4930k/Asus X79 Deluxe: Worse than i7 920/Asus P6T for real-time apps?

[rgames]

I recently swapped my trusty i7 920 on Asus P6T for a 4930k on an Asus X79 Deluxe and am having difficulty getting the same performance for digital audio apps. It appears the new motherboard just can't match the latency I had with the i7 920 on P6T: projects that ran fine on the old hardware produce occasional clicks/pops on the new hardware. I'm using the same audio hardware (RME Fireface 800) and the same two slave PC's to run virtual instruments that I used with the i7 920.

I've spent most of the last week trying different drivers, different hardware configurations, different Windows settings, etc. and just can't get the same real-time performance with the new machine. It's not drastically worse, but it is worse and I would expect a new machine could at least match one that's five years old.

Has anyone found any tweaks to improve the real-time performance on the Asus X79 Deluxe?

Thanks,

rgames

 

[BrightCandle]

I didn't have popping or crackling with my Asus X79 pro but I did see very high DPC latency when running the Asus tools. Specifically the overclocking tool caused serious DPC issues. Might not be your issue but thought I better mention it incase you just installed everything Asus gave you in drivers and tools.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

same os, too?

 

[rgames]

I gave up for a few weeks but want to try to get to the bottom of this.

Re: OS: Yes - performance is slightly worse with the same OS (Win 7). It gets a bit worse again if I use Win 8.1.

Re: ASUS tools - I didn't install any of them, only the drivers for the chipset, SATA, LAN, etc.

Again, it's not a huge difference, but the new system is performing worse than the old (for real-time audio performance) and it sure seems like I ought to be able to get it to perform *at least* the same. The new system definitely is much more powerful in terms of processor performance but the real-time performance is not what I was hoping for.

(Side note: I sure wish the benchmarking sites would do some real-time audio measurements so those of us who need it could see the performance before we drop a bunch of cash!)

Maybe the drivers for the X79 Deluxe are just too immature.

Thanks for any help,

rgames

 

[nitromullet]

Did you have to get a firewire card to run the Fireface?

 

[HeavyClocker]

Must be really bad.Spending more money to worse performance(at now).
Are you using any external cards or adapters?

 

[konfetaz]

Take a look at windows power options. Make sure you are not on power saver plan.. It will cause all PC performance...

 

[BonzaiDuck]

With a review I read just recently, DPC Latency figured into the X79 Deluxe performance as compared to a Rampage Formula board. The reviewer said it was "spikey" and it looks a bit spikey in the graphical results, but the reviewer thought that it was just worse than the Rampage, as opposed to being "unacceptable."

I am considering that board for my 2014 project with a 4930K processor.

Is the behavior you describe a matter of the onboard "HD audio?"

I'm interested in seeing what develops here given konfetaz's comment.