DPC Latency - "How low can we go" build?

[diskDfrag]

Hello and warm greetings to all (unless you aren't where it snows, in which case stay cool)!

TL;DR skip to "The Request" header near the bottom of the post. Thank you!


THE CURRENT SETUP
------------------------------------

I have found myself in a ridiculous cycle over the Christmas/New Years season. I figured it was time to retire two laptops of mine, an HP ProBook 450 G4 (i5-7200U, 8GB RAM, 1TB Samsung EVO SSD, integrated Intel Graphics) and a Dell G3 15 (i7-8750H, 16GB RAM, 1TB Samsung EVO SSD + 128GB SK Hynix NVMe, 4GB GTX 1050 Ti).

The HP is my current music production workstation, with acceptable DPC latency after Windows 10 OS/driver/power adjustments. The Dell is my gaming laptop, with poor but not-unbearable DPC latency issues. At least it doesn't affect my games.

I thought decommissioning both machines (to thus have one system) would be as simple as purchasing a prebuilt desktop from my local Best Buy during the Christmas deals they typically run. I researched online, settled on something with an i7 and an RTX card that felt like a good upgrade, and grabbed the spare change from under the couch cushions.

Oh, how I pity the naïve fool who wandered into that store only two weeks ago...

THE PROBLEM
-----------------------------------

I purchased one prebuilt made by iBuyPower (i7-14700f, 32GB 4800 MHz RAM, ASUS motherboard, 8GB RTX 4060 Ti), which had unbearable DPC latency (idled at over 1500 microseconds, opening a single Youtube tab caused unmanageable stuttering, microfreezes, and audio glitches).

I troubleshot the ever-living snot out of it by getting my hands on every driver upgrade/uninstall/rollback I could find, upgrading chipset/bios firmware, tweaking power setting adjustments in Win11, BIOS adjustments/factory resets, even reseating the hardware itself just in case there were loose components.

Thoroughly disappointed, I returned the PC, got my money refunded, and looked for a machine with similar specs on sale.

Enter the second mistake of this twisted charade: A second prebuilt, this one an ASUS ROG system. Less RGB (my eyes thank ASUS for that decision), but the same general hardware under the hood: i7-14700f, 32GB 5000 MHz RAM, 8GB RTX 4060 Ti, ASUS ROG motherboard.

Perhaps I should've paid closer attention to that hardware setup, because the problems not only were present on this machine, but they were exponentially worse! You ever see a computer pull 40,000 microsecond latency times? I didn't know Resplendence LatencyMon could track values that high!

Cue a re-run of the same show as before. BIOS/firmware updates. Driver updates/rollbacks/reinstalls/uninstallations/generic Windows driver replacements. Every power setting in Win11 lunged for like the last cookie at a Christmas party. Heck, I even tried plugging this new machine into an entirely different outlet on a different wall with a different power cord, just in case my home circuits were to blame somehow.

And doing an audio check with a single, lonely Youtube tab? Stuttering, like always. I've seen better lag response times from random community-hosted Counter-Strike servers. One tab of mild, corporate vaporwave would send the machine into stutters like a crappy 2010 camcorder video of the family opening Christmas presents. Even the games I downloaded to test suffered the wrath of the DPC latency gremlins that had overthrown the desktop.

At that point, I was going to get a concussion from how many times I had slammed my head on the desk in frustration. I lugged it back into the car, nearly fell over trying to put the thing on the desk at Best Buy, got my money back, and slunk back home in disgrace.

THE REQUEST
--------------------------

At this point, I'm completely out of ideas. I have a feeling that if I buy a third prebuilt and get the same results, I'm going to go crawl under the floorboards and become one with the rats.

The main culprits in every test and failure of DPC Latency are NVLDDMKM.SYS, WDF01000.SYS, and NTOSKRNL.EXE

My main goal is to build a computer with parts known/tested/confirmed to have as low of DPC latency as possible, or parts that are not known to cause DPC latency issues. The primary use is going to be music production, followed by gaming/streaming, then video editing/3d modelling.

Since both prebuilt computers were Intel/NVIDIA combos with ASUS motherboards, I'm not entirely tempted to build something with any of these elements unless there is demonstrated proof of low latency.

If anyone knows of any parts that have been proven to have low DPC Latency, or any builds you are running that are managing low latencies (especially for music production and gaming), please let me know the specs! I've been leaning towards AMD for both CPU/GPU because I suspect the P/E Cores of the Intel chips and NVIDIA's driver compatibility with Win11 might be partially responsible for the DPC latency. AMD also seems to be a more cost-effective choice for my budget, while not sacrificing too much in power and speed.

If budget is of concern, I'd like to get 16 CPU threads, 32 gigs of RAM, and 8 gigs of VRAM for as reasonably close to $1500 as possible. I understand if this is a difficult price point, it's just what I ended up paying for each of those prebuilt gaming desktops.

Thank you all so much! I appreciate your time and responses!

[Hyote]

I wish we could go back to 2016 with PC parts. For actually low latency you'd need a 1080ti, an i7-6700k and the lowest latency DDR3 RAM.
Now the Ryzen 9800X3D is the best CPU but I still see people complaining about floatiness. A 14900k wouldn't get you any better latency or performance so I'd stick with this. For the motherboard, ASUS boards still give people a better input feel than other brands (not advertising). Get a Corsair HX1200 or anything that you can find that has low EMI emission, have as few case fans as possible and preferably no RGB. If you follow any Windows tweaking guide (FR33THY, AMITXV, Calypto), you'll be able to get decent latency both by scores and feel.

[TN_fun]

What windows system are you using? Is this a retail license on a usb drive?

[diskDfrag]

Can confirm that both pre built computers that I purchased and had to return were running Windows 11 Home 24H2. Both were Home edition, pre-loaded into the SSDs included in both computers to show the set up menu on boot.

Windows version was fully updated during troubleshooting on both machines, all Windows/optional updates selected and applied. My apologies, forgot to mention that!

[kyube]

If anyone knows of any parts that have been proven to have low DPC Latency, or any builds you are running that are managing low latencies (especially for music production and gaming), please let me know the specs! I've been leaning towards AMD for both CPU/GPU because I suspect the P/E Cores of the Intel chips and NVIDIA's driver compatibility with Win11 might be partially responsible for the DPC latency. AMD also seems to be a more cost-effective choice for my budget, while not sacrificing too much in power and speed.

If budget is of concern, I'd like to get 16 CPU threads, 32 gigs of RAM, and 8 gigs of VRAM for as reasonably close to $1500 as possible. I understand if this is a difficult price point, it's just what I ended up paying for each of those prebuilt gaming desktops.

Thank you all so much! I appreciate your time and responses!

Yes, you are right.
The lowest DPC latency you can get (at least in Windows 10 & W11 23H2) is by going AMD CPU & GPU
To be even more specific:
- Intel NIC (old 10Gbit and old 1Gbit, skip 2.5Gbit ones)
- Realtek ALC1220 or older (NOT ALC4080)
- ASMEDIA USB Controller as 2nd USB option (with appropriate drivers)
- AMD W7 USB drivers

The issue is, AMD is at best a decent option for OpenGL, DX12 and Vulkan titles.
Yes, they do have better DPC latency than NVIDIA drivers (at least anecdotally, there's a huge lack of proper testing in this regard), but it trails extremely far in almost every other aspect (decoder & encoder capability, D3D9-D3D11 performance, mouse cursor bugs on specific displays, very grotesque control panel & just small quirks which break the general user experience)
I think you should just grab a Nvidia GPU and adjust it in software properly, by choosing the correct drivers & settings.
This will lower the DPC's & interrupts of the driver tremendously.

Just a heads-up, this forum is filled with people who like running around in circles and not fix their problem, but just spout random non-sense.
As a filter, if you see a user mentioning the following words very frequently, feel free to ignore them: EMI, FLOATY, MAGNETS, STUTTERY, MICROSTUTTER, BLURRY, JITTERY, FAST/SLOW MOUSE, MAGNET, LATENCYMON, CUSTOM OS,...

I assume you've been using LatencyMon to measure the numbers you've noted in your OP.
It's not a reliable metric to gauge how drivers behave on Windows. Use Windows Performance Analyzer instead (take a look at xtw or xperf from ValleyofDoom's repositories)

Do not buy pre-built PC's, buy separate parts and learn how to setup your operating system from scratch (as in, which specific settings in Windows lead to performance improvements)
Take a look at these guides, should help you a lot in the journey:
https://calypto.us/
https://github.com/valleyofdoom/PC-Tuning
https://github.com/BoringBoredom/PC-Optimization-Hub
https://github.com/djdallmann/GamingPCSetup

Be VERY cautious what you see online about this topic.
Always go for the safer option.
99,5% of content out there about DPC latency & general Windows software stack lacks any kind of PROPER testing data and relies on the current mood of the author of said posts.
If someone doesn't use PresentMon (Bored's frame analysis, for example), Windows Performance Analyzer (for DPC analysis), Intel VTune Profiler / AMD μProf & similar good tools & methods, they're doing it wrong.

Place your USB-powered audio devices through the ASMEDIA controller (but avoid using USB if possible altogether). It will result in much less stuttering compared to the default Microsoft USB drivers.

Don't expect Windows PC's to be as good as macOS for audio production, there seems to be a substantial enough gap between macOS & Windows in regards to audio latency & music production.

The entire DPC of Windows drivers topic is just blown out of proportions unnecessarily, because people WON'T learn from proper sources (whether out of ignorance / not knowing about good resources or just unwilling to do so due to some personal benefits from people not knowing)

Hope this helps.

[Slender]

9700k 10700k
5800x 9700x

[naporitan]

dpc_schizo.png (11.8 KiB) Viewed 6087 times

The latency of the operating system up to a certain threshold when used only in phonogram listening mode has NO IMPORTANCE. If your hardware is weak and there are many tasks running, then it is possible that the latency value is greater than the critical buffering and drops start to occur. If your five year old PC is used for a single audio task, then at any sampling rate available to you this very latency is nothing.

The struggle to minimize this very latency is for completely different reasons. Namely to capture analog signal into digital and output back into analog. This is necessary for musicians using a computer as a synthesizer, mixer, etc. There is important real-time from pressing a virtual key on the midi keyboard of a piano or touching a real guitar string to the appearance of sound in the speakers. The faster the pc and the faster the DAC and ADC, the latency decreases. The software latency threshold of a windows system is 48 samples. You can't go any lower than that, no matter how hard you kill yourself. This is embedded in the system kernel. Although the same RME declare in their latest products hardware latency of their devices about 18 samples, but draws the attention of experts to the parameters of the Windows operating system.

Friends.

Put together an inexpensive modern computer, package it in a nice body. Buy a top segment motherboard from any manufacturer and you get candy. Top segment motherboards have very good element base, interference isolation, good drivers with low dpc latency, etc.

Disagree.

Read carefully forums where pro devices and software are taken apart. There advice on systems sane and useful and explained all not from the point of view of pseudoscience audiophilia and professionally with specifications and datasheets.

In general, it is strange to look for something that has long been known and worked with in the very studios where your favorite music is made.

[Hyote]

kyube and naporitan both speak against anything experimental like they are propagandists, highlighting words like mood, pseudoscience, sanity. Do you know if something really is placebo? Did you do any kind of testing? You are leeches just as much as the other illiterate people coming up once a week to comment "placebo". Personally I only share some seemengly small and useless things because they might contribute to something else.

Back to the topic at hand now:
AMD GPU drivers got so bad now and I think for the 7000 series you need the newest ones. I think NVIDIA is the only way now.
Check if every piece of equipment you have is up to standards. I'm going to write the infamous word, brace for it.
EMI :O
You need everything to handle it well. I tested a bunch of cables, mice, everything. As r0ach once mentioned, it even matters which end of the HDMI/DP cable is plugged in and I came to the same conclusion.
The best mice you can buy are from EndgameGear in this regard.

[Slender]

kyube and naporitan both speak against anything experimental like they are propagandists, highlighting words like mood, pseudoscience, sanity. Do you know if something really is placebo? Did you do any kind of testing? You are leeches just as much as the other illiterate people coming up once a week to comment "placebo". Personally I only share some seemengly small and useless things because they might contribute to something else.

Back to the topic at hand now:
AMD GPU drivers got so bad now and I think for the 7000 series you need the newest ones. I think NVIDIA is the only way now.
Check if every piece of equipment you have is up to standards. I'm going to write the infamous word, brace for it.
EMI :O
You need everything to handle it well. I tested a bunch of cables, mice, everything. As r0ach once mentioned, it even matters which end of the HDMI/DP cable is plugged in and I came to the same conclusion.
The best mice you can buy are from EndgameGear in this regard.

what are you talking about? naporitan a schoolboy who cannot pass the mousetester test because he is afraid.
lower dpc latency = more time for usb driver processing = greater stability delta mouse hz.
and yes, endgamegear best mice.