Cubase 9.5 & 10 Stable. Tweaking Cubase & Settings.

Cubase
#1

Hi Everyone, So recently I spent a crapload of time tweaking my Bios on my (Hackintosh) running Mojave 10.14.2.

I have to say, after really going hard on the Tweaks on My (pc) (mac) is flying stable as can be! I have never had it this rock solid ever.

I found A good Gpu has made loads of difference. I can run a web browser now with no dropouts as the most extreme test.

See the image attached, this is what I have done & these are my Hackintosh settings on a Gigabyte Board.

I did everything in stages Firstly all the tweaks got it stable with very minor dropouts, Lastly added The Amd Rx580 8Gb & it’s flying with not one glitch.

So whatever they say, a video card makes a massive difference.

This video is a must as well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxtkEyGih2g&t=29s&fbclid=IwAR1V8iOrnpqis97wdL18hr7mYyLLPyfh9he87G9hY9XiWhKrA_uq-aYooIo

Specs.

Motherboard GA-Z97X-UD7 TH
CPU i7-4790K
Graphics Rx580 pulse 8Gb
16gb ram.
Uad Thunderbolt
Noctua DNu15 cooler.

Settings.

1.) /M.I.T/Advanced Frequency Settings/
a.) Extreme Memory Profile: (X.M.P): Profile1


5.) /BIOS/Secure Boot/
a.) Secure Boot Enable: Disabled

6.) /Peripherals/USB Configuration/
a.) XHCI Hand-off: Enabled

7.) /Peripheral/Thunderbolt Configuration/ Legacy Mode
8.) /Chipset/
a.) VT-d: Disabled

9.) /Save& Exit/
a.) Save & Exit as

I have managed to improve my ASIO performance significantly on a intels modern CPU’s so I thought I could share my settings in case it could help someone.

A lot of problems came from some Intel and Win10/Mac features that are always trying down-clock the CPU speed to save power consumption, which is totally an ASIO killer. This was causing my ASIO meter to be very unstable, and was causing ASIO drop outs on heavy load.

CPU is a i7-4790K base clock at 4.00Ghz.

The key for me was to figure out how to “lock” the CPU at 4.0Ghz, all the time, which is the maximum speed of the CPU, without having the BIOS feature to down-clock the speed of the CPU.

So here all the BIOS settings I had to manually change to make sure the CPU stays at it’s full potential, all the time:

1-Extreme Memory Profile (X.M.P) at Profile 1, to have my RAM running at 2400Mhz instead of the default 2133Mhz
2-Intel Turbo Boost Technology: Enabled, all Default
3-Intel Turbo Boost MAX Technology 3.0: Enabled. (This is what makes my CPU running at the max 4.0Ghz.)
4-Hyper Threading: Enabled. Seems to be ok for me

Now to prevents the CPU to be down clocked or down powered:
5-CPU Enhanced Halt (C1E): Disabled
6-C3 State Support: Disabled
7-C6/C7 State Support: Disabled
8-CPU EIST Function (Enhanced Intel® Speed Step Technology): Disabled
9-In Windows, make sure to use the High Performance Power Plan. In advanced properties, make sure to have all Processor Power settings at 100%.

Now, after a reboot, my CPU is locked 4.0Ghz all the time.

My ASIO meter is now rock solid under heavy load instead of moving back and forth and causing ASIO drop outs.

#2

Nick,

Thanks for sharing! I’m in the process of deciding on components for a new workstation build to replace my current one (6 years old). And was thinking about ditching the dedicated GPU so I can have more PCIe slots for a Thunderbolt Card and future NVME PCIe drives. The newer motherboards have decent built in graphics but after reading this I may just stick with a simple PCIe GPU.

#3

Yes, And it seems to be better with drivers than Nvidia. I have tried both, much better latency with Amd. Regarding Boards, you can buy boards with Thunderbolt inbuilt. I’m not sure how stable Cubase 10 is yet, as I’m a little scared to upgrade but 9.5 with these settings is flying on mojave & windows 10. same projects open perfect in 10 with no difference in CPU.

#4

Nick,

CB 10 has been solid for me (so far), I keep the installation on my OS drive and make sure to clean up previous version folders once I feel confident with an upgrade. All my other music related programs are installed onto a separate drive. I isolated the Cubase/Steinberg installs a while back and it’s worked well for me.

I notice you have a UAD Thunderbolt setup, I’m currently running an old Apollo 8 Silverface on Firewire and will be getting a Thunderbolt expansion card when I build the new Workstation. Looking at getting an ASUS Motherboard with a Thunderbolt Header and connecting an ASUS PCIe Thunderbolt card, UAD has this as an approved connection so I should be good to go.

Wondering how you like Thunderbolt, not sure if I should go with a TB2 or TB3 card. Doesn’t seem to be much advantage going TB3, I’m not going to be connecting anything other than the Apollo to it (and I’m not sure if the Silverface’s support the TB3 card, UAD doesn’t clearly state compatibility anywhere).

Thanks!