DP8 processor usage with 8-cores, meter vs meter

[wheever]

Hi my Unicorn sibs,

After reading about the amazingly easy and cheap CPU upgrade conleycd mentioned over on this thread: http://www.motunation.com/forum/viewtop ... 39#p434939 I went and stuck a couple of 4-core chips into my aging 2006 Macpro quad.

Anyway, yes, so everything is zipping along, and DP is much snappier...however: There now seems to be a complete mismatch between what DP is showing in terms of processor usage, and what menu meters is showing me. DP8's processor meter is showing, say, 70% processor used, vs menu meters showing all 8 cores running at 35%. Previously (and in DP 7, in truth,) the correlation was pretty close.

So what I'm asking is, do those of you running DP8 and menu meters (or similar) notice this? How about those of you with (real) 8 cores? I need to try to establish whether this is an idiosyncrasy in how DP handles 8 cores, or whether it's an idiosyncrasy manifested because of my new and utterly awesome frankenMacpro.

Thanks for any help you can give.

(Also, I highly recommend this upgrade to anyone with a 2006 Macpro. It takes all of 30 minutes if you're at all handy. It cost me $120 and will extended the life of this computer until one of my major programs will require 64-bit; so another 3-5 years. If you want more info, ask away.)

[conleycd]

Hey there,

I don't have DP8 yet to compare. I will have to take a look when I have it.

About running in 64 bit mode - apparently it is doable but involves transforming your Mac into a Hackinstosh - which may still be legal under the license agreement given that you are using Apple Hardware.

CC

[wheever]

Many thanks to you conleycd for having mentioned the upgrade in that thread! It's like a new machine!

I know I could hack the firmware to run 64 bit--and as a matter of fact I've come across ways of doing it that might not even require hacking the firmware--but I figure at that point the bottleneck will be buss speeds, and whatever version of DP or Reaktor will have speed requirements that will choke what will then be a 10 year old machine and it will be time to upgrade to a new 24-core running OS11 Aardvark. But I guess I'll blow up that bridge when I get to it,

[James Steele]

Yeah... when I get a few bucks, I really need to do this. I have a 2006 MacPro 1,1 and sounds like this would be pretty cool!

[Shooshie]

Ever since I've been using multi-processor Macs, the CPU activity shown in Activity Monitor and that shown in DP's Audio Performance Monitor have been seemingly without any correlation at all. Since I've used MenuMeters, the same disconnect has always been present. Now that I use a 12 core Mac, with 12 virtual cores (24 cores shown in MenuMeters), I've quit worrying about what DP's Audio Performance Monitor says. It just doesn't seem to have anything to do with anything. Maybe I need to read the manual to understand what it's measuring and how we're supposed to read it.

I would trust MenuMeters and not AudioMonitor. However, Audio Monitor clearly always leaves room for a buffer. Maybe it's the more reliable one to trust, but I'm not going on record as endorsing it.

shooshie

[FutureLegends]

I also upgraded my Mac Pro 1,1 to a 3ghz 8-core.
I have no idea what menu meters is. But if I compare DP's performance monitor to the Activity Monitor in OSX, the one in DP is usually fluctuating between 35-70 while Activity Monitor shows a steady 30%.
As far as I recall, this was the case even before the processor upgrade. And it's the case also in DP7. Haven't checked in DP8 yet...

[PJ]

There now seems to be a complete mismatch between what DP is showing in terms of processor usage, and what menu meters is showing me. DP8's processor meter is showing, say, 70% processor used, vs menu meters showing all 8 cores running at 35%. Previously (and in DP 7, in truth,) the correlation was pretty close.

I think DP's meter is showing CPU+GPU.

[labman]

Hey, more details on the upgrade you folks did please !

[wheever]

I discovered last night that I can max out the processor meter in DP to the point of causing audio to stutter and pop, while menu meters is showing only ~60% on all 8 cores. (I did this by instantiating a whole bunch of 2Caudio B2 reverbs set to oversample 4x.) So this appears to be some DP8 shortcoming, perhaps in the way it utilizes the threading. I'm still exploring, and am going to mess with the work quanta and see what happens.

Labman, I'll post stuff about the upgrade later today.

[HCMarkus]

And, 2009 4,1 MacPro Owners, don't miss out on the 2009 to 2010 update... Netkas.org has posted an EFI updater that effectively makes the 2009 into a 2010. No big deal unless you want to upgrade the processors to Westmere Xeons, which is what I did, taking my 4-core 2.66 to a 6-core 3.33 and upping its (32 bit) Geekbench score from 8500 to 13800.

I can't comment on the meter thing because I am still in the install and testing phase, prior putting the new machine to work in the studio. I can say SSDs make booting a dream. They're quite inexpensive now, so if you have yet to try one, your might want to consider it.

[wheever]

Here's what I'm talking about:

DP8 just running a not particularly heavy-hitting sequence:



The DP processing bar looks to be something above 50%; I'd call it 60%, but it's pretty subjective.



However: This one blows my mind. Same sequence with 2Caudio B2 at 4x oversampling.



This screen shot just happened to grab a point when it dropped to yellow, mostly it's just sitting there in the red, and the audio is going bonkers.

Now then, when I disable B2 entirely, the processor meters seem to line up better:



So, B2 seems to be the culprit, somehow. Is this a floating-point issue? Is it using the GPU to offload some of the processing? It's clearly not using the cores. I'll have to look into it further.



I'm really confused. Ideas, anyone?

[Shooshie]

I have no idea what menu meters is.

Menu Meters:
http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/me ... index.html

Very customizable. Show you what's happening with your system all the time, right in your menubar. Everyone I've shown it to has become a lifelong customer. I just sent the developer another $25 via PayPal, because there was an update. It's free, but you contribute if you want. I want. I want the guy to keep making it better and updating it for future Mac OS's. By all means contribute if you can. But I pretty much guarantee you that once you try it you won't throw it out.

Shooshie

[FutureLegends]

Seems it pretty much grabs the info from Activity Monitor and displays it in the menu bar?
Which means its giving the same results.

These mismatching processor loads and especially the spiking, is my single biggest issue with DP. I was hoping they would go away in DP8 but in my quick test it seemed to be much the same.

Regarding the processor upgrades here's my story:
I was drunk in Berlin and ordered the new processors from a guy somewhere else in Germany. I forgot about it until I got the mail from eBay that it was time to pay.
Back in Stockholm I received the CPUs and got to work with the brain surgery. There's a few videos on YouTube that walks you through the process. It was still nerve wrecking. The single hardest thing was removing the plastic enclosure for the fan. I think mine had got stuck somehow. That took me a good hour to remove. Then there were the all new things to me such as applying thermal paste and other alien substances. Not having the proper tools made it a bit difficult at times too.
Afterwards there was some issues with not all ram being recognised. Simply switching place of the ram trays solved that. And also the CPUs weren't properly reported (but seemed to work just fine). This was solved by some program I found somehow.
It's been worked great so far. I didn't see as big an improvement in DP as I was hoping for though. Still the processor spikes were abundant. But on most projects I could lower the buffer to 256 instead of 512, so it helped some. But I still feel that DP isn't using the full power of my computer. This is when using VIs. For recording bands and mixing I never had a problem even on the old quad.

[wheever]

Labman, here is the totality of my experience and knowledge on the quad to 8-core conversion:

The reference materials:

These videos are where coneycd got me started.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU6qQRfh ... e=youtu.be

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&featu ... fH3OXQa9Ao

This page goes into a little depth about this conversion:

http://retrocosm.net/2012/05/25/mac-pro ... r-upgrade/

This thread starts with the extremely critical firmware hack that allows the quad core CPUs to be properly identified, and also identifies your Macpro 1,1 as a Macpro 2,1, allowing a newer firmware version to be installed. This thread is also full of important info, other people's experiences, and recommendations for remedies for various problems you might encounter. (It's 18 pages long and a bit dense, so I'll summarize the most important things learned in my conversion experience in a moment.)

http://forum.netkas.org/index.php/topic,1094.180.html

Now, practically speaking, this conversion was a piece of cake for me, even though I didn't wait for the long-handled hex key to get here. (I, however, am very handy and have built a lot of electronics, houses, cars, etc. But even having said that, I think it's just super easy. Easier than replacing a hard drive in a laptop.) The case opens and comes apart beautifully, with just some fussing on the RAM bay with plastic clips. The instruction videos I think actually has you take out too many parts. The whole physical surgery took about 30 minutes, from opening the case to closing it again.

After I got it all back together I had a couple of kernel panics--which this computer has never, ever had in its 6 year life--and realized the firmware hack was mandatory. I was unable to properly run the hack at the beginning of that netkas thread because I didn't have the latest version of the MacPro 1,1 firmware installed. Once I figured that out, all went as expected.

Notes:

I found a matched pair of 5355s on Ebay for $119 with free shipping. I recommend buying a matched pair because that way you know you're getting the same revision on both chips. (Usually these can be found as a pull from a windows or UNIX server.)

There are different revisions of the 5355, as designated by a jumble of letters that follow the number. The final version is called the 5355 SLAEG, which apparently has lower power usage, among other things. Those are the most expensive, but they're still pretty cheap. My pair are 5355 SLY9, which use more wattage but were a lot cheaper than the SLAEG. (That netkas thread has lots about this.)

The long-handled 3mm hex is a MUST. I ordered one, but then my CPUs got here and I couldn't wait. You can make do with a 3mm key, but it's a huge pain in the butt. I bought this hex for $5:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000X2 ... 01_s00_i00

The install would have gone much faster with it.

Before you do the install, familiarize yourself with the recommended application of thermal paste on multicore chips. I think I way overdid the application.

http://www.arcticsilver.com/methods.html

Take note of how tightly the heatsinks are bolted on, and try to duplicate that when you put it all back together. I think I overtightened one of the heatsinks, and that processor is running 10°C hotter. I'm going to have to pull it of and redo it at some point.

I recommend you install the temperature tracking software mentioned in that 3rd link, and also the fan control utility. That way, if you hosed the thermal paste application, you can bump up the fan speed so as not to fry the processors, if necessary.

So that's what I know about this conversion. If I had waited for the hex wrench, and known my firmware was not up to date, the whole thing would have taken less than an hour. I highly recommend it. Greatest bang for the buck I've ever seen.

[labman]

Hay thanks so much for the upgrade details. Will pass to my engineer. (The one we trust with the sharp objects !)