[Topic moved here.]
There might be some difference (mainly depending on per-core CPU speed vs. drive speed, but also size of cache, placement/fragmentation on drive, etc.) since v7 uses a new cache format encrypted with a new version of the iLok libraries. However, I would expect any difference to be small, and in my tests it was at most 16% slower (with memory compression enabled). With SSDs, per-core CPU performance will be the bottleneck, as before (mainly due to the need to decrypt the cache).
If you're getting much slower performance than that then perhaps Windows is scanning/indexing the file (or other files) in the background at the moment, due to files having recently been installed/created. You could perhaps also try defragmenting the drive. Conceivably if you're load samples uncompressed then the decryption thread might make more of a contribution to loading times.
Loading times may benefit significantly from having CPU turbo-boost enabled (and/or similar dynamically-varying CPU performance technologies), so that the per-core performance can be boosted as much as possible during loading. However, one also needs to be careful to ensure that CPU clock speeds don't drop below their base clock speed in normal use, so as not to risk audio glitches.
(In the medium term I would very much hope we can implement a new cache-loading mechanism that's designed fundamentally to be able to take full advantage of fast modern SSDs and modern CPUs with more/unequal cores.)
bobhehmann wrote:Just upgraded, and the new HW is sonically and functionally fantastic.
Great -- thanks very much. Glad you like it.