Kick-ass computer, performance problems?!

althoff wrote on 8/26/2001, 10:18 PM
OK, here's my setup, first of all.

* Intel Pentium4, 1.5 Ghz
* Intel Motherboard
* Windows 2000 Server (for striping harddrives)
* 2x18 GB 10,000 RPM SCSI drives, striped
* 640 Mb RAM
* SB Live
* Geforce 2

I run about 15-20 tracks with a customary bunch of effects, nothing unusual. I get bigtime performance drops, my CPU load rockets up to 100% and stays there until I kill playback. Tried fiddling with playback buffer, doesn't really make any difference. It can finish off one bufferfull of sound, then starts to stutter.

Moved the project over to my friend's 2x1Ghz Intel PIII's on Windows XP, CPU meter barely reached 30%. Can someone please direct me towards what could be the problem? Is XP a better OS for media than W2k? Is Vegas optimized for dual processors? Is SCSI a bad choice for Vegas?

Pleeze =)

Comments

FadeToBlack wrote on 8/26/2001, 10:26 PM
althoff wrote on 8/26/2001, 10:30 PM
I read most of them but couldn't find much related to SCSI drives, that's the reason why I posted.

I can't find the DMA setting, probably because there isn't one on SCSI drives.

So, my question remains... Is there something else that might be the problem?
techead wrote on 8/27/2001, 7:10 AM
Two ideas for your performance drop:

1. I assume from your hardware/software description that you are using Windows 2000's software RAID striping. This takes away CPU time. It would be better to use a dedicated hardware RAID controller board from Mylex or Adaptec instead. Then the host OS does not have to deal with the RAID, it just looks like a giant high-performance hard drive.

2. Windows 2000 server is optimized as a general purpose file server running background processes. Windows 2000 Professional (workstation) is more optimized for running desktop applications. W2K Pro may be a better choice for running your projects.

Hope this helps.
jboy wrote on 8/27/2001, 2:42 PM
You might try downloading the demo version of SisSandra, or some similiar system measuring utility, to check and see how your box is running in general. It may be that it's functioning poorly, but you'd hardly notice except in an app that really taxes it. ..
althoff wrote on 8/27/2001, 6:33 PM
Yep, tried SisSandra, it reports a few nifty bits of info, but it says in general that it's not the harddrives that are the problem. They should manage the transfer rate.

No, I still get the feeling that it's something weird with W2kS and the software striping eating CPU time. I did check to run it from the network instead, but to my surprise I got the same bad performance.

Could of course mean that the SW-striping takes a constant toll on the computer rather than only eat CPU during disk operations, but there's no indication of that in the task manager. Kernel payload is rather low.

So, I'm back at square one. Maybe P4 wasn't such a good idea afterall. *sigh*
FadeToBlack wrote on 8/27/2001, 7:00 PM
Cheesehole wrote on 8/27/2001, 7:06 PM
I have a few suggestions:

1. set up your system and applications (like Vegas) on a good ATA-100 drive. (make sure your MB supports ata-100 and download appropriate drivers for your IDE controller so you can enable DMA)

2. use Win2kPro, not server (server loads a bunch of extra server related components that you'll never use, but will suck up CPU time and make it harder to isolate problems)

3. for all your sound/video data, use your SCSI drives with a hardware RAID controller OR as just a plain volume set (spanned volume). Avoid the software striping.

That will eliminate a lot of basic system bandwidth problems and if your problem doesn't go away, it will at least be easier to troubleshoot.

- ben
althoff wrote on 8/27/2001, 9:19 PM
Sounds reasonable, I'll take this up with our systems technician tomorrow.

Thanks for all the tips, guys! Nice to know there's compentent people around, willing to help a guy out.

Happy tracking =)
steveh wrote on 8/28/2001, 3:19 PM
Go to:

http://www.3bsoftware.com/

for SANDRA...