Looking at a New Desktop - Quad Core vs 8 Core

[Mister Natural]

curious how this would affect my DAW : WIN7 with LIVE9 & EMU1820pci

currently fairly happy currently with a QuadCore running at 3.0ghz (& can run @ 128 samples at 0.32ms latency all day long for a typical project configuration)

looking at a 8Core cpu running at 5.0ghz - prolly run me $550 for a new cpu, mobo and 16gb of memory

how do you think that this change would affect my music making ability ?

[metalifuxx]

I drool at the sound of 8 core at 5ghz. But that just gives you more trust that your project will be stable at high track counts and latency stays down. Or you can use more romplers if that is your thing. Not to mention not having to track freeze (as much).

My duo core 3ghz 32 bit WIN system from 8 years ago recently died. I was surprised at how much I could still do, even with modern plugins. Still lots of track freezing, but I was used to that from day one. Didn't seem to hinder the creative process much, but it was mostly for recording guitar/bass guitar audio , whether it was mic'd or DI'ed to ampsim. Use a drum sample plugin for drums, so some memory hit, and other occasional vsti. Occasionally I would get an out of memory error program crash, but thats due to the 32 bit 4gb limitation. Still that doesn't stop the creativity process, and maybe forces you to make decisions more quickly and move on (i.e. bounce out and re-import the track as audio) and possibly get you to be more creative.

So now I am using a previous system that I had before the above mentioned one for the time being until I can afford a new modern CPU setup. It's a duo core 1.86 ghz, 32 bit 4gb RAM ! My main DAW Live wont even run low latency real time audio input without clicks and pops, but I am thinking it is a video driver conflict of sorts with Live specifically. So I use Reaper now, and I am surprised at how smoothly that runs vsts on an old system. I am still able to record guitar based songs. Just makes me commit more to finishing all parts on a track or certain amp sim sound, before I freeze the track. I focus more on the song creation and getting the parts done for a song now, instead of jumping right into the mixing tone tweaking during the recording/writing process (which I am sure we're all guilty of doing). I certainly can't do memory and CPU intensive rompler and vsti stuff, but that's usually not a focus in my music anyway, so I am not too concerned. Sure it'd be nice to have that possibility right now, but it could be more of a distraction, since it's not really my forte. The computer can run any ampsim in real time low 128ms latency with an M-Audio Mobile Pre or IK Stealth pedal, so I am getting by. To say I am content or happy with the situation I would be lying, but I can still be very creative and make music that satisfies me.

It's rewarding to come up with a couple well written parts using the old Guitar Suite ampsims in real time, then be able to replace them later with something like Amplitube and they sound even better.

CPU limitations forced me to try some new things and styles on guitar on this recent track.

https://soundcloud.com/andy-murph/the-g ... -young-wip

Not that it forced me, it just made me think about actually writing some actual parts instead of 3 chords and some random noodling and calling it a new song idea with a nice sounding amp simulation and some effect layering.

Does your current setup slow down your current creativity work flow that much that you need a faster system is the question.

[hibidy]

I have a 4770k and run live at a 64 buffer/48k and can boogie pretty hard with it. Look up benchmarks for the system you are running. It's not an exact science, but it gives you an idea of performance. Some of the amd 8 cores run well below if I recall correctly. I have no idea why. But when I built this computer, bang for buck, the 4770k seemed the most logical choice.

[SalemBeatsKVR]

I have this processor right here, it's really fast: http://goo.gl/7NRdsL
Its Passmark benchmark score is: 12,142

I recommend checking Passmark benchmark scores for CPUs you're looking up,
as a computer's performance is determined much more heavily by its architecture
than by the number of cores it has and the clock rate those run at.

For example, you might think that this CPU is faster than mine,
considering that it has more cores with each of them at a higher clock rate: http://goo.gl/nPJ2cM
However, its Passmark benchmark score is only 8,085.

-Ki
Salem Beats

[planetearth]

curious how this would affect my DAW : WIN7 with LIVE9 & EMU1820pci

currently fairly happy currently with a QuadCore running at 3.0ghz (& can run @ 128 samples at 0.32ms latency all day long for a typical project configuration)

looking at a 8Core cpu running at 5.0ghz - prolly run me $550 for a new cpu, mobo and 16gb of memory

how do you think that this change would affect my music making ability ?

Which "8 core CPU running at 5 GHz" are you talking about? I'm not aware of any that run at that speed, let alone have 8 cores. Some of AMD's CPUs have 8 cores, but they're considerably slower than 3 GHz (and in some cases, 2GHz).

The Intel i7 series has 4 (or 6) cores, and each one can be Hyperthreaded. In the case of a quad-core processor, this appears to Windows as 8 "processors", but it is not a true 8-core CPU. Also, the standard speeds on these are around 3.6 GHz, though you can get them up to 4 GHz. (Some DAW users have seen problems doing this, and with Hyperthreading on i7 chips, so keep that in mind.)

There is a LOT more to getting your DAW to run faster than just getting the fastest CPU you can buy. Check the forums on KVR for what you'll really need.

Overall, you'll be able to run many more instances of your VSTs, and have higher track counts. Unfortunately, there will be no practical way to know for sure how much more you'll get until you specify all the parts you're considering getting.

Steve

[Mister Natural]

Which "8 core CPU running at 5 GHz" are you talking about? I'm not aware of any that run at that speed, let alone have 8 cores. Some of AMD's CPUs have 8 cores, but they're considerably slower than 3 GHz (and in some cases, 2GHz)

>http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 19-113-347

peace

[planetearth]

Which "8 core CPU running at 5 GHz" are you talking about? I'm not aware of any that run at that speed, let alone have 8 cores. Some of AMD's CPUs have 8 cores, but they're considerably slower than 3 GHz (and in some cases, 2GHz)

>http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 19-113-347

peace

That's what I was afraid of, actually.

I've long been a fan of AMD (especially as an underdog), but for DAWs, their CPUs just aren't quite as good as Intel's. In the case of this processor, you'll need to look at how it accesses the memory (and the caches), and it's just not as fast as Intel in those areas. And since it's not as fast, you don't get quite the same speed or performance boost you'd think you'd get from "8 cores" and "4.7 GHz". Also, this processor only has 4 physical cores, just like Intel's designs. They're not "Hyperthreaded" per se, but they can basically do two things at once, like Intel's.

With AMD's current architecture, the memory access is a bit of a bottleneck. Intel simply handles it better, and that keeps all the data moving as quickly as possible. As long as DAWs are sensitive to latency issues, you want as few bottlenecks in the system as possible.

Take a quick look at this: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

The AMD you're considering is roughly in the top third of that list. To be fair, it's the first AMD processor on the list (ranked from fastest to slowest), but it's below many Intel i7 processors. No, this is not a definitive ranking, especially for DAWs. But it does give a good indication of overall processor speed and value.

Steve

[hibidy]

I really don't know real world performance. Seems to me there were a couple of builders here in the past that seemed to be convinced that amd was what it was for the price. A fine chip, but not at intel's rate.

[Mister Natural]

not to sound like I'm an AMD fan-boi but

my understanding is that these tests for cpu speed are basically to measure performance while the cpu deals with things like 3-d graphics, animation(gaming), cad-cam design, etc. To Hibidy's point - "real world" for the computer musician doesn't require that same typical performance from the processor. Steve's point about "bottleneck" at the memory access might be most critical measure for the most robust DAW chip.

Thanks for the feedback gents

[Schmidi]

One thing to keep in mind is: how does your DAW allocate and assign resources.

I can only speak for my DAW, Ableton Live, and the way it appears to assign resources (as well as community research via the "Live __ Performance Test" threads on the Ableton forum).

What happens in Live is the DAW assigns a plug/FX/Track/etc to core one, and then assigns the next plug/FX/Track/etc to core two...repeat for each additional instance.

In this scenario, you most likely get better performance (higher plug/track counts before audio glitches) by having more cores (even if the competition is a better performing CPU). Think of having more spots to park your 25 cars!

Another thing to consider is DAWs have varying ability to work with Intel's hyperthreading (virtual cores). Ableton is not great at utilizing HT for example.

Finally, if you are responsible with your recording habits (bouncing to audio, freezing, etc) ANY of these CPUs mentioned are far more than enough power to get the job done these days. IMOP You are better off saving a bit on the CPU and putting the money towards a great sound card!

Schmidi

[hibidy]

I don't think unless you get a budget system that it will suck at any rate. What ever you end up getting I hope it works out. I've done pretty well overall. Man, I abuse my computers

[Kaine]

my understanding is that these tests for cpu speed are basically to measure performance while the cpu deals with things like 3-d graphics, animation(gaming), cad-cam design, etc. To Hibidy's point - "real world" for the computer musician doesn't require that same typical performance from the processor. Steve's point about "bottleneck" at the memory access might be most critical measure for the most robust DAW chip.

Audio software leans on the CPU far, far more than anything else listed above, the CPU benchmarks are more relevent to audio handling than any of those uses and well worth taking note of. I've also noted in testing previously that the shared 2nd level cache designs found in AMD CPU's do appear to be not exactly ideal where audio applications are concerned.

[Mister Natural]

thank you Kaine for that informative post - respect

[jancivil]

thank you Kaine for that informative post - respect

It's the opposite of what's real, though. These 8 and 12-core machines are made with heavy video rendering and graphics in mind.
As far as a single machine doing audio, nothing distributes to cores like that. The heavy VE Pro users still use multiple slaves for the high performance symphonic setups.
I know from my own experience, I can get into very large setups and it just isn't going out to anything approaching my 16 logical cores. The statement above that's right is 'here is more than enough for your purposes', in general anyway and if it isn't you need more machines in a network. Your bottleneck is not the CPU today. In terms of the software today, I'm still future-proof with the early 2009 MacPro octocore, except I would prefer more than 24GB RAM today.

I don't know how anyone could arrive at the notion that audio is the real heavy workload like that, other than pull it out of his ass, it's basically fiction writing.
Show me benchmarks, the benchmarks are video and graphics. I render both audio and video all the time. I can make Cubase stop and tell me about a CPU overload with a heavy realtime export but it's not about the actual CPU being overloaded, it's 'ASIO' under Core Audio.
Everybody knows this, too. You need heavy acceleration and much more power in the GPU as well.

He's completely backwards on AMD as well.

[whyterabbyt]

thank you Kaine for that informative post - respect

It's the opposite of what's real, though. These 8 and 12-core machines are made with heavy video rendering and graphics in mind.

No, they're not, they're built with all CPU-heavy tasks in mind. Video rendering and graphics are a tiny subset of what they're intended for.
Kaine specs and builds these things for a living, and I can guarantee he's got a better grasp of 'real' in this area than you.

Your bottleneck is not the CPU today.

Except where it is, of course.

I don't know how anyone could arrive at the notion that audio is the real heavy workload like that, other than pull it out of his ass, it's basically fiction writing.

Perhaps by being a professional at this stuff, instead of merely an amateur regurgitating stuff they dont actually fully understand. You're in DK territory here.
You're an inadequately informed dilettante here, without the background, the experience, the training, or the knowledge, trying to shout down someone who has all of that. Which is ironic, given how intemperate you are with such people in the music theory demesne.

He's completely backwards on AMD as well.

What comparison test of them have you done? Do you actually even know what a shared L2 cache is?