i9 10900 vs Ryzen 9 3950X

[sagetone]

Subject pretty much describes my question. Going to rebuild in 3-6 months. If you have experience with either or both of these processors for DAW work, can you advise your likes/dislikes, pros/cons?

Thank you, Todd

[apoclypse]

If you can find one I'd go with the 5900X vs the 10900K. It will in general will outperform the 3950X in certain task due to the higher clocks and IPC using lower power as well. However the Intel chips still clock higher and a lot of plugins still rely more on clock speed than multicore performance. It's pretty close for most DAW level work I think.

So imo go with the Zen3 system. The only issue is that availability is real scarce right now so if you see one jump in it right away. If you do go with a 3950X for some reason on the plus side you can upgrade a 5000 series chip down the line as a drop in.

One issue at least for me is that if you use a TB audio interface. Those are bit easier to find on Intel based mobos but no impossible on the AMD side. Asrock has a few mobos with TB add-in card support. As does Gigabyte with the B550 Aorus Pro.

[fedexnman]

Can't find those new AMD 5000 CPUs in stock at newegg not now not ever they are constantly out of stock .

[apoclypse]

Can't find those new AMD 5000 CPUs in stock at newegg not now not ever they are constantly out of stock .

Yeah. I've been trying to find one myself.

[sagetone]

Thanks @apoclypse, I missed that one in the CPU Passmark list, see it now. Just a tad better than the 3950X, but lower cost, so yep, looks pretty attractive. I won't be rebuilding for another several months, so I'll probably put in a notification request at Newegg.

[sagetone]

One issue at least for me is that if you use a TB audio interface. Those are bit easier to find on Intel based mobos but no impossible on the AMD side. Asrock has a few mobos with TB add-in card support. As does Gigabyte with the B550 Aorus Pro.

TB is another good point. My MOTU 828X interfaces to my current Intel i7 system via USB2. I notice no issues with my DAW, audios in, and ADAT interfaces to my Eurorack system. I'm still struggling with the advantages of TB for audio work in a single PC, home studio, non-networked system.

[jonljacobi]

Either will be fine. Personally I was going AMD soon, but I’ve decided to wait and see what arrives from Apple next year.

[WasteLand]

the 11th generation of intel seems to be on par again with AMD, or in some cases better... so more choices. prices unknown. AMD prices are quite high.. availability very low..
so if you have 3/6 months, you have more options, perhaps.
the i7-11700K is "announced", with a very high single core performance, higher than AMD. that is good for audio. but AMD will answer, of course.. 8 cores/16 threads, that beast. enough for any DAW...

[CoolColJ]

I was on an i7 3930k system of 9 years vintage, and was going to wait till mid 2021 to upgrade, but my motherboard started to die, and boot loop worse over the last few months.

Forced to upgrade, i decided on a Ryzen system

had planned to go X570 motherboard + 5900x, but the prices were sky high, supply scarce, and motherboard bios support iffy right now.

In the end I settled on an MSi X570 Tomahawk motherboard on special, second hand Ryzen 3800x and 64GB of cheap patriot Viper Steel ram. For half the price of an 5900x, and this system still rips.

Minimum latency setting on my Lynx Hilo via USB with 64 samples buffer setting at 48khz, or 128 with 96khz, and get zero stutters with under 1% processor load typical for each plugin.
Eats Nebula Pro 3 like nothing vs my old i7, especially with long reverbs! Loading multiple channels of Nebula chains is finally a reality

The USB3 ports on this motherboard are also way faster than the old i7, the same Sandisk Extreme Pro USB3 flash drive that does 200MB read/ 100 write, now does 400 read/ 300 write.
My Motu PCIe 424 card works fine on this system - links 2x Motu 2048 mk3 and 24IO interfaces - I use them as an audio mixer, as well as a Midi to CV conversion to analog synths

I think for most people anything higher than a 5900x is way overkill for audio purposes, and 32Gb
ram is also more than enough. 64GB feels wasteful, but extra ram can be used for caching

My old i7 3930k overclocked, did 1560 on Cinebench R20, and the Ryzen 3800x on stock settings and heat sink/fan, does 4700+, yeah about 3 times faster. Can't wait till I get my old Noctua N14 heat sink on her and let her rip.

Also the fan on my Corsair HX1200 power supply never turns on in Windows 10, same for the chipset fan. The MSI RTX 3070 Trio also tuns off the fans at idle, and only 24db under full load. So system is is very quiet from 1M away and will be near silent once I replace the stock heatsink....
Noctua is going to release a huge fanless heatsink in a few months, which would be perfect for my Silverstone FT02 case, as the 3 180mm fans at 500rpm (inaudible) will provide all the cooling needed

[v1o]

Who makes a DAW called Ryzen 9?

[sagetone]

I was on an i7 3930k system of 9 years vintage, and was going to wait till mid 2021 to upgrade, but my motherboard started to die, and boot loop worse over the last few months.

Thanks CoolColJ, good report on your new system and good to know!

Who makes a DAW called Ryzen 9?

v1o, Ryzen 9 isn't a DAW, it's a CPU family from AMD.

[Jim Roseberry]

Ryzen and Threadripper excel at multi-threaded performance.
Ryzen and Threadripper's Achilles Heel has always been ultra low latency performance.

The newer 5000 series has changed that.

Test scenario:
Presonus Quantum set to 96k using a 32-sample ASIO buffer size. That's 1ms round-trip latency.
Load an instance of Helix Native with a patch running two 2048-sample Cab IRs.
Plug-in your guitar and play.
The 3950x and 3970x can not sustain this load at those settings.
The new 5950x can sustain this load glitch-free.

As a point of reference:
The new 10th Gen i9-10900k (with all cores locked at 5.3GHz) can sustain the same Helix Native patch (totally glitch-free) while dropping the ASIO buffer size down to 16-samples.
If you're pushing the limits of ultra low latency performance, that's as good as it gets.

With the 5950x, AMD has finally gotten low-latency performance where it doesn't feel like a major compromise... to have superior multi-threaded performance.

In our audio specific tests, the 5950x (currently) performs slightly better with a B550 motherboard vs. X570. On paper, that shouldn't be the case.
X570 motherboards are active-cooled (tiny high-RPM fan).
You can get a B550 motherboard with integrated Titan-Ridge Thunderbolt-3.

[maggot22]

Ryzen and Threadripper's Achilles Heel has always been ultra low latency performance.

The newer 5000 series has changed that.

yeah, i would not recommend 3000 series, but with 5000 series AMD massively rebuilt architecture, now it gives better single-core results and utilizes caching better, so now they almost on par with Intel. In multi-threading AMD had beat Intel long time ago.

[sagetone]

@Jim Roseberry and @maggot22, thanks guys for your replies, very helpful!

But... where to buy that 5950X?? Not too many suppliers yet.

[CoolColJ]

The fan on my X570 motherboard never comes on, so not an issue here. System is near silent from 1m away

So I'm waiting to mid year to settle on my final system like I had planned to, and I would most likely skip the AMD 5000 series and incoming Intel Rocket Lake CPUS.
Since AMD Zen 4 and Intel Adler Lake cpus will be incoming around then, which will require a whole new motherboard and DDR5 ram most likely

Intel Adler lake CPUs looks to what I may just end up getting