The following screenshots should help you find the options in Rivatuner that allow you to set the graphic-card to a fixed performance level.

First you need to unlock the option:

Then you go to the System Tweaks settings:

Then you have to set a desired performance level (I advice to use lowpower 3D unless you want to play some performance 3D games):

The Customize option is the most basic/important feature of Rivatuner since the beginning.

So if you cannot see it then probably your graphic-card driver isn't supported. Are you using the Microsoft default driver by chance? Try installing the latest driver download from NVidia.

It's been a while that I tested W7, but as far as I remember there shouldn't be any much difference with Rivatuner. W7 works better concerning the bad custom WLAN drivers though. After some trying around I even managed to make all Apple drivers install and work.

Concerning your occassional spikes, try surfing the web (scrolling around) and watch the spikes or move a window over the animated GUI (meters) of your host. Do the spikes increase? If so then they might be graphic-driver related.

@Bob: do you mean you get those 100us without any modifications or with? KBDMGR may not give spikes, but it can still cause dropouts (and lots of them) when using low latency audio (for example with Ableton Live).

But as long as you don't get dropouts everything is perfect.

I could use a little help from somebody more savvy with Windows XP than I am...

Firstly, this is all happening on a late 2006 Apple iMac, with Bootcamp, running XP SP3 with an RME Fireface 800.  (This has nothing to do with the Firewire issue - this Mac has a Texas Instruments chip.)   I'm pretty sure I must have disabled something somewhere in the last three years, because the original drivers supplied by Apple/Bootcamp for the Mac's onboard RealTek Audio hardware had some conflicts with the RME Fireface drivers.  More recent RealTek drivers have learned to play nice with the RME stuff installed, so that's less of a problem now.

Somehow, over the course of optimizing my XP install for use with the Fireface 800, I've deactivated something that allows Windows to select a Default Audio Device for its own use, even though I have deactivated the Windows Sounds (the little noises it makes for file/window opening/closing, etc.).  When I go to the Sounds and Audio Control Panel, it states that there is No Audio device present, and the options for selecting the Default device for output, input, midi, etc. are all greyed out.

Currently, my Fireface is out of town being serviced, so I can't test things more than with the default internal hardware.  I tried removing the RME drivers (with the Add/Remove Control Panel) but afterwards the Sounds and Audio CP still showed the same greyed out selection page and No Default Device.

Using ASIO4ALL, I can get my DAW software (Pyramix) to access the internal, RealTek audio hardware for playback, so I know that there is no hardware fault - I get sound out.  The RealTek Control Panel (accessed through the Taskbar) even has a demo of its so-called 3D audio simulation, and THAT plays back just fine, but somehow when I try to get any other program that is looking for the default Windows Audio device for its playback, I get nothing.  Makes Myst V End of Ages very confusing, and more seriously, Sonoris' DDP Creator software cannot play anything back since it will only output audio to the Default device.

I know this is a little off topic, and I apologize for that, but it is almost certainly the result of something that was discussed in this particular thread, as well as some other threads dealing with optimizing and running Windows for RME audio use on a Bootcamped Mac.

Any suggestions for getting my Default Audio device back?

Remove all driver via Uninstall and Device-Manager, reboot and then do a fresh installation (especially for the Realtek drivers). Use Device-Manager's option to show hidden devices in order to remove drivers that are hidden (because the corresponding device is not connected like the FF800 for instance).

Sorry, I didn't check this thread lately.

The Realtek High Definition Audio driver was the right one. Since this didn't work try downloading the latest Realtek driver directly from Realtek's site. Watch out that you might need to run the installation twice, once for uninstalling the old driver and once for actually installing the new one.

Their download site is unbelievably slow when accessed from here, but usually you can find their drivers on Compubase and other sites, too.

http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/dow … Down=false

It's also possible that you didn't install the Bootcamp/Realtek driver properly to begin with. Windows will install it's own High Definition Audio driver then, but which doesn't work on the Macbooks.

Could you please provide a screenshot of your Control Panel -> Sound settings?

Thanks Timur for all of your work.
I have a brand new MBP and bought it to run Windows7 so I could use Software Audio Console on an upcoming tour. I got pretty nervous when the first audio I tried to play was full of crackling!
Using DPC Latency Checker I discovered that all I had to do was shutdown the bootcamp process. Running great now.

--
Nathan
www.nathanlively.com

Killing the bootcamp.exe process on my 2009 MBP 13" brings DPC latency down to an average around 200?s which is enough for what I have to do (frequency measurements, sound-system setup). Everything else mentioned in this thread (deactivating network drivers) did not change anything here.
Unfortunately I can't mange to change the files in BootChamped to make them work with Bootcamp 3.0 and Bootcamp.exe. I tried to change all KBDMGR.EXE to Bootcamp.exe in those files, but they seem to do nothing. Only manually killing Bootcamp.exe with the process manager helps. Any idea, what I am doing wrong?

Ralf

I'm not as lucky... I'm running Win7 64bit and with bootcamp 3.1 (after exiting bootcamp.exe) I now have a 1500u spike every 15 seconds.

I'm guessing it's due to the new video driver. RivaTuner 2.24 will not run with the new bootcamp drivers. I can start up Rivatuner, but I get a message box in the riva software that tells me that rivatuner was not made to work with this version of the software. So, I'm guessing I'll need to roll back the video drivers to something else until rivatuner is updated.

fb_,
Yep, I was just getting ready to post my correction. It is not the video driver, it is the ACPI battery driver causing the spikes. For some reason it just seems a higher spike than I remember ever 15 sec. After disabling the ACPI driver I'm seeing a max of 111us on my DPC with bootcamp.exe running and my WLAN is enabled. I'm feeling better about BC 3.1, this is looking really good.

Sorry, I should have added I am on XP SP3 here....

Look for bootcamp.exe
They changed the name of the executable in the new version of Bootcamp.

Experience with 9600M GT on (bootcamped) Macbook Pro 17" running Windows 7 64-bit (same as 32-bit, same as Vista):

1) Even the latest 257 Beta driver still does not solve the problem of high DPC latencies in 2D (low power) mode. DPC spikes reach well over 1500 us, which in turn can lead to audio-dropout (especially for professional audio users). Neither Performance nor Low-Power 3D modes show these problems.

The same was happening on Vista (while on XP it always ran in "Performance 3D" mode which isn't that much better a solution). I reported this via NVidia temporary "Feedback" form more than a year ago. The only "workaround" for professional audio users is to permanently force the NVidia driver to one of the 3D modes via PowerMizer Manager (recommended!) or Rivatuner.

Here is a trace of 2D mode while running Ableton Live (audio is *disabled*):

In one trace run I had exorbitantly high DPC readings via DPC Latency Checker. Interestingly these turned out to be a combination of the Nvidia driver and usbport.sys while using Live's GUI (which is somewhat questionably programmed though and causing its own load of problems).

2) DPC spikes are still happening when performance modes are switched (clock-rates changed), but less than in the past.

3) Like the current WHQL driver with the 257 Beta the GPU is *always* running in Performance 3D mode (maximum clock-rates, heat and power-consumption) when an external display is attached. This did not happen with older version drivers.

Hi

I've been trying to fix DPC Latency issues for two days now, and it's frustrating not being able to work
I'm running on WinXP on my Mac 24" (Core 2 Duo 3.06ghz) with my Fireface UC (latest drivers), and I'm forced to run WinXP since I been (still am) producing in emagic Logic 5.5 and all my VST's. And the funny thing is that Logic is running SUPER smooth, no glitches clicks or other latency issues! Now why is that? But when I'm running Ableton Live (8.2.8) I get these pronounced latency issues, bad programming by the Live team or what?
The reason for me using Live is collaboration work so it's really crucial for me to get it working problem free.

As seen in DPC Latency Checker Image, running Ableton, this isn't a pretty sight

Please help me

Thanks

Thanks for your reply Timur

I started thinkin that since I have to reduce the amount of memory [Maxmem=1024] used by the system in boot.ini when I run Logic I'd try the same for Ableton Live, but instead of limiting it to [1024] I added [Maxmem=2048] and VOILA! Sometimes it's good to use your brain I keep forgetting that Windows XP is really really old and doesn't like ram memory (at least not as much as more recent OS's).   

Well well sometimes the simplest way to fix issues are the best solutions! I hope this might help others as well

Thanks