Now I tried the experimental version of VCV with my Ryzen 1700 PC (8 cores /16 threads)
— omg this is amazing —
I can paly the 4th jan 2 patch here in 96000Hz with 10 threads enabled and still have about 400 ms
in the cpu meter left
more threads don’t help much and if I try using 13 or 14 threads it starts crackling.
when I play the patch at 41000Hz with 10 threads activated I have about 700 ms left and
with the WASAPI driver I can go down to 64 (1.5ms) ,
this is really good news imho.
I don’t need to change the graphics settings at all, it’s running fine at 90fps and doesn’t change the performance when I change the setting.
that’s awesome. I’ve also got 8 cores/16 threads and I’ve never found any benefit in any CPU intensive workload in going above core count. I’m sure hyperthreading isn’t actually useless, but I’ve never found a use for it.
glad it’s working for you. I don’t think FPS limiting is going to be useful for you, multi threading is for the higher end machines, FPS limiting seems to be the lower end … and macbooks.
seriously, I have a quad core MacBook and have to FPS limit to play this conversation’s sample patch, even though it’s fine to play on a single thread. something else is going on here I think.
I haven’t got the chance to properly try this yet, however it might be worth making a thread just for this fork rather than this one. Excellent work by the way!
PS Andrew does not seem thrilled so maybe we keep it down a bit…
I’ve tried it at various FPS limits, block sizes, and audio thread counts and I have to admit I’m not seeing a significant improvement at any block size. Interestingly the audio thread count seems to inflate the remaining mS available but it doesn’t seem to help. For example at 30fps with 512 block size I’m getting a tonne of stutter but sitting at around 350 mS with 2 threads. Even so with 1 thread I’m at >150 mS consistently yet I’m still getting a tonne of stuttering.
It seems definitely helpful, but not enough to get my MacBook to work with this patch right now
I’ve been trying out the multithread version (totally distracting me from working lol), and on my 2017 MBP I can use framerate 30 and 3 threads to get what seems like much better performance, at least I’m able to screen record video/audio and patch/modulate/wiggle without glitching. Temperature is showing 137, however, the fans are not screaming atm. I do have the MBP on a cooling pad (which from what I read doesn’t help much at all).
@JimT I don’t -think- I saw much about it on here yet… Think the experimental build might help out a 2 year old AMD quad-core A10-9600P 4C+6GPU?
If it’s any kind of benchmark, Valley Plateau runs about 120-150 miliSquirrels, and Frozen Wasteland Portland Weather about 1400 mechaSqueaks (which reminds me, I need to figure out bug reporting on the Klirr Factory PW - I never got it to load ever)
You’ve got 4 cores, so it might do something. However, PW taking >1000 squirrels probably won’t run given any number of cores, looks like it’s taking longer than 1 sample time to process 1 sample and the MT patch can’t make an individual module run multi-threaded. The only hope for PW is faster single core performance, but once you’ve got that, you can run the other modules on a different thread using the MT patch whilst PW takes up its own core.
Reducing FPS might help out too (in some voodoo, unspecified way).
This is definitely helping hugely on newer patches I’ve been making. I think maybe Dexter was causing a lot of issue for me.
Biggest benefit is that on 30fps my fan is not going anywhere near as mental and it doesn’t feel hot at all, which was a huge issue that would start pretty quickly after adding even a small number of modules!! So thanks very much @JimT
Another thing I discovered that improves performance greatly to me is Squirky Labs’ Thread Booster. On my mac this makes it so I can actually browse chrome with VCV Rack running my music without unbearable amounts of stuttering. On real-time i actually get no stuttering no matter what I do but chrome sometimes hangs, but I don’t mind that. Definitely a life saver module I wish I knew about!
Here’s my first proper patch with this new VCV Rack. Thanks again @JimT! 8th jan.vcv (82.8 KB) (don’t forget to hit reset on CLOCKED to make sure everything is running, thread booster is to the right of Audio if you have issues with it)
I’ve never used SevenSeas and don’t have time to figure it out right now. I can maybe try tonight.
DeepNoteGenerator is ~240mS on the i9 MBP.
I don’t think this is the right box to be testing on though as I am in the ‘overheating MBP’ group, not the ‘old machine’ group, of possible beneficiaries of Jim’s mod. The multithread mod might help an old machine that is struggling with it, whereas I benefit from being able to reduce the GPU frame rate.
Deepnote works fine in multithreaded. Adding it to joe’s patch does cause stuttering on my windows laptop just before the crescendo. Adding a second thread lets it run cleanly. I can’t give meaningful figures on 2 threads as the cpu counters get a bit screwy - I haven’t adjusted their math to account for the extra threads. It won’t use more or less CPU, it just runs deepnote on the extra thread and is fine.
FPS limiting has no effect.
Forcing 7seas to run on the engine thread is much the same story. Although I haven’t figured out how to get a sound from it yet. It’s current sitting on ~60mS, it’s happy getting processed with an extra thread.
