korz
02-10-2003, 12:20 PM
Firstly, I'd like to complain that the text of a message gets wiped out if you submit a post without your password... I spent a half hour writing a post which was wiped out because I accidentally hit BACK and then FORWARD on my brouser, which erased the password, and then Submit New Topic. The system should simply ask for your password and then post your article.
My questions:
I've run across three articles on Optimizing a PC for Audio:
http://www.aardvarkaudio.com/aasd-v1/products/general-support/Optimizing-PC-for-Audio/optimization-forpc.html
http://www.funklogic.com/pcaudio.htm
http://www.nemesysmusic.com/support/W2k_XP_Optimize.pdf
Naturally, the articles don't all agree. Some of the changes (like disabling Disk I/O logging or disabling AutoStart) are no-brainers. I'd like comments on some of the other things that are mentioned. Specifically, I'm interested in comments on the following tweaks:
* I've got a 2.53GHz P4 and a Matrox G450 32M video card. Will lowering the color quality from 32bit to 16bit significantly improve performance? I would like to occasionally use the system for Photoshop and would prefer to not have to switch back and forth.
* The Tascam (the third article, in case you haven't followed the links yet) article says to disable System Restore, which I believe works like GoBack in that it logs changes to the hard disk and allows you to roll back the clock on the system. Clearly I want to disable this for my audio hard disk, but I have a separate disk for my boot/OS/apps and, in fact, I have partitioned it into a C: and an F: drive and I'm trying to put all my applications on the F: drive (some insist on being on the C: drive). Would it severely impact performance to have System Restore on the C: and F: drives or should I disable it there too?
* It seems odd that the article should suggest that we set up Performance to give the best *background* service performance. It says to do this because ASIO-based drivers run in the background. Is this right?
* Swap File, aka Virtual Memory is a biggie. This and the previous Tascam article it references say to set your Swap File to a fixed size. The previous Tascam article (if I recall correctly) says to set your Swap File to zero, defrag, and then set up the Swap File to be of a fixed size, so that it get's place in a favourable place on the drive (or something like that). Another oddity here is that the article says to set your Virtual Memory size to 1.5 to 2 times your RAM, but if you have 512M of RAM, to set the Virtual Memory size to 512M. But what if I've got 1G of RAM?!?
* One of the articles doesn't even mention disabling Write Behind Caching, although judging from the explanation in the other two articles, I frankly can't see how our Audio applications could *ever* work with it turned on! I trust that we should definitely disable it, right?
Here's one more from me, unmentioned in these articles. I read in an article on general-purpose comupting, that you can significantly increase performance by putting your Swap File (Virtual Memory) on it's own hard disk (not just it's own partition!). I can see that being true, in general, but would it be a significant improvement for our Audio applications? Given that my mobo (Asus P4B533-E) has two IDE controllers, for potentially 8 IDE drives (4 masters!) and that I can get a 30G, ATA133, 7200RPM, fluid bearing, hard disk for $72 including shipping (see www.techbargains.com), (http://www.techbargains.com),) would it be worth it?
What say ye?
Thanks!
Al.
My questions:
I've run across three articles on Optimizing a PC for Audio:
http://www.aardvarkaudio.com/aasd-v1/products/general-support/Optimizing-PC-for-Audio/optimization-forpc.html
http://www.funklogic.com/pcaudio.htm
http://www.nemesysmusic.com/support/W2k_XP_Optimize.pdf
Naturally, the articles don't all agree. Some of the changes (like disabling Disk I/O logging or disabling AutoStart) are no-brainers. I'd like comments on some of the other things that are mentioned. Specifically, I'm interested in comments on the following tweaks:
* I've got a 2.53GHz P4 and a Matrox G450 32M video card. Will lowering the color quality from 32bit to 16bit significantly improve performance? I would like to occasionally use the system for Photoshop and would prefer to not have to switch back and forth.
* The Tascam (the third article, in case you haven't followed the links yet) article says to disable System Restore, which I believe works like GoBack in that it logs changes to the hard disk and allows you to roll back the clock on the system. Clearly I want to disable this for my audio hard disk, but I have a separate disk for my boot/OS/apps and, in fact, I have partitioned it into a C: and an F: drive and I'm trying to put all my applications on the F: drive (some insist on being on the C: drive). Would it severely impact performance to have System Restore on the C: and F: drives or should I disable it there too?
* It seems odd that the article should suggest that we set up Performance to give the best *background* service performance. It says to do this because ASIO-based drivers run in the background. Is this right?
* Swap File, aka Virtual Memory is a biggie. This and the previous Tascam article it references say to set your Swap File to a fixed size. The previous Tascam article (if I recall correctly) says to set your Swap File to zero, defrag, and then set up the Swap File to be of a fixed size, so that it get's place in a favourable place on the drive (or something like that). Another oddity here is that the article says to set your Virtual Memory size to 1.5 to 2 times your RAM, but if you have 512M of RAM, to set the Virtual Memory size to 512M. But what if I've got 1G of RAM?!?
* One of the articles doesn't even mention disabling Write Behind Caching, although judging from the explanation in the other two articles, I frankly can't see how our Audio applications could *ever* work with it turned on! I trust that we should definitely disable it, right?
Here's one more from me, unmentioned in these articles. I read in an article on general-purpose comupting, that you can significantly increase performance by putting your Swap File (Virtual Memory) on it's own hard disk (not just it's own partition!). I can see that being true, in general, but would it be a significant improvement for our Audio applications? Given that my mobo (Asus P4B533-E) has two IDE controllers, for potentially 8 IDE drives (4 masters!) and that I can get a 30G, ATA133, 7200RPM, fluid bearing, hard disk for $72 including shipping (see www.techbargains.com), (http://www.techbargains.com),) would it be worth it?
What say ye?
Thanks!
Al.