Running Out Of Cpu Power, help please! Options

[anakinsrightarm]

hellooo i have a macbook pro with 1ghz ram. i run pro tools LE 7.3 and have had the issue of running out of cpu power. i get the error message "you are running out of CPU power. Remove some RTAS plug ins or increase the cpu usage limit in the playback engine dialog. (-9128)"

i am not running that many tracks (3-4) and only about 2 plug ins and i am still getting the problem.
i also increased the cpu usage limit in the playback engine dialog with no luck.

i thought it had to do with not having an external hard drive, so i picked up a glyph 050 250 gb hd. on other forums they said it didnt have to do with the hard drive, and to come here.

thanks

This post has been edited by anakinsrightarm: Wed 2 Apr 2008, 04:23

[deaconblue]

anakinsrightarm,

If you are running Leopard (Mac OS X v10.5.x) then I would first recommend 2GB of RAM. Leopard is a bit RAM hungry by comparison.

Also, how much space is left on your internal HDD? It should be between 10 - 20% of the total volume, i.e., if you have a 160GB HDD (internal), then you should have at least 32GB of drive space free. If it is less, the virtual memory swap file is being written quite a bit and can tax your CPU.

Best of luck.

peace.

[qusp74]

also 1gb is not enough memory these days the operating system will be taking up the majority of that so I recomend getting as much ram as your machine can hold. however if you upgrade your ram to say 3 or 4 gig you will need to have at least three times that amount spare on your system drive to provide scratch or (swap) disk space; with 3gig ram you will need 9gig spare on your system drive and 12gig spare for 4gig of ram. This is needed just to provide scratch for the ram, not even taking into account what the system need for its operation. Also if you are running plugs such as the more powerfull softsynths and samplers such as KONTACT that are processor hogs or plugs that need to access sample sets or wavetables you should relocate these resources to an external harddrive. Also if you have the settings for latency in your DAW too low this may be causing problems. They need to be low, but not too low; A latency of 256ms or 512ms is recommended. anything below that; eg.128ms or 64ms would require a 'Quality' audio interface rather than the onboard chipset.

This post has been edited by qusp74: Wed 2 Apr 2008, 08:24

[qusp74]

In my previous post I allowed my brain to get muddled in my reply

the dubious statement
'A latency of 256ms or 512ms is recommended. anything below that; eg.128ms or 64ms would require a 'Quality' audio interface rather than the onboard chipset.'

; concerning latencies what I meant to say was that a BUFFER size of 256 or 512 (rather than the faux pa 256ms or 512ms) may be what you need to use for general operation; especially when using power hungry plugins. these settings relate directly to CPU load and latency (measured in microseconds) and the drain on your computers resources is increased further by your relatively low amount of RAM.

once you have rendered the output of the soft synths etc you will be able to drop the buffer to a more responsive level of 128, 64 or even 32 for your final mixdown. the rest of my previous post remains true IMHO

YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO DO ANYTHING REMOTELY USEFUL WITHOUT UPPING YOUR RAM CONSIDERABLY

Hope this makes more sense and hopefully it will redeem me and my mental faculties somewhat.....

This post has been edited by qusp74: Thu 3 Apr 2008, 07:17

[anakinsrightarm]

thanks a lot everyone i guess i have to up my ram or say goodbye to pro tools

[qusp74]

no problem,

But i'm afraid its not just protools you'll have to say goodbye to. 1gb is only JUST enough for the system to reside in, so if you want to use any applications at all (especially DAW's, or photoshop and alike) without bogging down your potentially quick system, you will have to get more RAM. Also, forcing it to use scratch memory constantly uses heaps more battery power because the hard drive is always in use.

If you plan to use BOOTCAMP or something similarly sac religious then you will have a whole new world of memory headache.... Windows is even more memory hungry than OS X

Fork out for the ram you won't regret it either way and no matter what you are doing on your mac; you will notice the difference immediately.

[Mac Daddy]

anakinsrightarm, Thursday April 3, 2008. 23:24 "thanks a lot everyone i guess i have to up my ram or say goodbye to pro tools"


This is easy. No question about what to do. Get more Ram. What is your problem? Ram is almost FREE these days! Pro Tools can cost more than a Kidney!

Pleeeeeeeeeeze....

[mortalengines]

Well....before you throw out your PT or spend a TON of money on new RAM, I gotta ask......Are you using Leopard? If so, PTLE 7.0 is NOT approved for use with OSX Leopard. Digidesign is working on a software revision as we speak. Yes, the more RAM the better but I just have 1.25 GB of RAM myself with Leopard on a G4 and I am chugging right along with Ableton Live (of course I have to do all kinds of track freezing and rendering and whatnot to get anything done but, I've had to do that for years so nothing has changed.....the G4 is a little long in the tooth but it cost me 2500 bucks back in 2004......I probably won't upgrade for another year. Anyway, check the Digidesign website and maybe dink around in GB for a little while until they come up with a proper version of PTLE for you and then decide whether you want to get more RAM or get a new DAW. You probably ought to get more RAM anyway and personally, Pro Tools is a pain in the ass.....I never could seem to get the right OS version to make my Mbox happy.....nor could I know the joy of freeware VST and AU plugs. My Mbox gathers dust......I may upgrade to 7.0 when they catch up to Leopard now (I upgraded due to the fact that Ableton 7.0 recommends the upgrade)....I dunno.


www.myspace.com/mortal_engines

[qusp74]

hi there,

2GB of ram for mac book pro best price is $39 US but You can pay up to a maximum of $67 for very high speed ram specifically designed for MacBooks. here http://www.ramseeker.com/ is a link for a range of the cheapest ram supplyers. Also the postage will cost you peanuts.

[qusp74]

Ok.... MAYBE I overstated the RAM issue a just a little bit... but coming primarily from a 3D visualization/graphics background I can never get enough of it. I still have a G4 with 1.5gig ram in it (my secondary machine) and it performed most things I needed up until a couple of years ago. thing is however that the memory a processor requirements of todays plugins (and operating systems) is getting pretty huge. Also... to put 4gig into a G4 years ago would've almost cost you more than the machine itself (if it was even possible; some OS's couldn't address that much) nowadays though with the memory capacity of current machines being 16gb+, buying yourself a couple of gig will cost no more than a cheap date and a movie. It IS possible to struggle by (and produce some excellent results); by adapting your technique to suit. Sometimes the old saying 'less is more' is very true. But as I've said here on this forum more than once 'It all comes down to how much you value your time'. I would liken 1gb RAM on a Core duo Macbook to putting a REV limiter on a BUGATI Veyron.

cheers and good luck

This post has been edited by qusp74: Sat 5 Apr 2008, 15:35