV editing - like Cakewalk,  -if you intend to use it that way of course.

One of the NVidia components that gives me grief on my system, for instance, is the nahamic service (I think it's spelled right because by now it's burned into memory) - which has something to do with the NVidia in-game system mic connections, I think, and every time I turn it off, an update turns it back on. Plus, I really need to disable the NVidia HDMI audio driver, because whenever my external screen turns back on after sleep, Cakewalk thinks I may need to add that HDMI audio I/O into my project...

Even the built-in Xbox utilities in Windows can present challenges, if you accidentally enable the control aspects, they can fight for keyboard & mouse control, to name a few things that Cakewalk also wants to have control of. -And so on. -You do have to pick your priorities, in some cases, as multi-purposing any PC can lead to compromises, which may only pop up when you least expect (or need) them.

 

On my current system, I have connected my external screen only to the Intel graphics controller, as it provides more than enough for displaying Cakewalk, and is probably more power efficient. In fact, since about the second or so iteration of on-board Intel graphics integration, I have never had any problems just using that for Cakewalk. -Never had a need for overclocking to get any serious work done there either. And I generally have Windows preferences dialed down to a minimum, since I don't need anything else but Cakewalk in focus on that machine.

 

So, I don't know if the latest Intel graphics driver update for your system has anything to offer Cakewalk, but if the system is primarily designed for gaming, then those updates may be more tailored to that part of the works, and as I say above, none of that usually helps Cakewalk in any way, -so beware. -If there is an option to configure the system as a non-gaming workstation at the base level, with reliability as the mean setting, then you will probably have less in your way with Cakewalk performance. -Just my suggestion anyway!

[Jim Stamper]

Thanks JnTuneTech,

I'll have to look into whether there's an option to set the base configuration as non-gaming. I don't recall from when I installed Windows and all a few months back, but it was hectic at the time. I was migrating around 130 apps from my old PC.

As far as I know I haven't had any trouble with the Nvidia component so far, it's the Intel update that's giving me headaches.