Windows 10 settings / stuff you can turn off for music?

You might be surprised at the way your PC acts as soon as you put the LAN cable back in.
They say you get the option of upgrading but as soon as you see the "we are fixing your PC for you" it's safe to assume you are being "upgraded" as they only want to "help" you, since getting you into their Cloud is what's really the only thing in Windows 10 that's different in regards to music apps, etc.

paaltio said:

I don't turn off anything. Most of the "optimize Windows for audio" guides are outdated, and I've even seen some that are pure nonsense, so I would steer clear of them.

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I don't want to pick on paaltio, but I have had the opposite experience, especially with my older, underpowered PCs. I just updated from Windows 7 to 10 on an Ancient PC

Idle CPU before (no tweaks): over 30%

Idle CPU after (with tweaks): low single digits (1% most of the time)

Hi all, I've read quite a few times, about having both Win-7 and Win-10 on your machine. If this is true, and basically how can it be done?

I was thinking that maybe just get another drive to put Win-10 on, but I haven't a clue how that would work?

I've got an i7-4790K with 16 gig of ram.

Tod said:

Hi all, I've read quite a few times, about having both Win-7 and Win-10 on your machine. If this is true, and basically how can it be done?

I was thinking that maybe just get another drive to put Win-10 on, but I haven't a clue how that would work?

I've got an i7-4790K with 16 gig of ram.

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You have 30 days to revert back to 7. I did this once and it was fine. Make an image of both OS. You can always change back.

Thanks for this thread! I'll make use of some of the tips here.

Here’s one that works in conjunction with Windows 8.1 and up.
Snapshots of RAM on powerdown has really sped up boot times.
This seems to speed up boot times, but powerdowns are damn near instantaneous now.
I use a SurgeX Rack for regulation and protection. So I always stood around for 30 seconds or so as I have to power down the Rack last.
Powerdown is liked greased Lightning now.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc938581.aspx

Here is quite comprehensive guide to performance optimization: google for "Glitch Free" (Cantabile, Brad Robinson)
Still planning to read it one day...

Added: sorry, can't post links yet due to forum settings.

JohnG said:

I don't want to pick on paaltio, but I have had the opposite experience, especially with my older, underpowered PCs. I just updated from Windows 7 to 10 on an Ancient PC

Idle CPU before (no tweaks): over 30%

Idle CPU after (with tweaks): low single digits (1% most of the time)

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Its kind of fun,right?
i personally dont tweak much as i did before when things were unstable
i make sure the memory profile in bios is not set to max
and just go over the bios to see everything there is adjusted
and i do upgrade the motherboard bios always.
i leave windows alone except the power features

and if you say your system is old are you meaning old as in ddr2 period or ddr3?
you might want to google "ddr3 memory vulnerabilities" if youre not aware, and this applies to ddr2 as well.

if i had 2 slaves and a master i think id make those 3 machines into client computers and set up a server/domain controller
and from there i can take bit deeper dive into these 3 systems and i could have much more control than on a bare windows system.
no security apps in the background,could have kali and redhat linux set up on the domain controler in hyperV or virtual box and manage security from there and so on.
but i dont think ill be doing that unless it would be year 2012 but i think of these things all the time since i do a bit of administrating and networking
ive stripped down many W10 systems for them to operate for one sole purpose depending on the need and even servers down to their shell/core when you only got command window to operate and no GUI,they become so damn efficient,so i am a bit curious to see how DAW would run with only what it needs?
with GUI ofcourse

AKM said:

Here is quite comprehensive guide to performance optimization: google for "Glitch Free" (Cantabile, Brad Robinson)
Still planning to read it one day...

Added: sorry, can't post links yet due to forum settings.

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thank you
i was searching for this but never found it since i forgot the name of the man
thats a comprehensive guide for just digital audio
i had the idea to create a powershell cmdlet for all that when i have the time,just for fun.

JohnG said:

SOME OF THESE THINGS ARE RISKY, LIKE BIOS STUFF!!

If you don't know what you are doing with the BIOS you can wreck your computer.

A. Tested system to see if I needed to bother (I did):

Downloaded latencymon (seems to have been updated for Windows 10 based on what's on their site): http://www.resplendence.com/downloads

Basic fixes and interpreting results of Latencymon:

https://www.native-instruments.com/.../windows-78-tuning-tips-for-audio-processing/

B. BIOS alterations -- remember, these are RISKY, especially turning off thermal throttling and other CPU protections

1. Updated BIOS (on my computers needed USB flash drive formatted for FAT):

2. Turned off Speedstep

3. Turned off Turbo boost / Advanced Turbo

4. Turned off Thermal Throttling / CPU Thermal Throttling

5. Turned off CPU C States Support and / or individual C-states related to CPU

6. Disabled onboard audio from motherboard (I'm using separate audio card so don't need it)

7. Turned off Isochronous whatever-it-is. I quote from an internet post: "Isochronous refers to time-bound processes, such as synchronizing audio and video in a multimedia stream or ensuring that data is transferred across a network or data bus (like a northbridge or southbridge on a motherboard) with similar constraints. It prioritizes threads or calculations between the IOH and ICH. So basically, the more important tasks will be determined and executed in Isochronous Mode. So if it's enabled, it means time bound processes are given priority first while if it is off FIFO rule applies. I think all these "features' on the board are just marketing crap and don't really show any real world advantage or disadvantage. If you're OCing, best to keep it disabled!"

8. I checked the BIOS and the "Advanced CPU Features." The CPU Clock Ratio was set to 15, which yields a CPU speed of 2.00 GHz. I changed it to 23 (max is 24) and now the CPU Frequency is 3.06 GHz, approximately what it's rated.

9. Turned off hyperthreading on at least one computer -- honestly can't remember if I did this on all of them.

10. Chimuelo (if I understood him correctly) recommends turning off EIST

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A very late reply, but I am not very active here:
I appreciate the effort of helping people, and I am convinced these settings work for you.
But I think most of these settings are wrong, aside from the fact that different motherboards behave different with such settings. But especially, switching off thermal throttling and manually changing the CPU clock ratio just like that both are very dangerous things to do, especially when doing them at the same time:
thermal throttling means that the CPU clocks down when the CPU reaches certain temperatures. This happens when it runs too hot. If it runs too hot, you WANT it to clock down, otherwise it can be damaged. You need to verify whether the thermal throttling feature kicks in on its bleeding edge (typically around 90°C) or earlier. When earlier, you may want to disable it, but rather make sure the system is properly cooled first. There are different throttling settings on some motherboards, and it pays off to know when they apply.

Rising the multiplier is the easiest overclock. But when doing this too high, without adjusting the voltage, you can easily turn your system in an overheating state or simply having it unstable, with sudden blue screens. Individual CPUs have different headroom for overclocking, some may easily offer 500MHz more while others, identical models, hardly manage a 200MHz overclock.

JohnG said:

I don't want to pick on paaltio, but I have had the opposite experience, especially with my older, underpowered PCs. I just updated from Windows 7 to 10 on an Ancient PC

Idle CPU before (no tweaks): over 30%

Idle CPU after (with tweaks): low single digits (1% most of the time)

Click to expand...

Necro-reply again: I suspect this is due to the power plan change, which is the most essential one.
I benchmarked an almost normal W10 (mainly power settings) vs one where all apps are uninstalled, background stuff disabled and all kinds of services which are not audio relevant. No difference. This was with v1709.

That does not mean W10 cannot be optimized, but the optimization is not in the background stuff and "unimportant services" which are idling anyway.

DAW PLUS said:

Necro-reply again: I suspect this is due to the power plan change, which is the most essential one.
I benchmarked an almost normal W10 (mainly power settings) vs one where all apps are uninstalled, background stuff disabled and all kinds of services which are not audio relevant. No difference. This was with v1709.

That does not mean W10 cannot be optimized, but the optimization is not in the background stuff and "unimportant services" which are idling anyway.

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I have a very similar opinion to you and disagree somewhat with the proposed settings by the OP. Besides overclocking, enabling XMP and enabling the high performance power plan, there is little I would suggest the average user to do. I have not found disabling native CPU power management (outside features needed for overclocking) or OS power management to make any significant difference. I firmly believe that the impact of DAW optimisation (and ridiculousness such as MMCSS) is much larger than anything that can be offset by disabling C-states or SpeedStep.

Well, although C states don't mess up systems as they used to do, they can still be a mess. It depends on the motherboard & chipset. The logic in those settings is sometimes completely lost.

DAW PLUS said:

I suspect this is due to the power plan change, which is the most essential one.

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I don't think that, in my case, the power plan change was the principal reason for the performance. Actually, turning off all the "background" apps that were automatically switched on in Windows 10 seemed to make a huge difference. The other thing that made an enormous difference was the C-state stuff which, at the time, was throttling back my CPU to half its rated speed.

That said, bear in mind that the initial post was made quite a while ago. Take one example: background apps. Last time I updated Windows, not all those background apps were on, though some were.

Seems Like Voodoo

Overall, you have to take all these suggestions with a huge dose of salt. For one thing, people often fail to mention important matters, such as -- they use the computer for gaming as well, or they have some proprietary network thing going on, or they have corporate anti-intrusion software, or whatever.

It also seems idiosyncratic -- as though different combinations of RAM or motherboards or what have you respond differently to such suggestions as turning on or turning off hyperthreading. For some people, an individual tweak improves things, while for others the same tweak does nothing, or even degrades performance.

I'm not using VE Pro's networking feature for midi, for example, because at the time I set everything up, years ago, VE Pro could only accommodate three computers.

Yes, it can be complicated and behave different on different system, also depending what version of Windows is being used.
I actually benched those background settings, but that indeed was last spring, so a very different version. HT always should be advantageous by approx. 25%. If not, typically the motherboard has an issue or a wrong BIOS setting - or a bug, like I once had, where setting RAM speed to automatic would cause HT to give poor performance. Setting it fixed would boost speed by 25%, as expected.
RAM speed itself is nothing to worry about, it is not a bottleneck.

DAW PLUS said:

it can be complicated and behave different on different system, also depending what version of Windows is being used.

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you are correct about variability from system to system, at least from what I can discern.

We are overdue for revising this list of Windows 10 suggestions. Maybe you could have a go at it? you seem to know a lot.

JohnG said:

you are correct about variability from system to system, at least from what I can discern.

We are overdue for revising this list of Windows 10 suggestions. Maybe you could have a go at it? you seem to know a lot.

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As a system builder, I am tied to a contract so I cannot post suggestions. Most software and interface vendors have pretty decent tips. Avoid what Black Viper suggests, it literally brings nothing on modern systems, at least not for audio.

DAW PLUS said:

As a system builder, I am tied to a contract so I cannot post suggestions. Most software and interface vendors have pretty decent tips.

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Understandable. If you have links to vendors whose advice you prefer, naturally that would be welcome.

I just got a huge improvement in my systems performance. Just installed this tool: https://bitsum.com/parkcontrol/ and oh boy this made a difference. I used to battle high interupt to process latency and long dropouts from time to time. My system is tweaked with almost everything I could find on line. To be honest I am surprised unparking cores in Windows changed something since I deactivated all C states and energy savers in my BIOS. Just had to share my joy
UPDATE: I can now run much lower buffers. Total game changer

Another thing to consider is HPET. This is a high precision event timer. There seems to be no consistency in whether disabling it gives better performance or vice versa. In my case it seems to be better having it enabled.
https://www.ghacks.net/2013/04/18/try-changing-hpet-settings-to-improve-your-pcs-performance/

I'll go down through this thread this evening..just built an i9 gigabyte system, and I'm underwhelmed by it's performance..might be nvidia bcc card..been googling all week, never thought to check here..