Threadripper or skylake i9 for vsts

[chk071]

This pushing and pushing for ultra performance is just BS. You see that both Ryzen and the i9 do, or will have a lot of issues, when they reach the market. Really, i don't even see a need to that kind of hysteric development. Do people like to throw money at the industry when they have to upgrade their computer every 3 years, to keep up with the development? Stupid, like so many things these days.

[Armagibbon]

Thing is man... this stuffs been available for like 5 or 10 years. Amd didn't have the cash for development and intel was happy sittin on their old ass overpriced tech. Only reason amd is gettin it out now is cus intel had to settle with em out of court for a huge sum cus they were rigging markets everywhere and they were gonna get it worse if they actually went to court. F*ckin scumbags. Amd took it cus they were bled dry by all intel's stalling and ryzen and threadripper are what they did with it. Threadripper is f*ckin amazing too. Turns out all the problems peeps were worried about are with win10. Too many cores ahahahaha

So all this? Developing too fast? Nah man this shit aint too fast its too f*ckin slow. Go buy f*ckin intel if you want everything to stay the same and expensive forever ahahaha

[chk071]

So you're happy with spending 1000 plus € every 3 years then, to keep up with this craziness, I guess. Well, I'm not.

Apart from that, if development was really as slowpaced as you and others claim it was, then my 3 1/2 year old desktop wouldn't be hopelessly outdated by now... it's just the usual, nowadays, complain on mountain high level.

[DJ Warmonger]

It won't be outdated for sure, but new Threadripper / i9 are literally doubling the performance we had one year ago.

[chk071]

I'm just wondering about the bollocks talk. Even cheap laptops outrun expensive desktops from 8 years ago nowadays, while only consuming a fraction of the energy. Realistically, you need a new PC every 3 or 4 years, to keep up with the development, especially in the game sector. I still remember how i used my 366 MHz PC for 6 or 7 years, and didn't come to sweat, even with newer games. And now people are talking about development at "snail speed". I just don't get it. I rather have a stable platform, than development in light speed, with loads of issues the new CPU's introduce. If a CPU needs a new energy scheme in Windows, then there's gotta be something wrong.

[MFXxx]

FWIW Im still running an i7 2.66 gen 1 processor with 12gb ram. Still handles a nice number of vsts and plugins, however I am now at the stage of bouncing down and multiple projects per track.
Currently Im getting so focused on whats happening at the moment, Im almost mitigating the fact that what I have is near on 8/9 year old tech still holding its ground. 6-7 nebulas/aquas, waves, slates and other plugins in a the ixer console. Its the vsti's and a few effects plugins that are buckling the exploratory experience. So I can only imagine what a simple i7 7700 could do let alone the i9's. It's easy to get carried away but Im at the point where I need to restrain myself and realise that its likely the current rig with a mobo, cpu, PSU and memory upgrade will hold me well for at least another 6-7 years +.

As far as AMD vs i9, my concern on reading through the various post in these early days of untested DAW territory, the Intels are likely to handle the vst's better over the threadripper. But that is my instinctive impression from what I am reading. I believe Im also going to stay with intel as I do not believe that the AMD mobos support firewire which I need for my existing soundcard (which is still hold its own, fireface800).

Im sure you've read it but check out the GS thread

https://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-c ... d-155.html. Loads of info and cross references.

http://wccftech.com/intel-core-i7-7800x ... ks-leaked/

http://wccftech.com/intel-core-x-series ... -i5-7640x/

Petes bogs are really informative and useful

http://www.scanproaudio.info/2017/07/18 ... -editions/

http://www.scanproaudio.info/2017/08/14 ... 20x-1950x/

Goodluck Im still on the fence but fwiw here's an idea of what I am considering at the moment, attached to save thread space.

Keeping the R5 case, couple of exisitng ssd and combi drives.
May leave the GPU for the time being wait for price drops as not really a gamer and maintain the existing GT660TI card as have 4 years warranty left on it.

[chk071]

It's easy to get carried away but Im at the point where I need to restrain myself and realise that its likely the current rig with a mobo, cpu, PSU and memory upgrade will hold me well for at least another 6-7 years +.

+1

And i frankly get a tad annoyed when i run more recent games on my rig, and see my PC sweat the life out of it, with frame rates of 30-40 fps... and people don't seem to realize that the only reason why it's getting that fast isn't because they want to make the people happy, but to keep them buying, and offer them the latest generation of shiny, awesome, and eyebrow raising graphics, while the core of the game, the gameplay and story is just another rehash of what already has been available twenty years ago. Same with the PC's hardware. Keeps the people buying and buying.

I think the audio peeps can be quite happy that development is not THAT fast there. But that's rather down to the industry being a rather small one. I'm sure, if it was as big as the games industry, we'd already see a whole generation of analog circuit modelled monster synths, which bring any 4 core 4 thread CPU down with 5 or 6 voices.

[MFXxx]

I think the audio peeps can be quite happy that development is not THAT fast there. But that's rather down to the industry being a rather small one. I'm sure, if it was as big as the games industry, we'd already see a whole generation of analog circuit modelled monster synths, which bring any 4 core 4 thread CPU down with 5 or 6 voices.

Yep my main reason for upgrading is for the following:

Diva/2CAudio/Dmitry plugins/Nebula/aquas/Omnispehere/Serum

But it will be worth it

[Elektronisch]

I still remember how i used my 366 MHz PC for 6 or 7 years, and didn't come to sweat, even with newer games.

are you sure you didnt forgot to write something like a zero after 6? because what you are saying would be not true. My very first pc (Pentium 4) in the 2001 wasnt the fastest and had 1.4ghz. In 2006 i got P4 with 3ghz single core and man Nexus was giving a stress to it until i changed to Core 2 Duo. Even games started to give alot of stress in 2008 for single core CPUs. So your saying is invalid

Jee 366mhz CPU in the end of the 90 was slow ...

[chk071]

I might have exaggerated a bit to make a point. Subjectively, I used to have my computers for a longer period though, back in the days. At least I had my 366 MHz machine for many years before it became obsolete, really... it was a mid-spec machine at the time I bought it. And, later, I had a Athlon XP2000+ running Win XP for a long time.

[Synthman2000]

I am always interested in CPU performance, however I am old enough to know it will make no difference at all to the end results of my music. Even any workflow benefits are marginal to unnecessary for myself. You know... bouncing from time to time is not so bad, and as I have been told and then discovered myself bouncing parts or tracks actually opens them up for potentially more creativity.

I am 100pct happy with a 6 year old i7, fast, stable, it need do no more than it does.

Is anyone here running 300 tracks of softsynths live ? My last track had 30-50 softsynths from multiple developers and 50 or more audio and other types, I cannot recall exactly how many cause the project was getting unwieldy on a 17 inch monitor more than 100 tracks some with just a single sound on them. And 100's and 100's of plug ins.

I will always stick with Intel as I have found they just work and I have no interest lean on the bleedin edge anymore. I just don't find my CPU the most important aspect of better musical results.

I mainly care about my production skill set progress, faster CPU's won't help that.

[david.beholder]

Yep my main reason for upgrading is for the following:

Diva/2CAudio/Dmitry plugins/Nebula/aquas/Omnispehere/Serum

But it will be worth it

Threadripper coincidentally has perfect timing with RePro-5 release. And RePro is quite cpu intensive.

But I'd rather wait until thanksgiving/xmas to see discounts from both AMD and Intel as well as rev 2 processors.

Is anyone here running 300 tracks of softsynths live ? My last track had 30-50 softsynths from multiple developers and 50 or more audio and other types, I cannot recall exactly how many cause the project was getting unwieldy on a 17 inch monitor more than 100 tracks some with just a single sound on them. And 100's and 100's of plug ins.

I'm using i7 6 core - 50 Zebras is easy but 50 Bazilles on hq is requiring freezing.

[generaldiomedes]

If you don't want to upgrade, don't. Nobody is forcing you. Many folks are at the end of their 3-5 year cycle and are salivating at the new power coming out. Personally I go on about a 4 year cycle but am waiting to see how the new laptop chips shake out.

I hope the rate of CPU speed increase continues, or we go to an industry standard DSP add on similar to video cards. I think we are a long way from topping out the computing power useable for audio - the popularity and superior sound of dedicated DSP units like Axe-Fx and Apollo are proof of that.

[jeffswitzer]

Currently on a mac pro early 2008 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Xeon. It's served me well over the past nine years especially after ssd upgrades and nvidia releasing webdrivers. Tinkering with the idea of somehow getting it to talk with whatever new system I get so that I can still use numerology and maybe logic pro as they are both mac only. Not really sure how feasible it is to run the daw on one machine and the vsts on another machine though; maybe a bit too convoluted of a workflow.

[Scotty]

There definitately has been a lag in terms of performance improvements (speed) from Intel over the past 5 years.. . I contributed to a few threads here over the past 5 years whereby my overclocked 3930K was only 20% slower than near top of the line Intel chips just prior to Ryzen's developments. Intel made progress in reducing powerconsumption but speed/performance gains were nowhere near Moore's law as it had been in the past (except for brief period of time in the late 90s) . THis included the first iteration of Kaby-Lake.

I typically replace my computer every 5 years and have been able to expect a 2 to 3 times performance increase with each upgrade which is coincidentally just about the time that my project track counts and plugins are demanding more headroom than I have easily available.

Not so for this past iteration. Finally Ryzen has put the pressure on and I can expect that when I upgrade next year, be it Intel of Ryzen , I'll have a machine that roughly 3x the power of my current rig.