• tomas
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Topic: fireface400: driver 3.x suited for win xp?

hi there,

i'm running win xp sp 3 and my fireface 400 with the RME driver 2.9992. i noticed that the 3.X drivers where oficially recommended for all windows versions at the beginning, but in the meantime they are labeled 'win 7' only... now i'm wondering: should i try the latest 3.x driver with my xp-DAW or should i stick to 2.9992?

i'm asking because i have some problems with my freshly set up DAW (when i run a particular project in cubase 5 the asio-performance meter shows over 80%, while my CPU-usage meter shows 40%...) i have set-up my system following the usual tweak-recommendations (i used the ones from 'sound on sound' magazine); i'm pretty sure i've done everything right in the setup of the system. i don't have any IRQ-conflicts with the IEEE 1394 controller. at the moment i'm looking at to possible problem sources:

- the ASUS-mainboard uses an AGERE-chipset --> possible solution: using an PCI-firewire card
- using a different RME driver

or am i missing something?

best,
tomas

p.s. i use a intel quadcore (@2.66Ghz) CPU and 3 GB RAM

2 Reply by MC

  • MC
  • MC
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Re: fireface400: driver 3.x suited for win xp?

Simply said: Version 3 will not solve performance problems under XP.

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

MC's Website

  • tomas
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Re: fireface400: driver 3.x suited for win xp?

thanks, matthias. would there be any other reason under XP to change from 2.9992 to the latest 3.x driver, that is any possible advantage of the 3.x drivers for XP?

  • tomas
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Re: fireface400: driver 3.x suited for win xp?

i came across this article http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/oct09/a … 1009_1.htm and ran some tests and have come to the conclusion that the performance problems i am experiencing have something to do with the configuration of the particular cubase project i opened to check my setup. if i open a brand new project, insert an audio track, put a cpu-demanding plugin in there and make as many copies of the audio track until i read about 80% on the vst-performance meter, it matches very well the cpu-meter in the task manager (also around 80%)... so i guess there's nothing fundamentally wrong with my setup - just a question of how cubase divides the tasks onto the 4 processors... sorry to have bothered you with my earlier question.

however - just out of curiosity - i still wonder if there is any use for a xp-user to update to a newer ff400 driver than 2.9992, or if this is considered to be the final driver for xp?

5 Reply by MC

  • MC
  • MC
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Re: fireface400: driver 3.x suited for win xp?

At this time - yes. The 3 series driver gets the better alternative when the sample rate change in WDM works as it should, but we (everyone) is waiting for MS to fix this.

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

MC's Website