what's more important, cores or GHz?
- KVRAF
- Topic Starter
- 1534 posts since 20 May, 2002 from Cambridge, UK
I'm looking to upgrade my desktop PC with a machine which has greater processing power, but how do I know what to choose? Is quad core going to be better than dual-core even if the quoted speed is a lower figure? I'm a complete lay-man when it comes to such technicalities so any advice is appreciated! I don't need fancy inputs/outputs or graphics as I'm doing everything in the box (FLstudio)
thanks in advance
thanks in advance
THIS IS MY MUSIC: http://spoti.fi/45P2xls
- KVRAF
- Topic Starter
- 1534 posts since 20 May, 2002 from Cambridge, UK
well I don't have specific numbers to compare, I was just looking for more of a general guide
THIS IS MY MUSIC: http://spoti.fi/45P2xls
- KVRAF
- 2231 posts since 23 May, 2005 from West Country, UK
You will only benefit from more cores if the applications that you choose to run are coded to make use of multiple cores.
In the case of your DAW, it appears that it is so coded:
https://support.image-line.com/knowledg ... hp?ans=476
Individual plugins may or may not use multiple cores.
For example, when Lush-101 was released it could only use one core. It was completely unusable for me. Now it has multicore support, and I barely notice its CPU usage.
If you had had a very fast processor at the time it was released then it would have been usable on the single core. It is still the case today that some plugins and apps only use a single core and therefore a faster processor will suit them better.
All in all though, with music apps, in general I would say more cores is better than faster processors if forced to choose as there is a movement towards multicore support.
Might hurt the wallet more though!
In the case of your DAW, it appears that it is so coded:
https://support.image-line.com/knowledg ... hp?ans=476
Individual plugins may or may not use multiple cores.
For example, when Lush-101 was released it could only use one core. It was completely unusable for me. Now it has multicore support, and I barely notice its CPU usage.
If you had had a very fast processor at the time it was released then it would have been usable on the single core. It is still the case today that some plugins and apps only use a single core and therefore a faster processor will suit them better.
All in all though, with music apps, in general I would say more cores is better than faster processors if forced to choose as there is a movement towards multicore support.
Might hurt the wallet more though!
- KVRAF
- Topic Starter
- 1534 posts since 20 May, 2002 from Cambridge, UK
-
- KVRAF
- 5716 posts since 8 Jun, 2009
Multiply the Ghz by number of cores. If the number for one is 1.5x or more than the other, go for that one. If the difference is less, it gets trickier. At low latency settings, more gigahertz is likely to rule over number of cores. You are also more likely to be able to run high-demand instruments, such as Diva, particularly at low latencies.Jbravo wrote:well I don't have specific numbers to compare, I was just looking for more of a general guide
At higher latencies (and this may be only 128 samples), cores win most of the time on DAWs. Check out DAWbench to see, although I don't think they've done FLStudio.
-
- Pick Me Pick me!
- 9684 posts since 12 Mar, 2002 from a state of confusion
This would be my answer too.Burillo wrote:TFLOPS
And it covers most of the bases as well... specifically, multiple cores, as well as increased clock speed, will give you more FLOPS (floating point operations per second) in theory. They are both a part of the equation (esp in a multi threaded environment).
from the wiki:
What is more important though, between the two, I'd say is extra cores. You'll ramp your FLOPS value much higher this way. That said, this only pertains to software that is multithreaded. Most software today seems to at least be able to assign, at least, different synth instances to different cores though, but it seems few can assign a single synth instance to multiple cores (believe u-he products can do this).
You're better off getting that 2 GHz, Quad core processor (in most cases) than that 3 GHz, Dual core processor, as example.
1 socket x ( 4 cores / 1 socket ) x 2 GHz x 4 flops per cycle = 32 GFLOPS
versus
1 socket x ( 2 cores / 1 socket ) x 3 GHz x 4 flops per cycle = 24 GFLOPS
- KVRian
- 1045 posts since 3 Jul, 2006
+1: more GHz for audio
- KVRAF
- Topic Starter
- 1534 posts since 20 May, 2002 from Cambridge, UK
thanks VitaminD for the explanation, that makes a lot of sense
@arkmabat - is your old i7 particularly slow? I guess people have different ideas of what speeds are acceptable/usable
@arkmabat - is your old i7 particularly slow? I guess people have different ideas of what speeds are acceptable/usable
THIS IS MY MUSIC: http://spoti.fi/45P2xls
-
- KVRAF
- 1895 posts since 13 Oct, 2002
Of course, right now if money permits, you want as much of both as you can afford. Though right now, the best return on investment is getting an overclockable 6-core, some of those can give you an easy o/c @ 4.5 GHz on air cooling with fast RAM. You also get lower latencies that way.lnikj wrote:All in all though, with music apps, in general I would say more cores is better than faster processors if forced to choose as there is a movement towards multicore support.
Might hurt the wallet more though!
While the industry is moving towards multi-core operation, low-latency multi-core live processing and generation of audio is proving to be a hard nut to crack. For now the fastest way to manage it is through traditional single core processing. The reason synths do better is that individual voices can be parsed out to different cores, but processing plugins are pretty much single core. And as linkj mentioned some DAWs are better than others at distributing the workload across cores.
It's going to take years, maybe decades, to really have efficient granular multi-core processing, from the hardware, to the OS, DAW and finally audio plugins, but as long as CPU clock rates can keep increasing, it'll be slow going as clock speed will still advantage the traditional model. As most things human, we generally only buckle down when we hit a wall.
-
- Banned
- 1374 posts since 5 May, 2007 from Finland
Hold your horses. We already have efficient multi-core DAW's. Reaper and Cubase(starting from 7) for example. I think you might be referring to "realtime" or very low latency performance? In that case you are partly right, it's quicker to run a single data stream with just one CPU(or core) as there won't be costly thread syncing involved.Breeze wrote:Of course, right now if money permits, you want as much of both as you can afford. Though right now, the best return on investment is getting an overclockable 6-core, some of those can give you an easy o/c @ 4.5 GHz on air cooling with fast RAM. You also get lower latencies that way.lnikj wrote:All in all though, with music apps, in general I would say more cores is better than faster processors if forced to choose as there is a movement towards multicore support.
Might hurt the wallet more though!
While the industry is moving towards multi-core operation, low-latency multi-core live processing and generation of audio is proving to be a hard nut to crack. For now the fastest way to manage it is through traditional single core processing. The reason synths do better is that individual voices can be parsed out to different cores, but processing plugins are pretty much single core. And as linkj mentioned some DAWs are better than others at distributing the workload across cores.
It's going to take years, maybe decades, to really have efficient granular multi-core processing, from the hardware, to the OS, DAW and finally audio plugins, but as long as CPU clock rates can keep increasing, it'll be slow going as clock speed will still advantage the traditional model. As most things human, we generally only buckle down when we hit a wall.