Realtime performance with plugins

Well I certainly found the limit of my CPU when it comes to running plug-ins. 4-core i7 running 4ghz. I get a few before things start jamming up the pipeline, but certainly not all of them that I want to run. I'm not sure it's a "number of cores" issue at all. Rather it seems to me that I'm exceeding the ability of a single core. CPU occupancy is in the low 20s indicating to me that a single core is doing all the work. RAM memory is not an issue and no hard page hits are occurring so it isn't going out to memory having run out of cache. Adobe Audition is multi-core aware but certainly isn't distributing plug-in processing across multiple cores.

Outboard DSP is a $2000 solution, and one that I can't handle right now. Ugh.

I have performed all the Windows optimizations listed in the (good read) Focusrite support website including eliminating background tasks, killing anti-virus, running in airplane mode etc. I have also tweaked the ASIO buffer size.

To be fair, I can run a hand full of plugins before the glitches start.

And yes, I'm busing as much as possible to reduce instances of plugins.

Running a 4-core i7@ 4ghz with 32G of DDR4 (again, memory does not seem to be the issue).

Does anyone have any tips on squeezing out more HP?

I hope Adobe is moving to leverage all available cores for plugin processing.

Cheers,

-K