What's my PC bottleneck? Threading?

[Jimantronic]

Hi all, I'm wondering what's the bottleneck in my PC? It's fast, but I'm wondering can it be faster?
It's a dedicated audio PC I've built running Windows 11 and Bitwig

PXL_20220920_204029597 (1).jpg

Here's the performance view when exporting the audio for a complex project with 20 tracks and approx 50 plugin instances.
I have Bitwig set so each plugin instance is in its own container. Bitwig seems to be doing a good job of spreading the load across all the CPU logical processors, but only 1 of them appears to be using over 50%, there's almost no activity on the disk, memory is only using half of the 32gb available and the graphics card is idling doing nothing

This is an AMD Ryzen 7 5700G in an MSI 550A-Pro motherboard, 32gb DDR4 ram, so it's not a top spec machine, but it's decent enough (link to full spec here https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/JRatron/saved/VqdXRB)

What's the bottleneck likely to be in this system? Just the overhead of handling the multi-threading?
cheers,
James

[whyterabbyt]

What bottleneck is there? What use is your screenshot, which is of a system comfortably not even close to bottlenecked?

[Jimantronic]

What bottleneck is there? What use is your screenshot, which is of a system comfortably not even close to bottlenecked?

I mean what is the speed limitation? The screenshot is from during exporting an audio render, which I understand will happen as fast as possible when not in real-time export. So I was confused to see that there appears to be plenty of spare capacity in the CPU, memory etc at a time when the machine should be flat-out working as hard as possible.
So I am wondering why this is the maximum speed if there are plenty of the obvious resources available. That's why I wondered if there is maybe something else like multi-threading which isn't so efficient and is slowing things down

[Pictus]

This may help viewtopic.php?p=7624448#p7624448

[Kokoala]

Here's the performance view when exporting the audio for a complex project with 20 tracks and approx 50 plugin instances.

Could you list the plugins used in each of your track for me ? It will help me to know if the 5700 is enough for my needs... you can PM

[Jimantronic]

Could you list the plugins used in each of your track for me ? It will help me to know if the 5700 is enough for my needs... you can PM

Sure, I'm back in the studio tomorrow evening, I'll try and grab you some info, but generally I've found the 5700 plenty good and the onboard graphics of the G version is way powerful enough for DAW duties

[Jimantronic]

This may help viewtopic.php?p=7624448#p7624448

That's a great resource, thank you Many of them I have done already, but I have certainly missed a few tricks and you listed some nice tools to check and change settings which is always welcome

[Kokoala]

Could you list the plugins used in each of your track for me ? It will help me to know if the 5700 is enough for my needs... you can PM

Sure, I'm back in the studio tomorrow evening, I'll try and grab you some info, but generally I've found the 5700 plenty good and the onboard graphics of the G version is way powerful enough for DAW duties

thanks a lot...waiting for your precious info

[Jimantronic]

thanks a lot...waiting for your precious info

Try this. Lots of information here, so do ask questions.

screenshot022.jpg

I've just swapped to an RME Babyface Pro FS today from a Motu Ultralite mk5 in a hope that better windows drivers will make for lower latency and a more stable system.

Also, just installing Ryzen Master and going over a few settings, although annoyingly the Ryzen Master Creator profile has just changed my CPU speed to be dynamic, whereas before I set it to 100% all the time.

[Kokoala]

I don't see hungry vsti exept the Buchla on 1 track only...and ozone on the master....but maybe I'm wrong
difficult to have a point of view of your CPU
what's the CPU% when Bitwig is playing your project?

[DJ Warmonger]

The CPU is always boottlenecked by the longest audio chain, which eventually is handled by one processor only. Having multiple effects on master channel is a bad idea, to begin with I suggest to separate production and mastering stages.

[legendCNCD]

Yeap that Ozone will steal cycles like crazy there

[Jimantronic]

The CPU is always boottlenecked by the longest audio chain, which eventually is handled by one processor only. Having multiple effects on master channel is a bad idea, to begin with I suggest to separate production and mastering stages.

Thanks for the input. That makes sense, but I still didn't understand why even if everything was queueing behind one chain and 1 processor, how come I wasn't seeing any single processor showing a high load at all.
One thing I did spot as a result of this is that despite having decent 3200mhz ram, it was running at 2133mhz as I hadn't set it up in the bios. So I enabled XMP and now it's running at 3200mhz as it should and it feels a touch speedier for sure.

[Jimantronic]

I don't see hungry vsti exept the Buchla on 1 track only...and ozone on the master....but maybe I'm wrong
difficult to have a point of view of your CPU
what's the CPU% when Bitwig is playing your project?

No, I think those are only heavy ones in this project. No Adaptiverb on this one
It uses approx the same 20% cpu when playing this one.

[Sindikhate]

thanks a lot...waiting for your precious info

Try this. Lots of information here, so do ask questions.

screenshot022.jpg

I've just swapped to an RME Babyface Pro FS today from a Motu Ultralite mk5 in a hope that better windows drivers will make for lower latency and a more stable system.

Also, just installing Ryzen Master and going over a few settings, although annoyingly the Ryzen Master Creator profile has just changed my CPU speed to be dynamic, whereas before I set it to 100% all the time.

Bit of a necro this but...

Which interface did you prefer between the BFProFS and the ULMk5?