My 8 year old HP Z-Book with Windows 7 has served me well! I just ordered this as it’s replacement. I hope I can figure out the windows 11 crap… Any advice for when this arrives as far as do’s and don’ts when setting it up? Is it an anxiety promoting event? I’m nervously excited. Will be running VCV Rack, CorelDRAW Standard, and Movavi video editor.
If you can be bothered, format the disk and install windows from scratch. Then you can just install the drivers you need, and not have all the OEM bloatware that windows usually come with.
Probably worth changing the power settings to max performance, other than that there’s not much I’d do. I used to spend hours tweaking windows settings for performance but these days it seems to just change itself back whenever you get updates.
I’m still on windows 10 on my main laptop, but I’ve used VCV on 11 too and didn’t seem to have any problems.
don’t know win11 (just seen here and there but never been on my pc), but I have seen that win10pro runs fine on good machines and ages very well, while the “slick” version = slow death.
you have a good machine and the “pro” version, I would not be on anxiety.
I know many of us here in the community are on win11, I’m interested as well in what they have to say about it
I worked at a technology repair center in the 80’s. I worked on IBM PC, XT, 286, running DOS. I would format drives and install DOS and later windows, from floppy disks. haha! But I don’t know the new stuff. At all… haha! I would be happy with windows 7 forever, but there’s no support for it any more. thanks! I remain optimistic.
I guess I’m just a rebel. I refused to get win 10 because I would loose CorelDRAW 15 which I use for my laser. It got to the point I could not open newer format files, certain websites would not work anymore… Long overdue. I was able to score a humble bundle with CorelDRAW Standard, for $35, well I paid more cause it’s for charity.
I received my new laptop. The first thing it did was to update the BIOS. I was a but nervous, but it went flawlessly. Then it did some windows updates. It is pretty awesome. I got it setup, somewhat. I installed Movavi, a video editor, it recognized the hardware accelerator and implemented it. I did a test render of a complex scene and it is so much faster. Like wtf faster… lol
I still need to install VCV on it. will do that today. I guess I just install it, and copy my files over? Oh crap, I have to reinstall Southpole modules, I still have the file… And my VST’s… Oh crap oh crap oh crap…
I have VCV Rack installed and it works great. I am working on a large (for me) patch and it’s using 35% which is a huge improvement. I went from windows 7 to windows 11. It’s different, but manageable. I had to uninstall mcafee using windows uninstall, and it worked without issue. Overall very happy with this laptop.
These days I would consider McAfee, Norton, Bull guard being more a “virus” than an anti-virus, but often you can reduce CPU load by removing/disable bloat-ware many resellers put on the PC.
I haven’t specifically for VCV, but in the past I’ve used “CPU lasso” with Flight-sim, to increase processor priority for the primary program I’ve been running, and perhaps moving less needed task/program to run on the E-cores, so the P-cores are “more” available for the software that needs them
As long as I can, I’m going to avoid Apple products. Their policies do not match my philosophy, and I don’t need their OS because I can do everything I think about on my PC.
Of course they are producing REALLY good hardware these days, and if my 6yo intel laptop dies today probably they will get my money
I used to format drives and install windows, but it’s been a long time. I really have no local technical friends to give me any real time guidance. Ultimately, it was easier to just uninstall mcafee. Well I am running vcv in whatever mode it defaults to. I’ve made no changes, just installed it. I’m just amazed with this machine.
Thanks, good to know that runs OK. My problem is that when you try to research specs and benchmarks online, most of it relates to multi core performance like video rendering, and single core speed still seems to be the most important factor for VCV. It’s difficult to relate benchmarks to real-world VCV use.
Also, I’m very greedy and like to make everything polyphonic, and run stupid amounts of effects and voices.
One important thing on a laptop is to force Rack to use the discrete graphics. The default is to use the built in gpu which has much worse performance.
Hey thanks for the heads up. I made the change this morning and I think my patch sounds more high performance… haha! Seriously though, how will this performance increase be realized? Thanks again!
When using VCV Rack with an Nvidia GPU, performance significantly increases because the GPU’s parallel processing power can handle complex audio calculations much faster than a standard CPU, especially when dealing with computationally intensive audio effects, particularly those utilizing AI or machine learning algorithms, leading to smoother playback and faster rendering times.
Key points about using an Nvidia GPU with VCV Rack:
Parallel processing:
GPUs have a large number of cores designed for performing many calculations simultaneously, which is ideal for the parallel nature of audio processing in VCV Rack.
CUDA acceleration:
Nvidia GPUs leverage CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture), a programming model that allows developers to efficiently utilize the GPU for custom calculations, which VCV Rack leverages for optimized performance.
Tensor Cores:
Newer Nvidia GPUs have dedicated Tensor Cores which further accelerate AI-based audio effects, resulting in significantly faster processing.
VRAM impact:
A GPU with sufficient video memory (VRAM) can handle larger audio datasets and complex audio manipulations without performance bottlenecks.
Overall, using an Nvidia GPU with VCV Rack can lead to:
Faster rendering times: Complex audio effects and large patch sizes can be rendered much quicker.
Smoother playback: Real-time audio processing with minimal latency, especially for demanding effects.
Improved performance for AI-based audio plugins: Enhanced processing power for complex AI algorithms within VCV Rack
I’m hoping for the best. 
