Post by viciousbliss on Sept 16, 2017 15:23:06 GMT -6
I've been trying to narrow down the sort of bare minimum one would need to run a 50-100 track session at 88/96 all ITB. I've got 3 computers available to me with the following chips:
Xeon X5670(dual)
I7-6700
I5-2320
The I5 can barely handle a 3 track session with no busses, nothing on the master fader, and 2 Seventh Heaven, one Reel ADT, and one Ultrareverb. The other plugins are NLS, Tapedesk, Hornet Tape, bx_console, CLA76, Autotune 8, Oxford Limiter V2, VLB902, and one zplane Elastiquepitch.
The 6700 has roughly a 35% single and quad advantage and a 95% multi-core advantage. The dual 5670 is -7% single +2% Quad and +257% multi.
cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i5-2320-vs-1st-CPU--Intel-Xeon-X5670/m1735vsm13952
cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i5-2320-vs-Intel-Core-i7-6700/m1735vs3515
The 6700 seems to perform the best up until I hit about 20 tracks. After turning turbo boost and hyper threading on for the Z800 with the dual 5670s against Avid's recommendations, I was able to do a 45 track session with several fx auxes easily and hit 70% max. The 1130 multi-core score I hit when using the cpuuserbenchmark program seems to prove that the multi-core number is the most important. That said, seems like the cheapest thing that could equal the 5670 performance is an overclocked Ryzen 1600. It's within a few hundred points on the multi-core end while being 50 some percent faster on the single-core. A stock Ryzen 1700 beats the dual 5670 by a little bit and overclocked provides a couple hundred extra multi-core points. A 6850k has 50 some percent single core gains and is just 15% worse in multi. Overclocking the Ryzen stuff is supposedly easy. You just open a simple menu provided by AMD and change a setting. No need to even buy a special cooler, the stock one works. Overclocking these Intels is a little more complicated from what I read.
Where you start to see diminishing returns is when you try to go above the 1100 multi score stock. The 6900k is still almost a grand a lot of places. Multi score is 1200. 6950k is fetching $1400 and offers a multi around 1500. 7820x offers about 20% more single performance over the 6900s and a 1300 multi score for $549. 7900x has a multi of 1700 and same single score improvement over the 6900s for $899. Threadripper 1950x hits 2370 multi but single and quad numbers are way down from the 6900s. In Scan Pro Audio's tests, the 1950x barely ran more Rea X Comps than the 7900 or Threadripper 1920x. But maybe it would do a lot better than those in a 100 track session. I believe Scan Pro also said Threadrippers conk out at 90%. If I'm not mistaken Jim Roseberry said the same thing about the Ryzens in his tests. He also described the Ryzens as "super flakey" in regards to motherboard performance. The 7900 and TR needed some kinda specialized cooling from what I recall too. TR also didn't do so well with some kinda VI test at lower latencies I think it was. These more expensive chips also require more expensive motherboards along with the more expensive coolers.
Soon enough there's the 8700k coming out. It's supposed to offer 10% more single and 70% more multi performance when compared to the 7700k, the reigning single core champ(7700 loses handily to computers with better multi scores in DAW bench tests). That would give it a single score around 150 and a multi score around 1254 for $349. This might be the sweet spot if the numbers turn out to be true. Otherwise, an overclocked Ryzen 1700 seems to make the most sense. If one absolutely has to work with a 100 track session at 88/96, it seems we have a few options that would handle it easily, but you're looking at spending maybe close to $1500 for a whole build that may have some drawbacks. DAW choice probably matters some here too. Reaper has some kinda efficiency advantage. Ableton has some efficiency issues and I forget what the big problem with Cubase is. I'm still running Pro Tools 12.
If anyone is running big sessions at 88/96, I'm definitely interested in hearing about your setup. For all I know someone is running 50 track sessions just fine with a computer scoring 800 in multi.
Xeon X5670(dual)
I7-6700
I5-2320
The I5 can barely handle a 3 track session with no busses, nothing on the master fader, and 2 Seventh Heaven, one Reel ADT, and one Ultrareverb. The other plugins are NLS, Tapedesk, Hornet Tape, bx_console, CLA76, Autotune 8, Oxford Limiter V2, VLB902, and one zplane Elastiquepitch.
The 6700 has roughly a 35% single and quad advantage and a 95% multi-core advantage. The dual 5670 is -7% single +2% Quad and +257% multi.
cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i5-2320-vs-1st-CPU--Intel-Xeon-X5670/m1735vsm13952
cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i5-2320-vs-Intel-Core-i7-6700/m1735vs3515
The 6700 seems to perform the best up until I hit about 20 tracks. After turning turbo boost and hyper threading on for the Z800 with the dual 5670s against Avid's recommendations, I was able to do a 45 track session with several fx auxes easily and hit 70% max. The 1130 multi-core score I hit when using the cpuuserbenchmark program seems to prove that the multi-core number is the most important. That said, seems like the cheapest thing that could equal the 5670 performance is an overclocked Ryzen 1600. It's within a few hundred points on the multi-core end while being 50 some percent faster on the single-core. A stock Ryzen 1700 beats the dual 5670 by a little bit and overclocked provides a couple hundred extra multi-core points. A 6850k has 50 some percent single core gains and is just 15% worse in multi. Overclocking the Ryzen stuff is supposedly easy. You just open a simple menu provided by AMD and change a setting. No need to even buy a special cooler, the stock one works. Overclocking these Intels is a little more complicated from what I read.
Where you start to see diminishing returns is when you try to go above the 1100 multi score stock. The 6900k is still almost a grand a lot of places. Multi score is 1200. 6950k is fetching $1400 and offers a multi around 1500. 7820x offers about 20% more single performance over the 6900s and a 1300 multi score for $549. 7900x has a multi of 1700 and same single score improvement over the 6900s for $899. Threadripper 1950x hits 2370 multi but single and quad numbers are way down from the 6900s. In Scan Pro Audio's tests, the 1950x barely ran more Rea X Comps than the 7900 or Threadripper 1920x. But maybe it would do a lot better than those in a 100 track session. I believe Scan Pro also said Threadrippers conk out at 90%. If I'm not mistaken Jim Roseberry said the same thing about the Ryzens in his tests. He also described the Ryzens as "super flakey" in regards to motherboard performance. The 7900 and TR needed some kinda specialized cooling from what I recall too. TR also didn't do so well with some kinda VI test at lower latencies I think it was. These more expensive chips also require more expensive motherboards along with the more expensive coolers.
Soon enough there's the 8700k coming out. It's supposed to offer 10% more single and 70% more multi performance when compared to the 7700k, the reigning single core champ(7700 loses handily to computers with better multi scores in DAW bench tests). That would give it a single score around 150 and a multi score around 1254 for $349. This might be the sweet spot if the numbers turn out to be true. Otherwise, an overclocked Ryzen 1700 seems to make the most sense. If one absolutely has to work with a 100 track session at 88/96, it seems we have a few options that would handle it easily, but you're looking at spending maybe close to $1500 for a whole build that may have some drawbacks. DAW choice probably matters some here too. Reaper has some kinda efficiency advantage. Ableton has some efficiency issues and I forget what the big problem with Cubase is. I'm still running Pro Tools 12.
If anyone is running big sessions at 88/96, I'm definitely interested in hearing about your setup. For all I know someone is running 50 track sessions just fine with a computer scoring 800 in multi.