Is multiple cores in a CPU more important than speed for recording? Advice Appreciated

[ksandvik]

Just get an M4 Mac Mini and add in enough memory and job done.

[PAK]

Whilst there’s many cores the main issue is the CPU you’re looking at is 10 years old at this point. Meaning no official support beyond Windows 10. Such older systems also tend to have bottle necks which further restrict options. £500 is a lot of money to spend on a dead end.

The cores are roughly 1/3rd the speed of the latest processors. This means even a base M4 Mac Mini (£515 Costco UK), would thump it in every DAW use case, and do it in near silence whilst generating a fraction of the electricity bill.

You can find niche use cases for such systems (Mostly because those E5’s can access 1.5TB of memory.) But, even if you perfectly load up all 20 cores, it’s barely competitive with the base M4 Apple Silicon processor at this point.

[21tones]

Thanks for the further responses. I won't start using Macs but I guess technology improves massively over time.

[uOpt]

The cores are not 1/3rd of the speed of modern cores, rather 1/2.

The Xeon comes with 64 GB. I'd rather have that than spending fresh money on 64 GB DDR5 now.

[PAK]

Thanks for the further responses. I won't start using Macs but I guess technology improves massively over time.

If sticking to PC the sweet spot might be an older 2nd hand AMD based system which can still run some of the newer Ryzen chips. That way it’s still within reach but gives you options which might give you many more useful years for the money..

[PAK]

The cores are not 1/3rd of the speed of modern cores, rather 1/2

Which ones? An E5-2698 v4’s single threaded performance is about 3x slower than the latest Apple Silicon. EG Passmark is 2053 Vs 6260..
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/28 ... -M5-8-Core

CPU Monkey doesn't have newer than Cinebench r15 numbers for the 2698. The closest is the 2696's Cinebench 2026 which is 232 Vs 737. Likewise Cinebench 24 is 57 Vs 198 etc.
https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu-intel_xeon_e5_2696_v4
https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu-apple_m5_10_cpu

[21tones]

PAK - thanks for the helpful responses. It looks like the computer tech guy is following your train of thought!
He has come back with a proposal to use some of the parts from the machine I described at the start of this thread
and put in a different motherboard and a Ryzen 5 5500 GT CPU. This has a stealth cooler comes with it.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/AMD-Ryzen-5500 ... r=8-1&th=1

Unfortunately, the RAM drops from 64gb to 16gb in this build, but with space to put more in later. Looking at the spec of that CPU it is AM4. I don't know whether that limits possible upgrades down the road, which is what you were suggesting. The overall spec would be AMD Ryzen 5500GT, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD + 2TB HDD, Windows 11 Pro, and just under £500.
Looking at my archived music project files, they only take up 3gb storage space. They haven't been fully converted to audio, with numerous mid tracks in each project, plus the audio ones e.g. vocals, guitars. I'm wondering whether to see if a 2TB SSD might be possible as the 2 TB HDD seems overkill for storage. This should be better for VST and sample storage allowing fast streaming?
I would really appreciate your thoughts about this.

[uOpt]

PAK - thanks for the helpful responses. It looks like the computer tech guy is following your train of thought!
He has come back with a proposal to use some of the parts from the machine I described at the start of this thread
and put in a different motherboard and a Ryzen 5 5500 GT CPU. This has a stealth cooler comes with it.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/AMD-Ryzen-5500 ... r=8-1&th=1

Unfortunately, the RAM drops from 64gb to 16gb in this build, but with space to put more in later. Looking at the spec of that CPU it is AM4. I don't know whether that limits possible upgrades down the road, which is what you were suggesting. The overall spec would be AMD Ryzen 5500GT, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD + 2TB HDD, Windows 11 Pro, and just under £500.
Looking at my archived music project files, they only take up 3gb storage space. They haven't been fully converted to audio, with numerous mid tracks in each project, plus the audio ones e.g. vocals, guitars. I'm wondering whether to see if a 2TB SSD might be possible as the 2 TB HDD seems overkill for storage. This should be better for VST and sample storage allowing fast streaming?
I would really appreciate your thoughts about this.

Bad idea.

Just for starters you will get 2x 8 GB RAM modules which are useless in the future and in a system like that you might want to avoid going 4 sticks of RAM at any time.

The Xeon would spank that thing in multicore load.

[jamcat]

A 10 year old ASUS motherboard with an Intel CPU has how many years of life left?
My 8 year old (at the time) ASUS+Intel system died two years ago.

Also, it was pretty noisy despite being fully decked out with "silent" fans and a BeQuiet CPU cooler. Not great for recording real instruments. My Apple Silicon MacBook produces zero noise, and is a lot more powerful (by actual plugin count and minimum latency achieved).

Listen to ksandvik. You can get a 10-core M4 Mac mini for £599. That would be the smart thing to do for your needs. All your software is cross-platform.

[Benedict]

Folks, modern plugs & DAWs are nothing special, they are just taking advantage of modern power machines & in a bad way... There is no more thought or effort into making resource efficient anything anymore... If these plugs & DAWs were presented back in 2000 they would be considered junk as nobody could use them...

While a bit OT to the real Q of core-speed vs core-count (I am in the speed camp), I think the comment has some value. Sadly DAWville is now driven more by fear and the attendant distraction of "novelty" than real 'get it done-ed-ness' that was necessary in 1999. Altho the signs were there as floofy apps held market where better ones like Opcode Vision failed, seeing the market didn't understand what they really offered. I am somewhat amazed Digital Performer is still going (assuming it is seeing updates seem few if not stalled).

That said, more power definitely never really goes astray and most modern DAWs are very capable (if you can handle the absurd workflows based in Excel thinking).

[PAK]

He has come back with a proposal to use some of the parts from the machine I described at the start of this thread
and put in a different motherboard and a Ryzen 5 5500 GT CPU.
I would really appreciate your thoughts about this.

Ryzen 5, 5500 is about 50% faster than the Xeon per core, but less cores means less overall multi-core performance. You’d be trading that for proper Windows 11 (and 12 should be ok) support, and a possible future upgrade path to something like an affordable used 5950 processor.

So, more multi-core power now, or trade it for better OS support and some future options? Only you can decide that. But the AMD route has a much better chance of seeing you comfortably through the next decade for minimal additional costs, where the Xeon is already restricting you. The only 2 considerations I’d add are:

1) Sometimes an AM5 system can be within 10-20% of the cost of AM4. Although present crazy DDR5 ram pricing likely screwed that up, it’s worth checking.

2) Modern systems in general, but AMD in particular, can be incredibly finicky about RAM. There’s no rhyme nor reason to it - some motherboards just don’t like certain ram sticks, regardless of specs. The person building your system will likely be aware of this, but it’s good to have them do checks so the system you get is nice and stable.

[eLawnMust]

Folks, modern plugs & DAWs are nothing special, they are just taking advantage of modern power machines & in a bad way... There is no more thought or effort into making resource efficient anything anymore... If these plugs & DAWs were presented back in 2000 they would be considered junk as nobody could use them...

While a bit OT to the real Q of core-speed vs core-count (I am in the speed camp), I think the comment has some value. Sadly DAWville is now driven more by fear and the attendant distraction of "novelty" than real 'get it done-ed-ness' that was necessary in 1999. Altho the signs were there as floofy apps held market where better ones like Opcode Vision failed, seeing the market didn't understand what they really offered. I am somewhat amazed Digital Performer is still going (assuming it is seeing updates seem few if not stalled).

That said, more power definitely never really goes astray and most modern DAWs are very capable (if you can handle the absurd workflows based in Excel thinking).

Oh, I agree they are very capable but that does not mean anyone will be making better music on it versus a 20 year-old version... With 'fat sounds' there is a large contingency of 'single-finger masturbators' with non-inspiring whatever... Plain & simple sounds much reveal a person's musical ability as much tunes nowadays if you take off all the FX & simplify the sounds there's nothing left other than a simplistic lullaby...There are other problems as well, nowadays new versions are pushed out way before being perfected, with updates pumped out online to 'fix' issues, same with games too so internet has not helped out on that one as in the old days with CD distribution everything had to be stellar before leaving shop... I still don't know how any of them sell the 'subscription model' to anybody... No way I would be tied to the internet just to compose...

More food for thought is that Cubase VST24 3.7 in 1999 had minimum req of 128 MB RAM where as present Cubase is what? 8 GB RAM? For what? Why burn my machine up & heat my home with that?... More processes going on more busses means more likely crashes... So modern Cubase is req approx 800 times the RAM of Cubase VST24? Is it 800 times as good? Not a chance... Maybe 2-3 times... You may say the sound is better, well I have run Serum, Harmor & SynthMaster (32bit versions) in Cubase VST24 3.7 which digested them fine, sounded great...

[Benedict]

...if you take off all the FX & simplify the sounds there's nothing left other than a simplistic lullaby...

I made a vid about that four years ago, Needless to say it was not popular. I suggested that if a piece couldn't work with nothing but sine waves, it was not really a good piece of music.

We can all "di-da-deee-do" Europe's "Final Countdown" *ya just did it didntcha* but can anyone just melody Trailer Swift or similar AI slop (ducks)?

Newer DAWs and VST are a tiny bit better based on horsepower for things like drift, but after that, what a person can make in a DAW now is not any better as such for all that. Proveably rather the opposite based on evidence.

But who other than declared wackers really cares as gear lust and complaining about how Reason isn't exactly the same as ProFools or CubeAss whilst making unpublished (and unpublishable) loopz seems to be all DAWville is really about.

[enCiphered]

What a weird, poor post.
Typical KVR bitterness and positioning yourself as above it all. Nothing but refusal to engage with how modern music actually works.
You are not analyzing music, you are defending an outdated value system, using sarcasm to mask it.

Given that none of your videos gained traction, some self-reflection might be in order.

[21tones]

PAK - thanks for your helpful and considered response. The tech did say that using an AM5 motherboard would open the route to upgradeability but said that, even using some parts from the originally proposed machine, would be pushing the cost to £800 or so. I don't know what CPU or RAM would be in at that price but he stressed that RAM is really expensive. I can't help but feel I need to go for something that isn't 10 years old. Have to have a search around and see if there is any money lying under the bed! I'll see what specs he is proposing going down that route. Thanks again. I really appreciate it.