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Topic: Aio Win7 vs Win10 performance

Hello everybody!

I’m working with the Rme Aio interface in a 4770k and Win7 (no internet connection) with ableton 9 midi and lots of vsti and more vsts.

1. Can I reach more performance in  windows 10?
2. Maybe ableton 10 upgrade?
3. Another daw suggestion with better performance and creative workflow?

I’m going to buy a new ssd and try something new, but appreciate so much all your recommendations to test demos and don’t get lost reinstalling everything so much times smile

Excuse my English and thanks!!

Re: Aio Win7 vs Win10 performance

Not sure exactly about the audio performance. I know that windows 10  has been improved in the audio area, but I'm not sure it will gain you more performance compared to win7.

But there is so many other levels that win10 is improved on, so I wouldn't hold back on upgrading to win10. You just have to make sure, that you have win10 drivers for all your gear and computer devices.... "motherboard drivers (audio, chipset, SATA, gfx etc.), external device drivers (printers,  scanners etc.).

But there is more levels win10 is optimized. Win10 uses less memory than win7, it also has a bigger and better driver database, so that win10 finds new attached gear more easily (require an Internet connection!). It's also more secure than Win7, and gets security / performance updates, which Win7 doesn't do anymore.

So I would not hold back, if you know that you have win10 drivers for all your gear. If you're not on 64bit windows, then it could be a jump there also. But again, when it comes to software, you have to make sure that you have 64bit versions of you plugins/software stuff. Otherwise you have to use a software wrapper (for example Jbridge) for older plugins of yours, where 64bit drivers doesn't exist.

RME Raydat, Asus Z370-A prime, i7 8700, Noctua D15s cooler, Corsair RM850x, Crucial 32GB DDR4 ram

Re: Aio Win7 vs Win10 performance

Win 10 sometimes works justs good as win 7, if you are lucky. But there are unfixable issues for some audio users too. If your win 7 is working I would not upgrade unless you need it for internet security or programs that do not run on 7. And make a backup of 7 so you can go back easily.

Vincent, Amsterdam
https://soundcloud.com/thesecretworld
Babyface pro fs, HDSP9652+ADI-8AE, HDSP9632

4 (edited by ramses 2018-03-04 16:11:14)

Re: Aio Win7 vs Win10 performance

Windows 10 was released 7/29/2015. Since then it had for 2+(!) years severe issues in memory management !
Look at this article with graphs, how bad it compared to Windows 7:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/450 … -is-not-sc

An efficient memory management is cruicial for the performance of the OS and applications.

According to information in the above article, memory issues have been solved since Win 10 "Fall Creators Upgrade",
which was released 10/17/2017 as version 1709. But it lasted over 2 years for Microsoft to fix these issues which is really unbelieveable.

But there is still one big issue which needs to be covered:
https://www.facebook.com/notes/vb-audio … 165445117/

A summary of this, as this is important for many people, you find in a new blog article which I wrote:
https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … ws-7-EN-DE

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub13

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Re: Aio Win7 vs Win10 performance

Thank you SSL, vinark and ramses!!

I read this from MC (Administrator) in RMEforum:

"Using Windows 10 in our lab we did not notice any change in performance or minimal buffer size.
Note that according to that article the changes affect Windows own audio (WDM etc, not ASIO)."

After reading about my question, sadly the main benefit for me with win10 IMO is the file system, better than win7.

The bottleneck in my system is the cpu, because I always work with a lot of synths, in my projects rarely use RAM more than 4/5Gb and have 16Gb installed.

I'm wondering, who manage cpu cores and threads charge balance, the Daw, the SO or Vsts itself?

6 (edited by vinark 2018-03-08 10:41:22)

Re: Aio Win7 vs Win10 performance

Mainly the daw (how many threads and to what and in what order), some VSTi (like Kontakt) and then the OS which assigns the cores to the threads.

But...if like me you use mainly VSTi's, it is also the coding and with Kontakt even the used scripts which can negatively impact low latency performance. If you have problems with cpu load, it might be interesting to see if the problems come from one or 2 plugins only.
Some have positive experience running their VSTi's in Vienna ensemble pro. Even running on the master PC they can run a higher load. Plus you can add more computers or offload finished tracks.

Vincent, Amsterdam
https://soundcloud.com/thesecretworld
Babyface pro fs, HDSP9652+ADI-8AE, HDSP9632

7 (edited by ramses 2018-03-08 18:53:26)

Re: Aio Win7 vs Win10 performance

dc wrote:

Thank you SSL, vinark and ramses!!
I read this from MC (Administrator) in RMEforum:

"Using Windows 10 in our lab we did not notice any change in performance or minimal buffer size.
Note that according to that article the changes affect Windows own audio (WDM etc, not ASIO)."

Even with Win10 I can run my stresstest successfully, simply playback (but not performing actual work or changes in the DAW): https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … cks-de-en/

Every system and workload is different. To finally judge, which is better for your type of applications, a side by side
comparison on the same system using the same type of diskdrive/SSD for Win7 like for Win10 is the best thing to do.

Synthetik benchmarks sometimes support us to measure performance, but it can also fail.
I remember reading about systems with SSDs in RAID0 (Stripe). According to synthetik benchmarks
the performance is much higher with 2 SSDs in a RAID0. But when you work with real applications
it doesnt give you this big boost anymore, i.e. Application does not load that much faster.

dc wrote:

After reading about my question, sadly the main benefit for me with win10 IMO is the file system, better than win7.

In Win10 its the same NTFS version 3.1 like in Win XP in regards to the filesystem itself.
What can be different is, how the different subsystem in the kernel interact with each other.
That can create differencies.

On my Win7 system with a Win10 parallel installation, if I remember back right, the difference of
a SSD benchmark (AS SSD) was not that much.

dc wrote:

The bottleneck in my system is the cpu, because I always work with a lot of synths,
in my projects rarely use RAM more than 4/5Gb and have 16Gb installed.

Then you should fine tune your system, that the CPU cores do not become blocked by i.e.
- too many ISR and DSPs (good driver, enable only required HW, ....)
- not required service and processes
- avoid CPU clock changes, Energy saving, CPU core parking ....
to get a CPU which can react agile to a workload and has enough time to process important audio related prosesses.

For Win7 there was a good tuning guide out but the author was disappointed that nobody honored his brick license.
For Win10 I do not know any good tuning guide. Which is an additional reason why I prefer to stay on 7.
Its for me easier, because there I simply know what to do.
On Win10 I would have to cross check every step, whether its still feasible, if things appear to be the same.
That simply much work that I personally would like to avoid if possible.
I avoided this work as much as possible for the parallel installation itself, by using the Windows 10 upgrade process.
But the fine tuning still needs to be done, as not all settings have been taken over by the upgrade process.
But it saved me the time having to install all applications, VSTs, VSTis .. that was already a big win.
But then Win10 brings additional things like the tiny applications running in the Start menue ...
This is work on top to be done for Win10, to look what additionally required for Win10.

dc wrote:

I'm wondering, who manage cpu cores and threads charge balance, the Daw, the SO or Vsts itself?

This is the task of the process scheduler.
There are tools on the market which allow to tweak this if required like Bitsums "process lasso".
IMHO Only recommended for specialists ... not the full blood musician who is usually only a "casual admin".
But the other tool parkcontrol is great to disable at least CPU core parking ...

Other aspects in regards to Spectre
The Microcode Upgrade against Spectre version 2 had on my system with the same CPU less impact under Win10
because Windows 10 renders fonts not in kernel mode anymore but instead of this in user mode. This creates less context switches for the CPU which are "more expensive" for the CPU since the microcode upgrade for spectre.

If all has been fixed in Win10, then it might be more performant, especially when you need to apply the patches agains spectre. Whether you like Win10 or not for other things (EULA, privacy, GUI, Windows as a service, ...) this is a different topic.

As you can see the question which is better, has many aspects.

But I think most important is, that you need to perform your own test on your own HW, as systems,
configurations, combination of HW and workloads simply differ...

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub13