How to best upgrade my entry level Haswell system...

[Cerb]

That they aren't equivalent to Intel quad cores, but Intel dual cores (Core i3). The cheapest Intel quad core equivalent I know of is the FX-8310.

 

[justanotherboy]

Has the OP found the bottleneck in his system? A good way to test if the HD is the issue is to test with a RAM disk. Unfortunately I don't know how to do this in Windows

 

[aaronking]

Has the OP found the bottleneck in his system? A good way to test if the HD is the issue is to test with a RAM disk. Unfortunately I don't know how to do this in Windows

Not definitively, but it is looking like the HDD might make the most sense in terms of an upgrade.

Not sure how to test with a RAM disk...

 

[Pilum]

Thanks for the replies. Nice to hear from other Reaper users. This is what I see in the Performance meter while hearing clicks/pops. Buffer is set to 512.

CPU 10.1%
Disk Total 2.2mb
Disk Read 2.2mb
Disk Write 0 mb
Ram Usage 1965mb
System Free 4461/8134mb
26 FX 16.61% CPU

If I up the buffer to 1024, I do not hear any clicks/pops.

Should note the project is set to 24/96.

The problem is not disk or CPU, the load values are far too low for that.
Modern HDs will deliver ~100 MiB/s, and DAWs will pre-buffer during playback, so you won't get I/O problems until you're playing back many many more channels. And you're not even fully using one CPU core in this case, so this can't be the problem either.

Quick rundown of things to try:

• Go to Control Panel/Power Options and make sure that you've enabled high performance mode. Power-saving modes can interfere with low-latency audio playback.
• Download DPC Latency Checker and check if your system has problems handling interrupts.
• If you have some kind of wifi adapter, try disabling it. This seems to be constant source of trouble with high-performance audio.

Also see the following threads on other forums:
http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/backline/600739-profire-2626-windows-7-64-bit-random-pops.html
http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=59482

 

[aaronking]

Cool, thanks.

Changed Power Option to High Performance
DPC Latency Checker says I should be able to stream without dropouts
I don't have a wifi adapter, but I do have a network adapter with a wired connection.

Thought I noticed a difference, but after further review, it appears to be the same. Disabling the network adapter didn't help.

Hmm...

 

[janeuner]

It seems way too easy, but it hasn't been mentioned yet...

Set the process priority in task manager to above normal.

 

[aaronking]

Thanks. Just tried it but no change.

I don't want to mess with UAC Virtualization do I?

 

[erunion]

The problem is not disk or CPU

true.

perhaps OP should check his FireWire card. Update drivers.

 

[aaronking]

I just tried using the Legacy Firewire Driver as suggested in another forum with no luck.

 

[R0H1T]

How about this ~

You'll need to run it with admin rights, additionally you can lower the I/O priority of anything originating (non essential programs) from explorer.exe to very low.

 

[aaronking]

Appreciate all the help. Doing a clean install and starting over. Will keep you posted.