Cubase Realtime performance penalty on upgrade from NVIDIA G

Cubase
21

Dual boot the OS and then its the same hardware, and with some stuff disabled, then there is no interference from non-music related stuff. I definitely wouldn’t mix it all into one OS.

In my case the other OS is used for numerical programming as is the GPU on the graphics card (and games :wink: )

This is almost certainly related to the NVIDIA driver + Cubase 8 combo as triggering a screen refresh makes the spikes much worse. Unfortunately anyone with a 900 series card can’t go back to the earlier driver versions that didn’t exhibit the problem we are seeing. Still there are folks with the problem even without this combo so its all a bit odd. I keep meaning to install Cubase 7.5 again alongside the 8 to see what its behaviour is like with the new card. just a bit concerned it might break everything! I may back things up and try it again on the weekend.

My guess is it will be optimised and fixed eventually. In the meantime a clean install got me back down to 64 samples latency with bursts jumping up to 60%, sometimes more on the realtime perf meter. But ASIO guard comes into its own in this situation and for my current usage this all works well enough. The older NVIDIA 670 card and older drivers worked down around 20% under similar load without bursts.

22

Not sure I agree with the Nvidia theory. I have MSI Nvidia GTX670 and all worked very well until C8 installed.
I have since moved the drivers back to 340.52 with little or no difference. I then disabled it and used the Intel onboard graphics which made no difference again. So I am just as puzzled as Steinberg seem to be.
I have logged as an issue but have had not response. I think they shgould release a statement even if it does say they dont know what the issue is but are looking into it. I would be happy to let them take remote control of my PC for them to see the issue and do whatever they need to do. I have payed for an upgrade which specifically is supposed to give better performance, mine is far worse. If I took my car to a garage for a service/upgrade and it came back worse I certainly would not pay.
Also seems that the Steinberg guys dont frequent these forums as much as they used too. I cant recall seeing any valuable advice on this issue from them.

Come on Steinberg, make an effort and at least let us know you are looking into this.
I would welcome you guys (Steinberg) to take control of my PC and do what you can to fix.
This is a Steinberg issue no matter which way its viewed, as such unless I get some reassurance that they are doing something I will taken necessary action to secure a refund for the recent downgrade and stick with 7.5 until the issue is corrected.

I will follow up my original query/issue with Steinberg and lets hope they at least have the decency to reply.

I am feeling badly let down by Steinberg on this issue.

23

What about Fabfilter plugins?

It’s also possible the text file fix would not work, but the 335.23 driver would. Probably not, but if all else fails…

I’ve also heard that enabling triple buffering for OpenGL in the video driver may solve the issue for some (with Waves). I have not tried this myself yet, but thought I’d share.

Not far enough. The last drivers to not have the issue are specifically 335.23.

I’ve bumped into this on two different DAWs and multiple times on each DAW when Windows did its auto-update thing (which I’ve now disabled).

Also tested several times with Wave tech support.

If you’ve still got the issue, try it. You’ve got nothing to lose.

Btw, this highlights why it’s nice to separate the DAW from the gaming machine. These kinds of decisions become easier when there are no tradeoffs to weigh.

24

Just to add another voice…I’m also having issues with ASIO spikes in Cubase 8, and I have a Nvidia GTX760, so there does seem to be some issue with the two not playing nicely.

My symptoms seem to be just slightly different though, which is that everything works just fine when I first fire up Cubase, but then as time goes on, ASIO spikes start creeping in until every couple seconds, regardless of what I’m doing, the ASIO overload light starts popping on. The ASIO meter is bouncing up and down, the red light going on, and I could be just sitting there doing nothing. Not recording, not playing back, just sitting idle and this is going on. When I playback, it’s clicks and pops galore.

This is resolved by closing Cubase (which crashes on close 90% of the time for me) and restarting. Then it’s fine again for a while.

So now, I just figure when I start getting ASIO spikes, it just means I’ve been working too long and I need a reboot break! :smiley:

I really hope this gets resolved soon, but in the meantime I’m going to try to remove some of the Nvidia software like GeForce Experience, etc. Maybe that will help…

25

i have now gone back to the suggested 335.23 drivers with no improvement.
I now give up. Having spent close to £2000 on Steinberg product I am no longer getting pleasure or the experince I deserve. I will now pursue my logged issue and request a refund for the version 8 upgrade. I will go back to 7.5 and when the issue finally gets resolved I may upgrade again depending on if I have moved back to pro tools.
Its really a shame as I just purchased Omnisphere and i am simply not getting the performance or enjoyment.

26

Most likely not related to the video card. But yes, remove all the Nvidia bloatware.

I’d check to make sure a drive isn’t set to index (for search results).

And do all these steps…

If after that it still happens, I’d check system services and any other startup or background processes.

After that I’d check audio interface issues (firewire / usb / drivers, etc.).

27

Well, crap. Sorry that didn’t work.

Last ditch effort would be to check the video link I posted above, and the other advice in my post.

After that, I got nothing. Except a complete rebuild and/reinstall.

The only comfort I can offer is that a stable and well-performing system, though difficult to achieve it would seem, is possible. I currently have such a system (after much work, many pitfalls and countless setbacks).

28

could you un install all of the Nvidea drivers/software and just use the Microsoft driver?


MC


p.s. I’m using a G force GT640 with 3 screens (30 cinema display and 2x 24 high res samsung)absolutely no problems at all, it is a completely passive card as well so no noise.

29

Any direct x9 or better card with the right number of outputs for the user will be fine for DAW work - including the vast majority of onboard gpus. There’s no need for high end actively cooled graphics cards with cubase unless you are scoring against videos - even then most modern low-end gpus will cope.

30

Are you using Cubase 8, as the problem is as far as I am aware only with Cubase since the Version 8 update.

31

Yes I am. I posted a scene gab in a thread about multi core/thread performance to show how well my system works compared to someone with issues of CPU spiking using dark planet VI on their Dual Xeon set up.

32

Downgrading to nVidia driver 335.23 also solved my video issues (thanks for the tip!). I was getting frequent hiccups in videos and in the interface in general. I opened a support ticket about this about a month ago and have yet to get a response.

I also opened a ticket about side-chaining not working as expected with the multi-band compressor and haven’t heard anything either. Not sure what’s up with Steinberg’s support, but in the past they were much more responsive.

Sean

33

First of all, after doing some research, im amazed at how many people this issue is affecting across a large array of different computer hardware setups, the only real similarity is that most people are using Nvidia graphic cards rather than AMD (however I have seen people reporting same problem with AMD too lol)

This issue needs to be highly prioritised and fixed as I have been dealing with this ever since Cubase 7 & it has really affected my motivation & enthusiasm towards my music as I don’t have confidence in my DAW Cubase 8.

My computer hardware is the following:

OS: Windows 7 64bit
DAW: Cubase 7 & 8 32bit & 64bit
CPU: i7 960 (Turbo & C1E disabled)
Motherboard: ASUS P6X58D-E x58 Chipset
Graphic Card: AMD 7970 & Nvidia GTX970 (I have been through 2 different cards since Cubase 7, I experience the issue with both cards)
RAM: Corsair Vengeance, Corsair Dominator, G Skill Ripjaws (I have tried 3 different sets of RAM over time, I like having extra sets lying around for testing purposes)
HDD: Mechanical & SSD (I have been through a handful of reformats since Cubase 7, have used cubase with both mechanical & now currently SSD drive, still experiencing same issue)
Audio Interface: Presonus AudioBox & RME Fireface UCX

Windows 7 Power settings have been tweaked for max best performance.

I have also tried different USB ports for my Audio Interface to see if it had something to do with my motherboard chipsets IRQ assignments, but to no avail.

So yea, basically I have had this 100% performance load spiking issue ever since Cubase 7 & 8 over a a bunch of different hardware, different driver versions & fresh windows reformat re-installs.
The only significant thing I can say for my situation is I notice the performance load spiking more regularly when im doing things such as:

  1. Dragging events around on the Arrangement track
  2. Hovering / moving the mute tool over events on the Arrangement Track
  3. The rest of the time is less frequent & random for eg. a spontaneous performance spike might happen when im playing around with a VST, or writing something in the piano roll, the pattern isn’t as consistent as above.

Last words, I havn’t spent enough time analysing with different graphic card driver versions, but as far as I can tell I have been experiencing this issue with every driver version, same issue between AMD & Nvidia graphic cards so yea.

Steinberg please fix this issue !

34

I had this problem, introduced at Cubase 7 and got worse and worse with every release to the point my DAW was hardly usable (no problems in Reaper or Mixbus which flew along on what is a reasonably fast PC) I was just about to ditch Cubase after decades of using it and the last 8.5 patch (largely) fixed the issue. My personal opinion is there’s something wrong with the ASIO guard code.