Despite my searching I’m having a difficult time deciding how to choose an appropriate CPU for Gig Performer. To my knowledge Gig Performer doesn’t use multiple cores, and, it appears the base clock speed is important even if Intel Turbo Boost will dynamically allocate more speed to an assigned core.
Intel base clock speeds are sometimes not even in the specifications, but they are increasingly low for the newer hybrid models with p-cores and e-cores. For example, a base clock speed may be only 2.1 GHz but with turbo boost a p-core can go to 4.50 GHz.
It’s difficult to find a new Intel CPU with a high base clock speed. If the GP community is having success with Intel hybrid CPUs despite a low base clock speed what models are recommended?
Or, is it best to just go with AMD? AMD doesn’t have the Intel design methodology of using p-cores and e-cores with turbo boost and a lower base clock speed.
I think there are a fair number of people with newer intel based chips. I tend to think that the turbo does give you the CPU you need with the newer intel chips, so you can sort of ignore the “base cpu”.
Maybe build in a bit of cushion? (5.00 GHZ p core or more with “turbo”?)
But, let’s see what other people are experiencing.
I don’t have systems with AMD cpus, so I can’t comment on that, but I’ve been testing an Intel I7-1360P (2.2Ghz base, 5.0/3.7Ghz turbo for p/e cores), and results weren’t bad. Windows seems clever enough to do the scheduling right, so the audio thread of GP doesn’t end up on an efficiency core.
Disclaimer:
I don’t use this system for performances, just for development, (but I really stressed out the system during testing.)
I’m a guitar player and in my case the normal setups are rather easy.
My backup computer
Intel(R) Core™ i7-4810MQ CPU @ 2.80GHz 2.80 GHz 16.0 GB RAM Windows 10 Pro
This computer works fine with turbo. It changes speed without interrupting audio. I did optimize everything including disabling defender.
My performance computer
13th Gen Intel(R) Core™ i7-13700HX 2.30 GHz 32.0 GB RAM Windows 11 Pro
I had to disable turbo in the BIOS on this one and set it to always run at top speed. In fact, I had to optimize everything to get this one to run without occasional audio interruptions.
@npudar I don’t recall everything I changed. For the most part, following the document provided by GP for optimizing Windows would cover most of it. What I found troubling is that the standard means of killing Windows Defender did not resolve the problem. It continues to get triggered every few minutes anyway. And those triggers would cause short instances of dead audio. I had to go into group policy and totally kill the service where it could never run to get it to stop. Once I did that, I had no further problems.
I can’t recommend doing this because it leaves a computer vulnerable to all the things defender is designed to block. I determined it was acceptable in my case because the computer involved is never allowed to connect to the internet except for when I have a long break between gigs. I use those as opportunities to perform all updates and make sure everything is running properly before the next gig. That’s typically a once each year December thing.
I am never connected to the internet when using Gig Performer so I turn off realtime protection in Windows settings prior to running Gig Performer.
I wish I could add turning off realtime protection (i.e. Windows Defender) to my GP startup batch file. Currently I have to drill down in settings and disable it.
However, in my experimenting I’ve never had Windows Defender interfere with audio through grabbing too much CPU. Perhaps if it were to initiate a full scan?
@dwhitejazz, @Frank1119 Even when killing real time scans through provided end user means, the service still runs. I found that every 10 minutes or so, something triggered defender. It would run, determine it was not allowed to do anything, and then go back to sleep. I found that it was causing occasional black outs in my audio. So, I disabled the service entirely.
I’m certain disabling real time scan can be accomplished with a batch file. Likely just a matter of knowing what registry entry to modify.
I do like @npudar 's suggestion that relacing defender with another antivirus might resolve the problem. But I come from an era when antivirus providers were also releasing viruses so they could claim they were protecting you and their competitors were not. I have a general distrust of antivirus providers.
I think that was just conspiracy theories. There were a couple of examples where one AV decided another AV was a virus and those grew to conspiracy levels.
Like every conspiracy theory, you’d need way too many people to keep it secret.