How much better is Reaper with Windows 7 instead of Windows XP

[prezbass]

The differences between x86 and x64 are pretty darned substantial. XP64 was a dismal failure; Win7 made the x64 platform a reality.

All that said- and others may have said this already - but in case they haven't:

Microsoft has officially ended its support of XP. That might not make an obvious difference to you, but remember that this also means that there will be no security patches for it anymore. It's very vulnerable now- and, if you keep it off the internet most of the time and only put it on for a small amount of time, you're heading for trouble.

All device manufacturers - not just audio devices -have ended their support for XP. There were some major differences in the device management in XP vs. Win7/8/10 that made it very expensive to maintain that support. All devices had to be written in a specific language with a specific model and that changed with Vista and got a lot better with 7/8 and 10. In fact, the driver model hasn't changed (much) between 7 to 10.

As far as folks hating on Win8.x, I honestly don't get it. The largest complaint I heard was all about the Metro interface, but that was so easily gotten around. 10 is even better- I'm running it without any issues whatsoever in my studio- everything just works. Moreover, a few of my close friends who have been Mac runners are even switching to Win10 because they're sick of Apple paying way more attention to iOS than OSX and screwing them over on their already too expensive hardware.

So- all that to say- take the plunge and get out of XP. It was a great OS for its day, but that day is over- especially so for audio production.

[prezbass]

Oh- I didn't mention how much better Reaper is outside of XP.

If you run Win7 x86, you won't really see all that much difference. Win7 is better behaved than XP was, so you will definitely gain stability. If you jump to Win7 x64, you will see a HUGE jump in performance due to the increased available address space.

My (non-scientific) example:
I had projects in x86 that were typical of most- a lot of VSTi's and more audio tracks and LOTS of plugins. I typically would start having trouble with Reaper around the 25-30 track count. When I switched to x64, Reaper wouldn't even notice those exact same projects- even with 32 bit effects. Getting rid of my 32 bit effects and going (largely) 64 bit alleviated any remaining issues. Today, running Win10x64 and Reaper x64 with 95% 64 bit plugins, I can let Reaper run for days without issue; I never have to reboot my machine between sessions- it's stupid solid.

There you have it.

[Mink99]

Dumb question @ prezbass :

Does a cpu really run at a higher frequency if it has an increased available address space ?

[prezbass]

Originally Posted by Mink99

Dumb question @ prezbass :

Does a cpu really run at a higher frequency if it has an increased available address space ?

Well- that depends on how you want to look at it. No matter what, the CPU is not going to run faster- BUT:

When you're bottlenecked at 3GB (that's all you're gonna get with a 32 bit platform, and I don't care what anyone else says- that's all, folks) you run out of room fast.

With increased available address space, the OS doesn't have to page out to disk as often. Disks are MUCH slower than RAM, so the perception is that the system is running "faster". It's pretty much that simple. (That's really not an oversimplified answer right there)

To sum it up- CPU speed is CPU speed. It's all the resources and their individual speeds that gum up the works, and since RAM is the fastest storage you have, being able to address it all makes the system run in top form.

Does that make sense?

[Nystagmus]

i think the defining factor is whether or not you use VST samplers or not.

I've never run out of RAM on any DAW system I've ever used.
I also never run out of tracks. The tunes still get done.

About DPClat.exe ...

It is incompatible with Windows 8, not Windows 7. I looked it up. And the bug is scheduled to be fixed in future versions of DPClat.exe ...you can read here:

http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

There seems to be a typo in the info, but if you read the full text and subtexts it clearly shows that it's still compatible with Windows 7. The changes were caused by Windows 8 using a different architecture.

I remember when I was on Windows XP SP2 I got amazing DPClat.exe results that were around 6-12. On Vista, the lowest I ever got was 50 after disabling a lot of stuff, otherwise it was about 100. On Windows 7, it was about the same as Vista. So that's a benchmark.

[buckman]

Originally Posted by Nystagmus

i think the defining factor is whether or not you use VST samplers or not.

I've never run out of RAM on any DAW system I've ever used.
I also never run out of tracks. The tunes still get done.

Yes i think this is the same as me, as i dont want to use any VSTi's etc just use Reaper as a recorder and arranger (like PT) and maybe a few plug in fx (although I might just use the low CPU JS_plugs that come with it as these look good...

[kenz]

Originally Posted by prezbass

The differences between x86 and x64 are pretty darned substantial.

Only if used on a system with more than 4GB of RAM, otherwise it's even slower. I don't know the OP's situation to judge this.

Originally Posted by prezbass

Microsoft has officially ended its support of XP. That might not make an obvious difference to you, but remember that this also means that there will be no security patches for it anymore. It's very vulnerable now- and, if you keep it off the internet most of the time and only put it on for a small amount of time, you're heading for trouble.

IMO, complete fear mongering nonsense. Most exploits are NOT remote, and considering he said he turned off most unnecessary services (most likely including the remote crap, which everyone should do, period, just for security), then he's pretty darn safe as long as he only uses it barely. If you go to reaper forum or youtube or email provider only and so on you seriously think you're going to get exploited? This is assuming XP even has a major vulnerability in the first place.

In fact, I reckon because the OS is not used widely anymore that, through security by obscurity, you're slightly more secure than newer versions of Windows on simple websites (just like nobody bothers to hack/exploit Windows 98 anymore, so going on the internet with 98 is actually pretty safe as far as OS vulnerabilities go).



As far as everything else you said, that's correct, unfortunately XP will get fewer and fewer hardware support.

It's not the OS that's faster because it's 64-bit. It's the hardware because you get to use more RAM. (compare with 64-bit XP in this regard;

However, and this is for the opening poster, RAM SIZE has NOTHING to do with processing performance. RAM speed does, however. The Operating System does cache disk accesses into RAM, however, if you look at task manager and monitor both the cached amount of value in RAM and its use, and see if you even fill it up in the first place. If you don't run out of RAM, then you don't need more, period.

This obviously depends on the user. But I'm sick of all this misinformation being spread from absolutely clueless customers who only know how to techno-babble. (not in this thread mind you, but obviously people read this kind of stuff everywhere else on the internet, which is why they "hear" this kind of stuff... like when people start talking about how "they were told RAM reduces latencies", WTF?!?)


I get that people try to justify their purchases and like to feel like their big amount of RAM was worth it even tho they don't do anything intensive, but this is way beyond crossing the line with how much crap it's been spewed out; I don't know where OP got this from but clearly he's been reading up from a bunch of nonsense.

Anyway back to topic and subject of RAM at that. XP for me was the last magic OS by Microsoft, with a slim version of it only using 78 MB (!) of RAM upon boot. That felt good in a way, it showed me that I actually get to decide what to do with the RAM I purchased. That figure is now almost 20 times higher, 20-fold increase, just unbelievable. Never in history of operating systems has bloat happened so fast. (even if you compare Windows 95 to XP for example)