Significance of Graphics Card Drivers to Cubase?

Cubase
1

I’m making some initial preparations to upgrade to CB 12 from my current 11 Pro. I’m a busy video and music producer so I don’t want any problems that will take up extra time. In this thread here (Cubase Pro 12 constantly crashing - #8 by AdamMassacre) Martin Jirsak was advising the OP to install a special NVidia driver, saying,

Please try this:

** Download the latest Studio driver version from here . If there is no Studio driver for your graphic card, use the one, which is available and continue with the same steps bellow.*
** Disconnect the computer from the Internet to make sure Windows will not download and install its own graphic driver.**
** Uninstall the NVIDIA driver.**
** Restart computer.**
** Start the NVIDIA driver installation (as administrator).**
** Don’t install the whole package, use the Custom (Advanced) settings.**
** Disable everything (don’t install NVIDIA Experience, PhysX, etc.), keep just the video driver enabled.**
** Connect your computer to the internet.**

I use Premiere Pro for my video work and as you can imagine a professional video editor like that is fussy about things like video drivers, so since PP works perfectly I’m reluctant to mess with my video driver. Why does Cubase care about the video driver? FWIW my audio interface is a Steinberg UR22 Mk II.

Many people have reported problems with Cubase 12. I want to upgrade to lose the dongle. But I don’t have time for problems (nor do I have time for building a custom PC as someone here suggested). What is the least time-consuming way to make sure my upgrade is trouble-free?

Thanks in advance.

PS I followed the link in Martin’s suggestions and the NVidia page said nothing about a “Studio” driver. What is a Studio driver?

2

I think you’d have to be particularly unlucky for graphics drivers to cause an issue - I see a lot of people suggest they are an issue, yet very few problems solved by updating graphics drivers/cards

3

True, i dident buy any grffikcard on my new pc cos of this. Hopfully they have uppgrad the hole gui and Systembolaget make it flow with grafik Cards today, and start to use the gpu in cubase as a dps motor :slight_smile:

4

Here’s the deal , IF you follow Steinberg recommendation on chip sets and motherboards (which used to be the Z series and i can’t see why that would of changed ) there is no reason why you should be having soooooo much trouble .
One thing that Steinberg will not admit to is how fragile C12 is with Multi Monitor DAWs .Ive also had my fair share of issues with graphics in C12 BUT with trial and error on my side not understanding what was needed i went through 4 graphics cards until i found one to suit .
Some people will tell you to stay with the Windows onboard and Us USBc for any extra displays , if that works for you then fine , Scan computers also told me personally that i could use the onboard graphics along with a graphics card .
I use 4 screens myself and the fourth screen alone has mixer 2 , midi remote app , Supervision and the controlroom open on which does need a fair amount of graphics use is to but a reasonable graphics card if you are looking for more than 2 displays . Here’s what i tried .

Radeon Hd7900 out of date , which started all my problems with C12 but works perfect with C11 to this day
GT 730 because it had 4 HDMI ports i thought it might cope but turned out to be a big pile of crud
GTX1650 Ventux 4gb oc v1 (2020) , great little card IF you only want 3 screens with mediocre amounts of graphics ,can be a little laggy with some vsti’s
RTX 3060 Ventux 12gb … Brilliant card , absolutely brilliant , no stuttering of lagging when opening intense vsti’s like with the 1650 but to be honest if it wasn’t for Spectralayers 10 i would of stayed with the Gtx1650 but this is the thing :

With Audio it’s about removing the bottlenecks for the audio to run with less jitter and latency round trip as possible (im sure someone will tell me my terminology is wrong ) to complete it’s constant streaming tasks so the better card/driver you can afford the better ,
With my old 7900 card i could get approx 50 tracks MAX before the ASIO would spike and make C12 unusable .
With the GT 730 i could get about 30 tracks before the Asio glitched out (very annoying)
With GTX1650 in the time i used it i had 90 tracks with still headroom before the asio started being a little erratic
With the RTX3060 im working on a 2 hour project for the first time in my life with Cubase 12 with 185 tracks including vsti’s , audio , midi , sampler tracks and the Asio meter is still on less than Half , Unbelievable right ? Well this is my real world findings that graphics cards are important . Other will tell you not so but ,each to their own ,all i know is apart form a couple of small bugs C12 runs beautifully and the ASIO meter doesn’t even move let alone spike ,and that is the whole point keeping the asio happy .

Ps my spec
i7 9700
Corsair 32gb 3200
Corsair aio
Rtx 3060
Gigabytes Z390 chipset

Just think we have C13 to go through all this again aaahhh
Sorry for all the edits , i suffer with Dyslexia

5

It’s not reasonable to expect a user to install a particular motherboard and chipset to run a DAW. Many of us have multiple DAWs (I also use FL Studio) There’s no reason why Cubase shouldn’t work with any major off-the-shelf PC running Windows 10 or 11 - I’m using a Lenovo Thinkstation P520 and I expect it to work with that, as does my current installation of C11 Pro.

But my Question was about Graphics Cards. I asked why the graphics card even matters to Cubase. What is Cubase using a graphics card for? FWIW I have an Nvidia RTX4000 using 511.65, which is good enough for Premiere Pro, and given how fussy video editors are about graphics cards, if it’s good enough for Premiere Pro it should be good enough for Cubase. But again, why does Cubase 12 even care?

I’ve gone through several driver iterations since getting C11 with no issues but my projects aren’t as big as yours. My current project is the biggest one I’ve ever done and it’s about one-hour long with about 25 tracks. So far no problems with C11. Does C12 care more about that stuff?

6

Isn’t it ? Name another process that’s as demanding as Audio ? This is why you have too configure your Daw , if you don’t then your end up with issues . It really does boil down too in the end whether you want the full potential out of Cubase or not .
Background running software on Off the shelve computers can be a nightmare to configure for DAW work if you don’t know what you are looking for .
Companies have specific guildlines for reasons

7

I think DAWs that could only run without hanging or crashing on high-end custom PC’s would have very few sales. Anyway, Steinberg’s requirements are very modest. (see: System Requirements for Steinberg Products | Steinberg) For C12 Pro Minimum CPU is i5 , minimum graphics is Nvidia Series 700 or higher, Minimum RAM is 8GB. Pretty much any current off-the-shelf desktop PC meets or exceeds those specs.

I could see why having higher-end hardware might matter if you’re trying to push performance to its absolute limit just like if you were trying to edit 8K video at 120 FPS. But for more mundane applications like mine - 25 tracks - it better work on an off-the-shelf PC, and indeed, I’m having no problems on C11. Is C12 more finicky?

8

C12 had some sort of behind the scenes over haul on graphics handling so it seems , im sure C13 will shed more light as to why C12 has been more finicky . But the Question stands about performance , you either want a DAW , configured for audio or you have a general purpose computer which isn’t exactly the best because or the background running apps as ive mentioned

9

Unless Cubase is using some graphics card-based hardware acceleration (I don’t know one way or the other – I do know that Photoshop has the option to do that, and I have to turn it off for my relatively old graphics card), I think the answer to this question is likely that it’s not so much that the graphics card matters to Cubase specifically, but rather that anything that affects performance, and especially latency, matters to a DAW’s ability to run performance-intensive plugins and stream audio in real time based on the mix of tracks and plugins being run at any given time. This is a consideration for any drivers on the system, but especially audio card drivers and, to a somewhat lesser degree, graphics card drivers.

As I understand the Studio versus Game-Ready drivers for NVidia, the biggest difference is that the Studio drivers are intended for multimedia creators (e.g. users of DAWs, video editors, graphic editors, etc.), while the Game-Ready drivers are (obviously) intended for gamers. The Game-Ready drivers get much more frequent updates to suit high performance on the latest high-end games, but those frequent updates can sometimes create problems, for example in stability, for other uses.

My sense is that video editing is less intense on the need for low latency than DAW work (with lots of tracks and plugins) is. There is various caching and pre-rendering going on in some cases (I don’t know about Premier Pro) and/or lower resolution previewing, and the biggest demand comes when rendering the full-resolution result, which is not dependent on being able to keep up in real time, unlike DAW playback of lots of audio tracks with plugins active.

The main need in DAW world is having the video card do whatever work it needs to do as efficiently as possible, both to display what it needs to display (relatively limited impact in DAWs) and “stay out of the way” on the latency front. Some cards and drivers may be better than others in this respect, and the match of graphics card (and its drivers) and other system components (e.g. CPU, motherboard, etc.) may come into play with respect to which graphics card does best on this front in any given system.

As for the process mentioned for the graphics card stuff, the main thrust there would seem to be to choose the Studio drivers (over the Game-Ready drivers) and not turn on the extra stuff that is not needed for DAW work and which may impact the ability to get low latency. Worst case would be that, if Premiere Pro requires some facilities that these recommendations are suggesting not enabling, you could install them later, but perhaps they might have an adverse impact on Cubase. The Nvidia drivers do allow making some different optimizations for different programs, so that could also be an option.

10

I have igpu and downloaded latest opengl works like a charm

11

Well, 25 tracks is a child game comparing to my 100+ tracks in each project, using a tones of vst plugins and instruments. And I use 4 monitors, which is big difference for workflow and gpu usage comparing to systems with one or two monitors