Should Hyperthread be enabled in BIOS?

[Rod L. Short]

It's an Nvidia GTX 1050TI and, yes, have disabled it's HD audio driver. I have tried it with and without the wifi and, it makes no difference. This is getting frustrating. This is not the first time I've had issues. The last time I ended replacing my Focusrite Saffire Pro with my current Scarlett 18i20 and also replaced my old computer with this current Dell XPS. That's too expensive to do again.   

[Promidi]

As a test, what happens if you temporarily disable your Nvidia driver in device manager?  Your screen will flicker as you do this - it's quite normal. 

Note: I am assuming your Nvidia driver is version 431.60

[Jim Roseberry]

On 8/12/2019 at 6:29 AM, studiodude1 said:

CPU min & max is set to 100%. I find nothing saying anything about C States in my BIOS. Typical plugins, mostly Waves stuff. Latest Focusrite drivers. Onboard sound is disabled. All the latest updates from Windows, Dell, Waves, etc.etc.

With off-the-shelf systems, the BIOS often doesn't expose all possible parameters.

This is to keep less savvy users from fouling up their computers.

The downside is that you don't have access to these parameters.

[Jim Roseberry]

On 8/12/2019 at 4:01 AM, studiodude1 said:

I am troubleshooting frequent, random dropouts. I have disabled SpeedStep and SpeedShift. Should Hyperthreading be enabled?

On a modern build, Hyper-Threading should be enabled.

[Rod L. Short]

Jim Roseberry - So, are you saying my new Dell might just be an expensive boat anchor when it comes to running a DAW?

[Rod L. Short]

Promidi - I think I'll try switching to the Intel Graphics instead of the Nvidia card.

[Gswitz]

At the moment that it goes bad, what do you see in your system and application event logs?

[Gswitz]

2 hours ago, studiodude1 said:

Jim Roseberry - So, are you saying my new Dell might just be an expensive boat anchor when it comes to running a DAW?

I think mostof the time, most computers can work fine if configured correctly. I expect in the right hands, your computer could be made good.

So don't give up hope or break out your wallet yet. Answer the questions. Consider hiring Jim to take your phone call maybe. He can walk you through things you might be missing.

[Rod L. Short]

Gswitz - Not sure what you mean. Where do I find system and application event logs?

Edited August 15, 2019 by studiodude1

[Promidi]

48 minutes ago, studiodude1 said:

Gswitz - Not sure what you mean. Where do I find system and application event logs?

Start Run and enter eventvwr.msc    However, to Interpret these properly, you really need to know what you're doing. There will be many events present, even on a system exhibiting very little issues.

[Promidi]

14 hours ago, studiodude1 said:

Promidi - I think I'll try switching to the Intel Graphics instead of the Nvidia card.

That's always an option as a test.  However, remember there are some plugin's graphic User interfaces that take advantage of the Nvida CUDA.  Meldaproduction is an example of such a plugin suite.

[Rod L. Short]

Promidi - My Nvidia driver is version 431.70

[mettelus]

Pete Brown chimed in on this other thread with an interesting comment about NVIDIA. Doing a "Custom" installation of the most recent NVIDIA drivers will allow you to only install the Graphics and PhysX drivers (which has been common practice for a while now for non-gamers). After seeing a lot of "protected" activity on NVIDIA's telemetry stuff, I went and disabled that a year ago or so now.

I just updated to 1903 yesterday, and the "KB4505903" reference was already baked in, but that is the first thing I would check (it will tell you it is not applicable to your machine if you have it and try to run it). After that, re-installing NVIDIA with only the Graphics and PhysX options selected may be helpful. His post was a nice confirmation that NVIDIA includes a LOT of bloat in their generic installation package (ShadowPLay, 3D stuff, User Experience, etc.), which is not useful for a DAW.

[Gswitz]

Start run mmc

File add remove snap in

Double click computer management

Local finish

Ok

Expand computer.. System tools.. Event viewer.. Windows logs..

This gives handy access yup device manager also.

You don't have to understand ask the events. If you are watching latency monitor when it trips to red, that is the moment in the logs to look at. It may be obvious what caused it.

If your video card is causing issues look in device manager for power settings on that card.

Edited August 16, 2019 by Gswitz

[reginaldStjohn]

On 8/15/2019 at 12:57 AM, studiodude1 said:

Promidi - My Nvidia driver is version 431.70

Just as another data point I had an Nvidia Video card that would cause high latency. I tried all the tricks mentioned in this thread and even more. I eventually just got an AMD card (Radeon) and that fixed it. 

[Promidi]

3 hours ago, reginaldStjohn said:

Just as another data point I had an Nvidia Video card that would cause high latency. I tried all the tricks mentioned in this thread and even more. I eventually just got an AMD card (Radeon) and that fixed it. 

It must be only certain Nvidia Video cards.  I have one (an MSI GTX960, not over clocked) and I am not getting any latency issues in CbB. 

In my Nvidia control Panel - Manage 3D settings, I have my Power management mode set to Prefer Maximum Performance.  I actually measured the current draw between modes and it was only a 3 watt difference. 

In fact, all power saving features on my PC are disabled.  Those settings are really only for notebooks when battery life might be important (or maybe for those where power costs are insane).

[Rod L. Short]

I THINK I MIGHT have found the answer, thanks to Promidi!

"In my Nvidia control Panel - Manage 3D settings, I have my Power management mode set to Prefer Maximum Performance."

I never even knew these settings existed! After changing mine to "Prefer Maximum Performance", I have had no dropouts! I will need to do some further torture testing before I can be certain but, it looks very hopeful, so far! 

19 hours ago, Promidi said:

In my Nvidia control Panel - Manage 3D settings, I have my Power management mode set to Prefer Maximum Performance. 

 

[Rod L. Short]

So far, so good! I think this worked. I'll do another day or so of testing and, if all is well, I will mark this as SOLVED.

[Starship Krupa]

Ah, you have a Dell.

My own main DAW is a Dell tower and it works just fine for Cakewalk, so despair not.

There's a thing about mine I can share.

When I first started running Windows 10 on it instead of the Windows 7 that came with it, LatencyMonitor was showing me similar spikes to the ones you were seeing, but they were about ndis.sys. I Google searched and found many people complaining of this issue, usually after getting an OS update from Microsoft. To shorten the story, what solved it for me was that instead of the "latest and greatest" Intel network interface driver, I needed to use an older one from Dell's website.

Occasionally it seems like Microsoft pushes out a NIC driver that breaks it again, and when they do, I use Device Manager/Device Properties to roll back the driver and all is well again.

[Promidi]

53 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

Occasionally it seems like Microsoft pushes out a NIC driver that breaks it again,

I have configured my Windows updates so that Microsoft never updates any drivers on Patch Tuesday. I like to manage drivers myself - for this very reason.