Here we go...

HW:
- Xeon E5-1650v3, Supermicro X10SRi-F server board, 32 GB ECC DRAM
- Win7   - on Samsung SSD 860 EVO 1TB
- Win10 - on Samsung SSD 850 EVO 1TB (Upgrade Installation)
- Cubase Projects - on other drive: Samsung SSD 850 Pro 512 GB

Comment to CPU Clock:
It is normally constant at 3.6 GHz and the newer E5-1650v4 would even run at 3.8 GHz (~6% faster).
But Cubase uses AVX CPU instructions which are more complex, produce a little more heat, therefore Intel has decided to throttle CPU clock down to 3.5 GHz when running AVX instructions on a core.
When rendering a file, then all cores/threads run AVX instructions, then all cores are throttled down to 3.5 GHz.
It's a little bit questionable, why the more heat efficient v4 version of the CPU is also throttled down to the same 3.5 GHz, maybe something that Intel overlooked, who knows.
So if you get a CPU, do not expect the clock to be at minimum the base clock, you need to make a big dive into Intel documents, and you will find that Intel does not make it easy for you. For some CPUs they document the Clock when executing AVX instructions and for some products they do not document it.

SSD Driver/ Windows Settings:
- Samsung Magician: Rapid Mode ("RAM DISK") enabled in Win7 and Win10
- Windows Indexer Prozess stopped.

Recording related parameters:
- UFX+ connected via USB3, 44.1 kHz, ASIO buffersize: 32 (minimum)
- MADIface driver 0.9681
- Cubase Pro 9.5.50 (with the Cubase performance energy profile activated)
- 400 Tracks test project as described in this blog article: https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … cks-de-en/

The comparison

1. Windows Boot until GUI:
Win7   : 15 s
Win10 : 15 s equal (earlier Microsoft claims, Win10 would boot faster is not true)

2. Login and wait until all applications loaded incl. all icons in the task bar:
Win7   : 16s
Win10 : 35s (+118%) much slower, Win7 in some situation feels more agile to the user.

3. Cubase startup time including loading the 400 Tracks Performance Test (by doubleclicking to the cubase .cpr file):
Win7   : 01:07
Win10 : 00:59 (-12%) faster

4. Time to downmix/render the 400 tracks to compressed FLAC file, maximum compression:
Win7   : 06:56
Win10 : 07:34 (+9%) slower

5. Memory utilization with loaded 400 tracks project
Win7   : 13918072K / 1024 = 13592MB
Win10 : 13585MB same

Findings in regards to Cubase Performance under Win7 vs Win10:
Project load time is ~12% faster under Win10.
Downmix/Rendering time is ~9% slower under Win10.

Personal Conclusions

At the end of the day it appears to me that Win10 has nothing, that brought real advantages to the user. Claims from Microsoft, that Win10 shall be better and more performant can not be seen.

In contradiction to that the Windows 10 Memory Management systems was in the 1st years even significant worse in its performance until Windows 10 1709 has been introducted in Sept. 2017.

Also Microsoft didn't communicate important changes to library calls to developers which lead to significant audio loss under Win10.  Root cause was that Microsoft did neither communicate nor document important changes to important library functions. Therefore the memory management routines did not work fast for audio applications that have near-realtime performance. I question myself why they introduced something like this. It makes no sense to have memory management being performed fast or slow. Those basic functions simply need to perform. From my perspective a design flaw and Microsoft should have informed the developers on such drastic unexpected changes.

This to major gotchas and their impact I documented already in this blog article: https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … s-7-EN-DE/

Microsoft forces the users to accept the changed EULA (end user license agreement) which grants Microsoft extensive rights to collect, market and disclose data, including personal and biometric data, to third parties.

The Windows 10 Update process does not allow anymore customization to install i.e. only important and security patches.
The rapid upgrade intervals and the amount changes being introduced leads to quality flaws.
Several times users had severe Problems with their systems after upgrades. Like i.e. not working SSDs with 1803 up to a complete loss of user data, if you didn't store your data on a separate partition.
This happened last recently with the 1st release of the 1809 version in September 2018.

All that I can say .. be prepared when using Win10 !

Ensure that you have a good working backup tool with tested desaster recorvery procedures. My recommendation is to use Macium Reflect for this, a backup tool based on making Disk Images of the system. Good quality, very fast due to Rapid Delta Restore Mechanism, which only changes the data on disk that need to be changed on a full restore. This makes a full restore to the last week possible withing less than 10Min for a >600 GB filled SSD. This also reduces the wear on your SSD.

Final word:

Win10 is usable but has some downsides:
- rapid changes
- risk of issues after upgrades
- privacy issues

We need to learn to live with a few disadvantages. The intention of this article was to show, how quick you can even create a dual boot / Win10 test environment by performing a Windows upgrade installation.

And again: a working backup / recovery procedures is even more mandatory than ever, because also Microsoft is overstrained to keep a certain quality at these rapid upgrade cycles of ~6 months.

They promised to change this in the near future, so that you can delay upgrade for longer, but at a certain point they need  to force you to upgrade, if i.e. the support for earlier versions is over.
And then you have even a higher risk, as much more changes because you delayed upgrades for a longer period of time.
So do yourself a favour and introduce working / tested backup and restore procedures for Windows and your data.