CPU Problems with FL though The Specs of my computer have high performance standards?

M

moesulaiman

New member
Hi

So My problem is I have A Dell Inspiron N5110 laptop, and I run Fl Studio 10.0.9 with a Steinberg CI1 Audio Interface (has ASIO drivers)but i am having very frustrating problems with CPU overload. I recently upgraded from a desktop PC with lower standards (same Processing speed, but everything else had lower standards) to my laptop (Specifications Below) in order to increase performance, however it seems that my laptop has more frequent CPU spikes than before.

For example, right now I am running a project in FL Studio that is running 2 instances of Nexus 2, 1 instance of Trilian, 1 instance of Kontakt 5 with EastWest Colossus as the library loaded, a Layer Channel with Trilian and Nexus as the children, and about 5 WAV Drum sample Channels loaded as well. I have each channel loaded seperately into the mixer with 3 different instances of AkustiX, and 5 different instances of Parametric EQ 2. My CPU monitor reads 6 when Idle, and reads 30 while playing. However, random and frequent spikes of CPU to 99 occur which is My issue at the moment.

I have read many tutorials from this forum, and from the Image Line forum that explain the methods to increasing FL Studio Performance (Changing Buffer Size, Audio settings, allowing multithreading processing, Linear Resampling, and even running every VST in Bridged Mode) but the frequent CPU spikes continure to occur. Can Anyone Help? Do you think the issue is corrupted Plugins? Should I upgrade to FL Studio 11? Is there something wrong with my computer maybe? Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks

Here are my Computer's Specifications:

Dell Inspiron N5110
Processor: Intel(R) Core i7-2670QM CPU @ 2.20 GHZ processing speed
RAM: 8 GB
64-bit Operating system
Windows 7 Home Premium
 
Have you tried to set the priority level for Fl Studio up? Start FL Studio, start 'Task manager' (right click on the taskbar en choose the task manager), locate the Fl Studio process under the tab 'Processes' and right click the flstudio .exe. Try some of them out ( High, Realtime, above normal) under 'Set priority'. Hope this helps!
 
homie I have a computer from 2000 and I can run Fruity Loops 10 with 3292923 plugins being active, your computer is just shit lol
 
few things you can try:
change plugins used for common sounds, they all sound like cpu hogs so try another one if you can remake or find similar presets
disable antivirus, automatic updates, disconnect from net altogther
clean out your pc regularly with ccleaner or similar
render out your audio to wav if you wont be making anymore patterns with that plugin
 
The best way to fix this problem is to go Start/ Control Panel/ Add Remove Programs/ Uninstall FL Studio.

Then install a real DAW.
 
I'm the on-site tech support guy for PCs.
My brother runs Oxygen Beats, and I'm his personal tech-support guy as well. He switched from a desktop to a nice, shiny, expensive Alienware laptop within the last month, and called me over to fix the same kind of problems you've been having. Even on their highest-end CPU, the same issues persist. It's a matter of configuration.

Don't worry, you don't have corrupted plugins (they would crash miserably rather than hang!). Upgrading to a different FL Studio version will not help. I'll give the same procedure I used to fix my brother's laptop (and optimize my own, back when I used one).

Laptops generally apply more power-saving settings than desktops do, both to conserve battery and to prevent heat from building up (it's difficult to dissipate heat in those small enclosures).

#1: Laptops, especially Dell laptops, ask the battery its status every 15 seconds or so. The entire system pauses to wait on the battery to calculate how much juice it has remaining. This takes a long time and causes a CPU spike. To fix this, take your battery out. If you have a non-removable battery, go to your Control Panel -> Device Manager -> Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Battery Control Method and disable it.

#2: Your processor is probably turning cores on-and-off in an attempt to save as much power as possible. Go to Power Options and change to "High Performance" mode. Usually, you will need to hit "View More Modes" to see it. Normally on a desktop, you would turn off the C-States and SpeedStep in the BIOS as well, but on a Dell/Lenovo/Alienware Laptop (and likely other brands as well), this causes the processor to constantly run in its slowest state rather than at its fastest.

#3: Open the "Advanced Settings" for the mode you selected in #3, and go through every option, disabling every power-saving feature you can find (including ASPM). Everything should be at "100%" or "High Performance" or "Power Saving Feature Off".

#4: In your Device Manager, find the "USB Devices" category and expand it. Right click on each USB Device and check for a "Power Management" tab. For each device where the tab exists, click on the tab and disable the option "Allow The Computer To Turn This Device Off To Save Power". This could make a big difference in your setup, since your audio interface happens to be a USB device.

#5: WiFi is commonly known to cause system stalls in both PC and Mac computers. Disable WiFi while you're making music. You get bonus points for disabling your Ethernet port as well, although this usually won't make even close to the difference that disabling WiFi will.

#6: Disable "Turbo Mode" in the BIOS if given the option. Although it sounds like a good idea ("Yeah! Let's let the processors go faster!"), the reality is a little complicated for real-time processing. Your computer has a certain amount of thermal (heat!) headroom to work with. If, as an example, you push two cores to their full load and two other cores are sitting around doing nothing, you likely could get away with generating some more heat. Turbo Mode will take advantage of this by temporarily DISABLING the "idle" cores in order to temporarily OVERCLOCK the "active" cores. The problem with this is that turning processors on/off and overclocking/returning them to normal takes a long time. Switching back and forth could cause CPU spikes. The feature does a good job of improving the speed of "offline", single-threaded, latency-insensitive tasks: compressing a ZIP file, rendering a video/song, encoding data, compiling a program from source code, etc.

#7: Laptop hard drives are slow (Once again, due to power/heat requirements). Kontakt uses "DFD" technology on most of its patches, which means this: the file loads the "attacks" (the initial transients) of all of the samples into RAM. The tail (remainder) of the sound is streamed directly from your hard drive. If your hard drive can't keep up with all of the requests, you could suffer stutters and glitches. You have two options to fix this:
A) Buy and install an SSD (access times are several orders of magnitude faster), or
B) Switch Kontakt patches into "Sampler" mode instead of "DFD". This will make better use of your RAM in helping your projects perform better. However, the time to load a project will increase, as each entire sample will be loaded at project load, rather than just the attack-portions. To do this, hit the little wrench icon. To the left of the "Tune" knob, there should be a drop-down that should read "DFD". Open this drop-down menu and change it to "Sampler" mode.

#8: If you don't use it, disable System Restore. (http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/disable-system-restore-in-windows-vista/)
It can cause unexpected system slowdowns when creating restore points.

#9: Disable automatic disk defragmentation. (http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/3292-disk-defragmenter-schedule-turn-off.html)
Defragment your disks on your own downtime -- you don't want your computer to decide that it needs to complete a defrag session right before you start up your DAW.

#10: Disable automatic Windows Updates. (http://www.askdavetaylor.com/how_to_stop_disable_windows_7_autoupdate.html)
Same reason as #9 above -- you don't want your computer to decide that your music-making time is a good time to download and install updates.

#11: Download and install the latest BIOS for your laptop. (http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/19/Product/inspiron-15r-n5110)
Click under the "BIOS" category. Download and install. Occasionally, this can single-handedly solve your headache.
Even if it doesn't, it usually leads to better performance and compatibility.

If you'd like any clarification on any of the points, let me know!

I took the time to personalize this guide and make it as comprehensive as possible.
If I've helped you solve your problem, please consider donating $5:
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=DFR9B9EYDSJGN

Hope your problem is fixed!

-Ki
Salem Beats

P.S.,
To see how suitable your current configuration is for real-time audio (and to see the results of making specific changes), there are three main tools you can use:
DPC Latency Checker (Very Simple) [http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml]
LatencyMon (More Detail) [http://www.resplendence.com/downloads]
xperf (Extremely Complicated / Powerful) [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/performance/cc825801.aspx]

I suggest starting with "DPC Latency Checker" and using "LatencyMon" any time you'd like more detail on particular drivers. "xperf" is more advanced with a large learning curve, and should only be used if you're having a very hard time tracking down what's causing your problems.
 
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FL studio is the last DAW to go 64 bit, if there even there yet. Pick a different software, you'll thank yourself for it.
 
macbeat said:
FL studio is the last DAW to go 64 bit, if there even there yet. Pick a different software, you'll thank yourself for it.
Click to expand...

If you own a copy of FL, you can download the 64-bit beta. It's not available for demo, and I'm assuming that it won't be until it's out of beta.

I've heard that it's fairly stable, and probably should be out of "beta" status by now.

The plugin wrapper is capable of running in a separate 64-bit process in the 32-bit version.

-Ki
Salem Beats
 
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Salem Beats said:
If you own a copy of FL, you can download the 64-bit beta. It's not available for demo, and I'm assuming that it won't be until it's out of beta.

I've heard that it's fairly stable, and probably should be out of "beta" status by now.

The plugin wrapper is capable of running in a separate 64-bit process in the 32-bit version.

-Ki
Salem Beats
Click to expand...

This corny nigga lives in a fantasy world. Just click is poorly designed link in his sig and ask yourself if you'd listen to some homo making the kinds of beats a 13 year old using his dad's computer would make.

corny ass nigga is corny.
 
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macbeat said:
This corny nigga lives in a fantasy world. Just click is poorly designed link in his sig and ask yourself if you'd listen to some homo making the kinds of beats a 13 year old using his dad's computer would make.

corny ass nigga is corny.
Click to expand...

Blah, blah, blah.

Where's your music, macbeat?

-Ki
Salem Beats
 
Salem Beats said:
Blah, blah, blah.

Where's your music, macbeat?

-Ki
Salem Beats
Click to expand...

Just a word of advice. Be yourself when you're making music. We have enough corny ass wannabe's polluting the internet with their shitty beats. Tell YOUR story, not the same sorry ass garbage being regurgitated by every fruity loops pirating noob.

Maybe music isn't for you bro. Don't feel bad, most people's dreams end up in the past. That's where you should keep yours and leave art to artists.
 
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macbeat said:
Just a word of advice. Be yourself when you're making music. We have enough corny ass wannabe's polluting the internet with their shitty beats. Tell YOUR story, not the same sorry ass garbage being regurgitated by every fruity loops pirating noob.

Maybe music isn't for you bro. Don't feel bad, most people's dreams end up in the past. That's where you should keep yours and leave art to artists.
Click to expand...

Are you talking to yourself...?

Stay on topic and show us your music. Let everyone see how amazing you are.

-Ki
Salem Beats
 
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