*Advisory:* This Isn’t a fix that is advised by Ableton, just a method that I’ve found works for me. There are many possible causes for high GPU usage, so it is recommended that you contact the Ableton tech support team along with a status report before trying these fixes.
wow..it WORKED ...i have also been pulling my hair over this and thought i had to replace my 3yr old PC since all my big project was choppy and laggy when hitting 16-17 gb of GPU memory. Now ableton is using my fast RAM instead and almost all choppyness vanished..thx a lot for the tip Chas ..you sure saved my day (and hair) :)
Just want to say, I never post comments on youtube videos but just had to this time. This worked for me I have been pulling my hair out over the last month or too about this issue. Thanks for posting this! Sorry for those who this did not work for because I think we have all been there.
Worked. Im running windows 10 and I too saved the text file as "options" and did not include the .txt extension. Thank you so much Chas. You've helped a community of people in just 2:13 seconds. Although I had a bit of trouble keeping up with you... Shit you're fast....
What’s so bad if GPU does some work? If GPU isn’t doing it, is the work done by the CPU instead? When I’m recording/mixing I need all the CPU power to be available for the audio engine, so I’m glad if the GPU does the rendering.
Thank you so much for this. Ableton used to use around 10% GPU, but it would randomly jump to the 40%-90% range. It was very annoying, especially since I sometimes have it open while doing other stuff, like playing a game or watching TH-cam. But now it's using
Wohooow. It works! Great stuff! I had a problem with Ableton freezing when I open Vision 4X together with other visualization tools like AB Metric. I got rid of my problems with your tip. Thanks a lot!!!
Very similar problem here. No luck with this ^ fix though. Might any other tweaks along your troubleshooting path spring to mind and worth mentioning here? (Win10 ABE11 RadeonHD5450) Cheers.
@@PromoMIAR I realized, that the problem was not completely solved. It seems to be related to this special Ableton project. In other projects, I do not have this problem at all. And somehow I think it is also related to the fact, that I just switched to Windows 11 and I feel like my Intel Graphics UHD 630 has some problems, even though, I use the latest driver. When I open Pluigns in this specific Ableton 11 project, all graphics have problems, wehne opening a second plugin in parallel. Sadly, I have no solution to this problem.
@@stekra-youtube Thanks for reply. I'll keep digging. (Update just now: I pulled out my Radeon and using now the onboard Intel Graphics. Issue resolved!. Unfortunatly it has less resolution so I don't think I'll stay with it. But at least I can confirm a new Graphics Card will probs fix it for me. My Radeon is very old so maybe a very cheap used Nvidia will be the answer.
@@PromoMIAR Interesting to read as I was thinking about adding an additional graphic card. But from what you experienced, the onboard one seems to works better. But I guess, overall it is a matter of the graphics driver.
@@PromoMIAR additional Info: I tried to open my problematic project in the Live Beta 11.3.1b5 Version and Ableton crashed while opening it. I also made a change in the graphic settings in Windows 11. I don’t know exactly the English headlines but it was System/Screen/Graphic and there I added Ableton with the setting: maximum performance. The former setting for Ableton was “Windows decides” maybe this helps?
Thanks for this. Cleared up my sound quite a bit. I'm surprised this isn't found much else where. Ableton needs to get some of this stuff in order because I started shopping around for other DAWs. Studio One 5 sounded just fine.
absolute ledge this with power management settings tweek spot on gpu crashs are a thing of the past yes maate absolutely over the moon have a good day sir!!
Hey bro Thanku so so so so so Much ....for this vedio ....it's short but it did worked ...my projects was going 40 precent cpu ..at 16 gb ram ....now same project is 5,6,,% cpu only ...❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
What should I do if the Ableton has never lagged or crashed, but now it just started lagging and crashing very hard, not even allowing to record a voice track?
First of all, thanks for help with this. I can actually click on parameters and adjust them while audio is playing without Ableton freezing/crashing. I did have something interesting happen after I added the Options.txt file. I noticed that Ableton Live 11 completely disappeared from my applications list in Task Manager after the set loaded. Did anyone else notice this, or is my computer an extra special kind of buggy? Edit: I looked under the Users tab in Task Manager and was able to find it listed there. I'm still not sure why it disappeared from the Processes tab.
I am using a Lenovo Thinkpad X270 to run Ableton Live 11 Lite. Im not sure which processor it has. Do you think this fix will work? My audio is crackling hard.
I tested a stressful project in Ableton. Without -_ForceGdiBackend setting it was 27% of CPU and 37% of GPU With -_ForceGdiBackend setting it was same 27% of CPU and 0% of GPU
Also I've compared two Daws: Ableton-11 and Bitwig-4. I made the same simple project in both of them. Same heavy synths, same notes, same tempo and length of loop. Same number of tracks (12 heavy tracks). Machine: Xeon 2667 Results: in Ableton (with -_ForceGdiBackend) CPU 25% GPU 0% in Bitwig CPU 27% GPU 0%
Cheers. No idea how you found that out but unfortunatly no luck here. Win10 with RadeonHD5450. I think my issue is OpenGL specifically. I can fix if some plugs have a disable option but any ideas if no option? (There is no OpenGL interface anywhere I can find.
It kind solves it, if you have integrated video. But if you dont? I dont and with that option now my "play" scroll is super laggy. Cant get my head around this problem, started from nowhere. Ableton 9 runs perfectly with my GPU, 10 and 11 clogs it up to 50%
Hmm, not sure about this. This fix worked fine on my PC with a discrete GPU. It's probably worth checking if there is another reason that your GPU is struggling.
@Chas Sheppard - In the text file that you created there is clearly another line of text above the -_forcegdibackend command, but your video capture is distorted as hell..... What does it say? (Can't read the GPU usage stats either....)
Freeze, i ran 80 vsts across 25 channels cpu said 50%, no audio issues at all, i froze 10 tracks and it dropped to 22%, You have to freeze, basically freezing shuts off the devices and the cpu can just read an audio file stored in a freeze folder, its how proper producers worked in the 90s, you get a sound commit to it freeze it move on, todays dumb bedroom producers wonder why they have high cpu count oblivious to the fact there are 100 vsts open in there project when you dont need them on you just need what there doing committed to a clip. If you need to change stuff, unfreeze then freeze again. Or get an i9 with 64gig ram and a super cooling unit that can get your cpu to stay ice cold while in session. The hotter your cpu gets will also slow down your sessions.
Sorry to hear that dude, as mentioned in the comment above you, make sure that the file is named Options.txt and not just Options, or Ableton won’t read it. Best of luck 🚀
@@chassheppard I made the mistake to name it Options.txt, but if you create a new txt file it already has the .txt extension at the end. (and it doesn't work) (My PC config doesn't show the extension) So it was named "Options.txt" which I could see. But it was actually "Options.txt.txt" when the "file name extension" view was enabled. So basically I created a new TXT file, named it "Options" then went through your process and it worked just fine. THANKS SO MUCH! 🙌 I hope this is not confusing :-)
Some helpful infomation for Mac users. Keep in mind the ForceGdiBackend command will not works if your Live 10 verison is larger than 10.1.18, I've test those 25, 30, 35, 40 versions and neither works. I've also tested Live 11.0.5 and no good. Should anyone have tested Live 11.0.0 and 11.0.2 on mac, plz let us know if it works. BTW, from the Ableton forum I've learned another command "-MaxFpsMac=30 (or 15 if more agressive)" will do some help too, even though not so efficient as GDI setting do. However, this command is banned on Live 11. Ableton sucks :(
I was looking for information on how to offload all the work onto the GPU so that the CPU wouldn't overload and the device wouldn't freeze. The question is, why then disable the support of the GPU, as the load on the CPU will be higher thanks in advance for the answer
*Advisory:*
This Isn’t a fix that is advised by Ableton, just a method that I’ve found works for me. There are many possible causes for high GPU usage, so it is recommended that you contact the Ableton tech support team along with a status report before trying these fixes.
With Ableton 12, this entry didn't work but this one did:
-_ForceGdiBackend
But better results with this:
-MaxUiFrameRateHz=30"
@@greggregowki2840 thanks for letting us know :)
wow..it WORKED ...i have also been pulling my hair over this and thought i had to replace my 3yr old PC since all my big project was choppy and laggy when hitting 16-17 gb of GPU memory. Now ableton is using my fast RAM instead and almost all choppyness vanished..thx a lot for the tip Chas ..you sure saved my day (and hair) :)
It worked!
If you are in windows just be sure to name the file as "Options" without the .txt extension, it's added by default.
Magio thanks so much for your coment. I deleted .txt and it worked perfect now! :)
Thank you SO much! I was having major USB audio dropouts on every interface and tried countless hours of fixes. This was the ONLY one that worked!!!
You're welcome!
Just want to say, I never post comments on youtube videos but just had to this time. This worked for me I have been pulling my hair out over the last month or too about this issue. Thanks for posting this! Sorry for those who this did not work for because I think we have all been there.
No worries, happy I could help :)
I found ableton 11 giving much more cpu useage than 10.
Worked. Im running windows 10 and I too saved the text file as "options" and did not include the .txt extension. Thank you so much Chas. You've helped a community of people in just 2:13 seconds. Although I had a bit of trouble keeping up with you... Shit you're fast....
What’s so bad if GPU does some work? If GPU isn’t doing it, is the work done by the CPU instead? When I’m recording/mixing I need all the CPU power to be available for the audio engine, so I’m glad if the GPU does the rendering.
Thank you so much for this. Ableton used to use around 10% GPU, but it would randomly jump to the 40%-90% range. It was very annoying, especially since I sometimes have it open while doing other stuff, like playing a game or watching TH-cam. But now it's using
Glad I could help :)
Wohooow. It works! Great stuff! I had a problem with Ableton freezing when I open Vision 4X together with other visualization tools like AB Metric. I got rid of my problems with your tip. Thanks a lot!!!
Very similar problem here. No luck with this ^ fix though. Might any other tweaks along your troubleshooting path spring to mind and worth mentioning here? (Win10 ABE11 RadeonHD5450) Cheers.
@@PromoMIAR I realized, that the problem was not completely solved. It seems to be related to this special Ableton project. In other projects, I do not have this problem at all. And somehow I think it is also related to the fact, that I just switched to Windows 11 and I feel like my Intel Graphics UHD 630 has some problems, even though, I use the latest driver. When I open Pluigns in this specific Ableton 11 project, all graphics have problems, wehne opening a second plugin in parallel. Sadly, I have no solution to this problem.
@@stekra-youtube Thanks for reply. I'll keep digging. (Update just now: I pulled out my Radeon and using now the onboard Intel Graphics. Issue resolved!. Unfortunatly it has less resolution so I don't think I'll stay with it. But at least I can confirm a new Graphics Card will probs fix it for me. My Radeon is very old so maybe a very cheap used Nvidia will be the answer.
@@PromoMIAR Interesting to read as I was thinking about adding an additional graphic card. But from what you experienced, the onboard one seems to works better. But I guess, overall it is a matter of the graphics driver.
@@PromoMIAR additional Info: I tried to open my problematic project in the Live Beta 11.3.1b5 Version and Ableton crashed while opening it. I also made a change in the graphic settings in Windows 11. I don’t know exactly the English headlines but it was System/Screen/Graphic and there I added Ableton with the setting: maximum performance. The former setting for Ableton was “Windows decides” maybe this helps?
Thanks for this. Cleared up my sound quite a bit. I'm surprised this isn't found much else where. Ableton needs to get some of this stuff in order because I started shopping around for other DAWs. Studio One 5 sounded just fine.
Excelente! desde Uruguay fue muy útil tu video! Gracias!
For those who didnt found the folder (as me) ... use the windows button + r .. then type in %appdata% ...
absolute ledge this with power management settings tweek spot on gpu crashs are a thing of the past yes maate absolutely over the moon have a good day sir!!
Hey bro Thanku so so so so so Much ....for this vedio ....it's short but it did worked ...my projects was going 40 precent cpu ..at 16 gb ram ....now same project is 5,6,,% cpu only ...❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
muchas gracias, funciona! 1% siempre
What should I do if the Ableton has never lagged or crashed, but now it just started lagging and crashing very hard, not even allowing to record a voice track?
Bro this video is a godsend for me fr. Damn massive ups onnit.
Glad to have seen this. Thank you so much
U da boss! Solved and many thanks for that!
No problem!
First of all, thanks for help with this. I can actually click on parameters and adjust them while audio is playing without Ableton freezing/crashing. I did have something interesting happen after I added the Options.txt file. I noticed that Ableton Live 11 completely disappeared from my applications list in Task Manager after the set loaded. Did anyone else notice this, or is my computer an extra special kind of buggy? Edit: I looked under the Users tab in Task Manager and was able to find it listed there. I'm still not sure why it disappeared from the Processes tab.
Not really sure why that would be unfortunately, not something I’ve run into before.
Thanks mate! It helped solving my issue too!!
Perfect. Thanks!
I think you saved my life
But now you’re running more cpu how you fix that?
shit worked like a charm on my mac mini. thanks homie!
I am using a Lenovo Thinkpad X270 to run Ableton Live 11 Lite. Im not sure which processor it has. Do you think this fix will work? My audio is crackling hard.
It's worth a go, although there are a number of things that can cause audio crackling, you can undo his by deleting the options.txt file.
does that cause any side efx? like slower rendering of meters or anything else?
Not as far as I can tell.
wow its Working!, thank you, genius!
qual roda melhor no Mac OS catalina, 10 ou 11? qual é mais leve???
I tested a stressful project in Ableton.
Without -_ForceGdiBackend setting it was 27% of CPU and 37% of GPU
With -_ForceGdiBackend setting it was same 27% of CPU and 0% of GPU
Also I've compared two Daws: Ableton-11 and Bitwig-4.
I made the same simple project in both of them.
Same heavy synths, same notes, same tempo and length of loop.
Same number of tracks (12 heavy tracks).
Machine: Xeon 2667
Results:
in Ableton (with -_ForceGdiBackend) CPU 25% GPU 0%
in Bitwig CPU 27% GPU 0%
Cheers. No idea how you found that out but unfortunatly no luck here. Win10 with RadeonHD5450. I think my issue is OpenGL specifically. I can fix if some plugs have a disable option but any ideas if no option? (There is no OpenGL interface anywhere I can find.
Perfect! Thank you!
Thanks man it worked!
It kind solves it, if you have integrated video. But if you dont? I dont and with that option now my "play" scroll is super laggy. Cant get my head around this problem, started from nowhere. Ableton 9 runs perfectly with my GPU, 10 and 11 clogs it up to 50%
Hmm, not sure about this. This fix worked fine on my PC with a discrete GPU. It's probably worth checking if there is another reason that your GPU is struggling.
@Chas Sheppard - In the text file that you created there is clearly another line of text above the -_forcegdibackend command, but your video capture is distorted as hell..... What does it say? (Can't read the GPU usage stats either....)
that's your wifi, I see it clear as crystal
Nicely explained thanks brother 🎉
Thanks 🚀
Damn,you are a GOD!Thanks
Sadly doesn't work for me, still 15% GPU. On Windows 10 and Live11
Sorry to hear that dude, unfortunately this is the only fix i know of for this issue :(
@@chassheppard Hey, thx for your efford. I made a mistake, I named the file 'Options.txt' instead of just 'Options'. Fixed! THX again for the video
@@ahlanmeride Awesome :)
Thanks lot man! you rocks
No problem ❤️
will this jack with the rest of my computer?
As far as I can tell, it will only affect Ableton Live.
Настоящий Джедай аблетона! Сила! 💪🏽 спасибо 🙏
Freeze, i ran 80 vsts across 25 channels cpu said 50%, no audio issues at all, i froze 10 tracks and it dropped to 22%, You have to freeze, basically freezing shuts off the devices and the cpu can just read an audio file stored in a freeze folder, its how proper producers worked in the 90s, you get a sound commit to it freeze it move on, todays dumb bedroom producers wonder why they have high cpu count oblivious to the fact there are 100 vsts open in there project when you dont need them on you just need what there doing committed to a clip. If you need to change stuff, unfreeze then freeze again. Or get an i9 with 64gig ram and a super cooling unit that can get your cpu to stay ice cold while in session. The hotter your cpu gets will also slow down your sessions.
Super!Thank you!
In my case i DO want Ableton to fully use my GPU so i don't get below 60fps
So what's the problem if GPU is being used? Isn't it better to share the loads between cpu and gpu?
If you want your supersilent computor to sound like a jet plane then yes. But maybe you'll run into problems recording audio....
Thank you!
А вас не смутило, что с графической нагрузкой процессор был занят на 1,5% (1:27), а без - на 20 (1:41) (!)
Neat Video 💖
Thanks :)
Помогло! Thank you!
Will the same type of thing work on the CPU bug that keeps making the usage jump to for no reason?
Unfortunately not, this probably won’t affect CPU performance.
"_ForceGdiBackend
is this correct ??
so what if want it to go back to default? just delete the txt? thank you for the video btw
Yeah, just delete the options.txt file
Is still working for the latest update of ableton 11 now?? Because i have the same issue
Hi, this fix is working for me on the latest version of Live 11.
@@chasshepparddo u think if i move my ableton projects to my main ssd C drive will help ?? thanx anyway
Thanks.
Is there a way to do this on a Mac?
Not sure unfortunately.
Hi, can I do this for mac also? do you have any ideea where should I put the file? thank you!
Heya mate, I have no experience using Ableton Live on Mac. I’d contact customer support and see what they say :)
@@chassheppard great, thanks, man! :)
@@djdance30 scroll down help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/articles/209772865-Options-txt-file
my roaming folder is empty =P
does it work for Mac users?
Unfortunately, I haven't tested this for Mac.
thanks from Ukraine!
this is what ableton ts willo tell you to doo , if all else fails LOL. OK cool though for sharing
ist only for windows?
Hi, as far as I can tell, this only works on windows.
Thanks for the vid, but it didn't work for us.
Sorry to hear that dude, as mentioned in the comment above you, make sure that the file is named Options.txt and not just Options, or Ableton won’t read it.
Best of luck 🚀
@@chassheppard I made the mistake to name it Options.txt, but if you create a new txt file it already has the .txt extension at the end. (and it doesn't work)
(My PC config doesn't show the extension) So it was named "Options.txt" which I could see.
But it was actually "Options.txt.txt" when the "file name extension" view was enabled.
So basically I created a new TXT file, named it "Options" then went through your process and it worked just fine. THANKS SO MUCH! 🙌
I hope this is not confusing :-)
Some helpful infomation for Mac users. Keep in mind the ForceGdiBackend command will not works if your Live 10 verison is larger than 10.1.18, I've test those 25, 30, 35, 40 versions and neither works. I've also tested Live 11.0.5 and no good. Should anyone have tested Live 11.0.0 and 11.0.2 on mac, plz let us know if it works.
BTW, from the Ableton forum I've learned another command "-MaxFpsMac=30 (or 15 if more agressive)" will do some help too, even though not so efficient as GDI setting do. However, this command is banned on Live 11. Ableton sucks :(
Have you found anything that would work on Ableton 11?
I was looking for information on how to offload all the work onto the GPU so that the CPU wouldn't overload and the device wouldn't freeze. The question is, why then disable the support of the GPU, as the load on the CPU will be higher
thanks in advance for the answer
There's no AppData folder for me. 🥲
Thanks man ! it works !