OK, first of all… I didn’t do any specific benchmarking with and without this performance “fix”… but from general experience, I think it is really significant.
Intel CPUs suffered from a side channel security issue known as Spectre/Meltdown which was discovered a few years back. In response, changes were made in Windows and in CPU microcode. All of these changes cost performance… how much, you be the judge. For reference: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2018/01/09/understanding-the-performance-impact-of-spectre-and-meltdown-mitigations-on-windows-systems/
The nature of the security issue is very esoteric and quite difficult to exploit outside of lab conditions. For me, my choice is to take the risk and leave the vulnerability unpatched and get my performance back.
This can be done largely by adding the following two Windows registry keys:
reg add “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management” /v FeatureSettingsOverride /t REG_DWORD /d 3 /f
reg add “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management” /v FeatureSettingsOverrideMask /t REG_DWORD /d 3 /f
Simply execute each of those command lines from CMD.EXE running with admin privilege. Reboot… see what happens to your Cantabile performance. I think it made a significant difference for me (again, I didn’t bother with specific benchmarking).
I think it will depend on what CPU you have, how much it will matter. I have a Core I7 8750H, FWIW.
I’m interested to hear if you try this, and if you notice significant improvement in Cantabile performance.