I5 or i7?

[Esquared]

I'm having a computer built to be compatible with Windows 10 and Tracktion 7. I'm wondering if there's a significant difference in having an i5 processor as opposed to an i7 as far as lag time, etc.? Any thoughts? And thanks in. Advance

[whyterabbyt]

I'm having a computer built to be compatible with Windows 10 and Tracktion 7. I'm wondering if there's a significant difference in having an i5 processor as opposed to an i7 as far as lag time, etc.? Any thoughts? And thanks in. Advance

If they're the same generation, then the i7 is almost certainly going to be more powerful, therefore capable of doing 'more'.

Whether the 'more' it can do makes a difference to your projects depends entirely on the projects themselves. Everything in your audio project uses up some of your available CPU power; just playing back prerecorded audio takes about the least, anything like a sampler which also relies on playing back prerecorded audio can also be fairly lightweight. Anything which has to do a lot of calculations, eg realtime plugins take up more still. Most intensive of all tend to be the plugins which try to emulate/model real-world devices accurately.
And obviously the more of each you use the more power that requires.

If you dont need lots of realtime plugins all running at the same time, and you dont need the latest fancy models of analogue synths, and you manage your track CPU useage by freezing, etc etc then you can get away with less and less powerful systems. There are plenty of people working just fine with much older/slower systems than a modern i5.

Basically the i7 gives you the opportunity to do more audio processing in realtime in your project than the i5. Whether or not you need the 'more' or not is impossible to predict.

If you can give more info as to what it is you hope to be doing, and what plugins you intend to be using, that would help; most people round here will know what's processor-intensive or not.

[BushmasterM4]

The motherboard is the biggest bottleneck. Choose wisely. I have built over 10 daw rigs in my past and have used many motherboard brands. But by trial and error, I stick only with Gigabyte boards on new builds.

[tovokas]

If price isn't a huge concern, then go with the faster processor. Eventually you'll need the extra cycles, and it will extend the 'hot rode status' lifetime of your machine. If I understand correctly, the I7 is stronger in multi-core performance, and T7 will use as many cores as you have. (I believe it spits things up track by track to different cores).

I'll second Bushmaster M4's recommendation to get a quality motherboard. Having a funky board with sketchy components (cheap capacitors that start failing in particular) can lead to many almost impossible to troubleshoot errors and crashes.

I'd also HIGHLY recommend an SSD hard drive to house T7, your sample libraries, and your tunes. It makes an incredible difference in song and sample instrument load times, which makes everything more enjoyable!

[tovokas]

Double post. Uhh, get lots of ram too.