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Old 09-25-2014, 09:23 AM   #41
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Originally Posted by ivansc View Post
I am still happily using a 6 core Phenom II machine which I built about 3 years ago.

Works for me and I use a lot of VSTis.
Can I ask you what are your buffering settings? Because I have the same CPU, but it gives me a lot of problems...
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Old 09-25-2014, 01:37 PM   #42
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msmucr: In the UK the price differential is considerably more than 40 euros.

I can do the top end AMD plus quality mobo for not much more than the cost of that i5 cpu on its own.
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Old 09-25-2014, 01:40 PM   #43
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Can I ask you what are your buffering settings? Because I have the same CPU, but it gives me a lot of problems...
I run 64 buffer when recording with vstis and around 1024 when mixing.
A lot of it is down to the quality of soundcard drivers that you have.

Did I mention I only have 8gb of 1333 ram too?

Love my RME
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Old 09-25-2014, 05:22 PM   #44
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Do you have any evidence this Kaveri/APU bullshit does any good at all for softwares like Reaper and VST plugins?

Who cares about some theoretical benefits AMD spins up in their marketing materials? I only care about what my normal softwares will be able to do right away, not what *might* be possible if the software vendor decides to support some special hardware architecture in the future.
Yes I have evidence, I'm running REAPER and haven't had any problems thus far. Currently I don't have a lot of VST's, I'm being selective at what I put on my computer, I don't want a lot of junk VST's I'll never use, but I'll keep you posted if I have a problem. You also have to take into consideration that I'm running 16GB of dual channel 2400 Mhz RAM with 16GB of virtual memory on my board, along with the L2 cache on the APU itself, I highly doubt I'm gonna have issues running multiple VST's. You can have an 8 core i7 super beast, but it's not gonna do ya much good if your RAM is crap, ask any DAW/HTPC builder worth his tech and I'm sure he'll agree that VST's will tax your memory faster than they will your processors cores.

Again, I am not advocating that a Kaveri build is right for you, all I am sharing is my experience and knowledge of what I have learned from building a DAW from the ground up. In my opinion, it's kind of retarded to keep regurgitating an i7 as a necessity, and the only option for a quality Home Studio rig, that my friends is bullshit. In all honesty, it comes down to one question, "What's the best affordable processor that will best suit your needs"? To keep suggesting the most expensive i7 offerings is disingenuous, as even the most expensive i7 CPU will have a more profound impact on your wallet than it will on your sound. The worst mistake you can make is to suffer the delusion that your silly little processor can emulate the big boy's who have an arsenal of multi-million dollar studio equipment at their disposal, armed with server grade quad processors that would put your puny i7 to shame.

Sharing this experience as I just did herein, is meant to help you to take into consideration other factors of the computer you want to upgrade or build from scratch. To look beyond the glamour of the processor and also consider your memory, your HHD's/SSD's, and your PSU which have a profound impact on the performance of your processor and the entire machine as a whole... Not to mention your bank account.

Have fun.
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Old 09-25-2014, 08:20 PM   #45
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@unique

The well known intel Core i 7 CPUs are in fact 4 core. In comparison to an amd 4 core these are in fact no match.

But I am still not convinced that in a daw scenario (!) the AMD 8 core might not deliver acceptable results too...

A lot of the requirements we do have are more dependent on the chipset, on the drivers etc.
well!! i asked the cokos support a while ago and they said "AMD-CPUs are very good!" they do perform very well and this question has been asked over and over again, also here in this forum, and that they have become to lazy to answer even too lazy to put a standardised answer to such questions.
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Old 09-25-2014, 08:26 PM   #46
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Originally Posted by Xenakios View Post
Do you have any evidence this Kaveri/APU bullshit does any good at all for softwares like Reaper and VST plugins?

Who cares about some theoretical benefits AMD spins up in their marketing materials? I only care about what my normal softwares will be able to do right away, not what *might* be possible if the software vendor decides to support some special hardware architecture in the future.
I use a Intel D2700DC that is the counterpart of the Kaveri: i had a project with 78 tracks in 44.1khz/24bit and lots of plugins and it was around 70-80% CPU-Load (RME HDSP9632 Card).
i now have the new intel Q2900 board here and will install it this or next month.
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Old 09-26-2014, 12:44 AM   #47
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Each daw machine is only as strong as the weakest element in the processing chain.

A faulty or suboptimal usb hub can ruin the whole expensive CPU power. A weak wlan driver can. A power consumption feature on the mobo can

I am coming more and more to the conclusion, that the i5 or a6 /a8 CPUs provide sufficient computing power. The bottleneck is the peripherals. That is, when I will build my next machine I will focus on the Mobo / chipset. But that will even be harder to get information about....
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Old 09-26-2014, 12:57 AM   #48
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The bottleneck is the peripherals. That is, when I will build my next machine I will focus on the Mobo / chipset. But that will even be harder to get information about....
the price of the mobo is a indicator, like 170 to 250 euro-bucks for the board. dont look below that. its gonna cost you a lot of time. if the board has a lot of aditional features its likely not to have much bandwidth free for the pcie slots. find out how many lanes are connected to the pcie slots, thats the main feature you would be looking for if you intend to use a pcie-audio-card. the more lanes lead to the pcie the more powerfull the chipset is.
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Old 09-26-2014, 02:54 AM   #49
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(blush)
Just bought an i7 4770 with Asus Z97-K mobo and 16gb of Gskill 1866 ram....

It better be worth the upgrade!
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Old 09-26-2014, 10:34 AM   #50
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(blush)
Just bought an i7 4770 with Asus Z97-K mobo and 16gb of Gskill 1866 ram....

It better be worth the upgrade!
Lol nice surprised you made that upgrade. Make sure to have a good cooling 3rd party heatsink or liquid loop. Go have some fun in the overclockers forum, Edit I'm not sure that the non k version is overclockable though.

Last edited by unique; 09-26-2014 at 11:02 AM.
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Old 09-26-2014, 01:09 PM   #51
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(blush)
Just bought an i7 4770 with Asus Z97-K mobo and 16gb of Gskill 1866 ram....

It better be worth the upgrade!
You never mentioned you were in the UK until that recent post. I guess the VAT kills you there.

You should be fine with that aetup. I got a Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD5H mobo, but almost went with an ASUS. Even with "only" 8GB of RAM I've disabled the page file (Windows swaps like a pig), so you could surely do the same. What cooler did you get? I went with a NoFan CR-95C cooler, but it requires low profile RAM, so you have to plan ahead. I think the GSkill all has pretty hefty heat sinks. Anyway, let us know how it goes once you get it all up an running. I think you will be very happy.

Cheers,
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Old 09-26-2014, 01:25 PM   #52
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Yes I have evidence, I'm running REAPER and haven't had any problems thus far. Currently I don't have a lot of VST's, I'm being selective at what I put on my computer, I don't want a lot of junk VST's I'll never use, but I'll keep you posted if I have a problem. You also have to take into consideration that I'm running 16GB of dual channel 2400 Mhz RAM with 16GB of virtual memory on my board, along with the L2 cache on the APU itself, I highly doubt I'm gonna have issues running multiple VST's. You can have an 8 core i7 super beast, but it's not gonna do ya much good if your RAM is crap, ask any DAW/HTPC builder worth his tech and I'm sure he'll agree that VST's will tax your memory faster than they will your processors cores.
The question a couple of us have asked and which you haven't answered is what that huge on-die GPU is buying you in the DAW use case. I think it is nothing but heat and die that could have been used for cache (or not used making the part cheaper). In the end you have a 4-core system that, as many benchmarks with a lot of different kinds of processing going on show is about equivalent to a $190 i5 Haswell part.

Quote:
Originally Posted by ATX View Post
Again, I am not advocating that a Kaveri build is right for you, all I am sharing is my experience and knowledge of what I have learned from building a DAW from the ground up. In my opinion, it's kind of retarded to keep regurgitating an i7 as a necessity, and the only option for a quality Home Studio rig, that my friends is bullshit. In all honesty, it comes down to one question, "What's the best affordable processor that will best suit your needs"? To keep suggesting the most expensive i7 offerings is disingenuous, as even the most expensive i7 CPU will have a more profound impact on your wallet than it will on your sound. The worst mistake you can make is to suffer the delusion that your silly little processor can emulate the big boy's who have an arsenal of multi-million dollar studio equipment at their disposal, armed with server grade quad processors that would put your puny i7 to shame.
No one that I've seen here is saying an i7 is a necessity. We are pointing out the relevant factors that are different between some of the choices and how these factors may affect performance, price, TDP (and hence system cooling and noise level). Yes, most everyone has a budget to consider, but understanding what the tradeoffs are is more important that trying to cast this discussion as an AMD vs Intel or "my system" vs "your system" argument.

I don't believe anyone said anything about CPU choice equating to professional studio results. Arguably, room acoustics are more important in the small home studio realm than anything we're discussing here, but that is whole other can of worms.

Quote:
Originally Posted by ATX View Post
Sharing this experience as I just did herein, is meant to help you to take into consideration other factors of the computer you want to upgrade or build from scratch. To look beyond the glamour of the processor and also consider your memory, your HHD's/SSD's, and your PSU which have a profound impact on the performance of your processor and the entire machine as a whole... Not to mention your bank account.
A CPU is a tool to get your job done, nothing else. A decent mobo with effective and efficient RAM and peripheral support is also important as you point out. Most Z97 mobos are not slouches in this area. Depending on what you are doing and how you work, disk speed can also be a factor. There are plenty of other threads where this has been hashed out. PSU is only important in that it is able to deliver the necessary power (and be quiet if that's what you want).

Back to making music...

AP
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Old 09-26-2014, 03:58 PM   #53
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My last 3 PCs I have bought from cyberpowerpc.com Prior to that I used to build them. I'm not into building them anymore.. too much hassle if something doesnt work right..

Im about ready to buy a new one it appears that the comparable setups in my price range are FX8320 and the I5 4690k

MBs
GIGABYTE 970A-DS3P

ASUS Z97-K

Same case/ram/hdd/dvd/os etc

I can configure similiar systems for under 800 dollars shipped with 600w ps and 8 gigs of 1866 (4x2) ram.

The AMD setup comes in about 40-50 dollars cheaper and has a dedicated video card vs the onboard video of the Intel setup (im not sure and dont really care which is more powerful).

The Intel Video looks to me to be just fine for DAW (even supports 3 monitors)


The measurements shown here appear to show a pretty significant performance edge to Intel

http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-4690K-vs-AMD-FX-8320


It shows the AMD CPU 100 dollars cheaper but in configuring systems on cyberpower, it ends up being less than 100 dollars difference.. thats mostly due I think to the fact the AMD board requires a video card.

Im leaning toward intel..
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Old 09-26-2014, 09:36 PM   #54
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The question a couple of us have asked and which you haven't answered is what that huge on-die GPU is buying you in the DAW use case. I think it is nothing but heat and die that could have been used for cache (or not used making the part cheaper). In the end you have a 4-core system that, as many benchmarks with a lot of different kinds of processing going on show is about equivalent to a $190 i5 Haswell part.

No one that I've seen here is saying an i7 is a necessity. We are pointing out the relevant factors that are different between some of the choices and how these factors may affect performance, price, TDP (and hence system cooling and noise level). Yes, most everyone has a budget to consider, but understanding what the tradeoffs are is more important that trying to cast this discussion as an AMD vs Intel or "my system" vs "your system" argument.

I don't believe anyone said anything about CPU choice equating to professional studio results. Arguably, room acoustics are more important in the small home studio realm than anything we're discussing here, but that is whole other can of worms.

A CPU is a tool to get your job done, nothing else. A decent mobo with effective and efficient RAM and peripheral support is also important as you point out. Most Z97 mobos are not slouches in this area. Depending on what you are doing and how you work, disk speed can also be a factor. There are plenty of other threads where this has been hashed out. PSU is only important in that it is able to deliver the necessary power (and be quiet if that's what you want).

Back to making music...

AP
HSA is the answer to your query... Heterogenous System Architecture works like this, see the GPU on the A10 series of processors is designed to take system load off of the CPU, thus with HSA both the CPU and GPU can communicate and work in harmony to share compute power. Think of HSA as a switchboard between the CPU and the GPU, it is this switchboard that gives Kaveri the ability to match an i7-4470K neck and neck on an overclock. Without it, it probably wouldn't be able to compete with an i7 much at all.

The A10's all come with plenty of of L2 cache (2MB), it would be nice if they stamped L3, but L2 works fine. The i5 and i7 that I have compared the 7850K to only offer a pathetic offering of cache or none at all, though they do offer hyper-threading. Price wise, on the 4 core CPU set up it's just about comparable to an i5-4670K at stock speed, which both have more than enough compute power to run most any DAW on the market. But where the Kaveri kicked Intel's butt is in it's GPU setup, because it saved me the cost of shelling out $200+ dollars for a video card which in total would have cost over $400+ dollars in total if I would have went with an i5. Though the i5/i7 are great CPU's, it is my opinion that Intel is hard pressed to compete with AMD's value where the benchmarks of "price vs. performance" is the deciding factor.

As for the remainder I digress, I agree with most of your sentiments. The Z97 is a fine chipset, expensive, but a fine chipset nonetheless. With an i5/i7 CPU a Z97 can run circles around the competition, but while Intel is busy running in circles, AMD is making a B line for the finish line in the consumer market. :P

Peace!
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Old 09-27-2014, 03:39 AM   #55
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Yeah - I felt guilty about getting that extravagant but by the time I sold my existing mobo cpu and ram to a pal and factored in the couple of paying gigs I have this coming month it was only a question of coming up with about 100GB pounds.

I just hope I am as happy with this build as I have been with the last 2 AMD machines.

FWIW I am going too run the stock intel cooler to start with and see how I go.

I am re-using a very nice Lian-Li case & a good power supply, which will hopefully see temperatures staying low.
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Old 09-27-2014, 05:17 AM   #56
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I'm using an AMD Quadcore on 2 custom built systems. One is the 4100FX x4 and the other is the Phenom II x4. I too would like to eventually upgrade to 8 cores, but the quads have been more than sufficient. Before my current set ups I was using AMD single core processors. In my experience AMD no matter what processor I was using always performed exceptionally well and has been rock-solid for me.
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Old 09-28-2014, 09:10 AM   #57
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Agree with you on AMD.
My current build is a real shot in the dark - I have had it dinned into me by all the "experts" that an i7 will out-perform the best AMD processor, so now it is time to see if they are right.
A friend is inheriting my 6 core AMD mobo ram and cpu so I will be able to do a side-by-side "before/after" comparison!
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Old 09-29-2014, 01:52 AM   #58
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Update:

The stuff for my build arrived ten minutes ago but I am too busy to get straight into it!
Talk about frustration...

Hopefully I will get it done tonight.
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Old 09-29-2014, 12:39 PM   #59
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Computer running just fine - with a new intall of win8 since I totally failed to figure out a way to convince Windoze7 to "repair" my computer to reflect the new hardware.
Some things really WERE easier with XP.

So I now have the unenviable task of re-installing everything and of course re-authorising it all!
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Old 09-30-2014, 10:55 PM   #60
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Computer running just fine - with a new intall of win8 since I totally failed to figure out a way to convince Windoze7 to "repair" my computer to reflect the new hardware.
Some things really WERE easier with XP.

So I now have the unenviable task of re-installing everything and of course re-authorising it all!
I'm glad to hear everything is going well Ivan. I'm sure you will be happy once you get everything running right and authorized. Them's the breaks when transferring data to a new OS, sometimes it's not so smooth, but that's Microsoft for you! That's why I always update to the latest operating system when I can, helps me to eliminate a lot of sluggish junk and makes everything in system run smoother. Technology is always changing so it's wise to look at change as a positive. Though a lot of us love our 32bit software, everythings moving to 64bit, ten years from now it'll be 96bit or something like that? :P



I'm interested in hearing how your comparison goes against you old system? Post it when you can bro!
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Old 10-02-2014, 08:38 PM   #61
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HSA is the answer to your query... Heterogenous System Architecture works like this, see the GPU on the A10 series of processors is designed to take system load off of the CPU, thus with HSA both the CPU and GPU can communicate and work in harmony to share compute power. Think of HSA as a switchboard between the CPU and the GPU, it is this switchboard that gives Kaveri the ability to match an i7-4470K neck and neck on an overclock. Without it, it probably wouldn't be able to compete with an i7 much at all.
We can all read wikipedia or AMD ad copy. But in reality it is a lot more complicated than that. The point is that a fancy high-powered GPU (currently) has no use in the DAW world. It's taking up half of your die area and dissipating heat in the same package making cooling more difficult and giving you nothing in return. Now if you're gaming or rendering graphics then maybe it helps. But I would argue that you would be much better off getting a dedicated GPU card for those use cases.

Quote:
The A10's all come with plenty of of L2 cache (2MB), it would be nice if they stamped L3, but L2 works fine. The i5 and i7 that I have compared the 7850K to only offer a pathetic offering of cache or none at all, though they do offer hyper-threading. Price wise, on the 4 core CPU set up it's just about comparable to an i5-4670K at stock speed, which both have more than enough compute power to run most any DAW on the market. But where the Kaveri kicked Intel's butt is in it's GPU setup, because it saved me the cost of shelling out $200+ dollars for a video card which in total would have cost over $400+ dollars in total if I would have went with an i5. Though the i5/i7 are great CPU's, it is my opinion that Intel is hard pressed to compete with AMD's value where the benchmarks of "price vs. performance" is the deciding factor.
The benchmarks tell a pretty convincing story there. My point about the cache was that, for a DAW use case, using the die area for L2/L3 cache would be much more cost and performance effective than using it for GPU. Intel's on-board GPU is about right for the DAW use cases, takes up less area, and leaves more space for cache (or less cache, less die area and lower price for i3/i5).

BTW, I write low level high performance code for computer vision systems for a living. It's a lot easier to take advantage of the various SSE, FMA, and AVX instructions than it is to try to use a GPU. I'm sure it is the same for audio which is why you don't see much of anything in the VST world that works that way.

A P
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Old 10-02-2014, 11:22 PM   #62
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Well - I did the transplant of my old AMD system into my friends old system and.... his existing win7 (installed by me a year or so back) picked up ALL the "normal devices" and just started up running.
We downloaded a couple of drivers and the job was done!
Talk about irony...

But I have to say the i7 with 16gb is pretty quick. No time to do any serious music yet but one of my older projects that I managed to load (missing plugins is the biggest limiting factor on the others as I wade through reinstalling) is barely managing 1% of cpu & the whole machine is much snappier.
If only my broadband internet was a little quicker.... 2.6mb this morning

Last edited by ivansc; 10-03-2014 at 11:17 PM.
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Old 10-03-2014, 10:54 AM   #63
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AMDs are pretty fast and I reluctantly say probably faster than the intels,

But I am not sure about AMDs stability I think is a bit on the weak side.

intels stability on the other hand is probably the best there is and has found there way into Apple computers.

I have a PC that does not crash never, a good part of that reason is the intel chip inside.

They are high priced but worth the investment stability is key
The only reason Apple went to the x86 architecture is IBM would not supply G6 chips to them and Motorola couldn't build them. Besides Apple wanted to increase their profit margins by getting fools to pay four times as much for the same hardware that is in a Windoze machine.

Stability??? ROFLMAO wow what a fawnboi thing to say. I have been in the computer design and building business for over 2 decades I would and routinely do use AMD for high end mission critical systems.
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Old 10-03-2014, 11:18 PM   #64
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+1 on stbility. No difference here whatsoever after years of either swapping between the 2 or (as I am now) running BOTH.
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Old 10-05-2014, 02:27 AM   #65
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When I went through some daw optimisation statements I found the one hint very often: turn hyper threading off as it produces latency. While the overall throughput of the CPU is higher, the constant streaming capabilities decrease. And the second is what we need.

Turning ht off will make an i7 behave like an i5.

So I decided just to try, as my second studio PC is getting into the age where hardware failures become a risk.

So I will now build an AMD 8 core system, (but 3.5 instead of 4 ghz) , and try to get it into a daw capable mode. And compare it to my primary studio PC , AMD 6 core 2.6 , that is behaving very well.

Just bought Mobo & cpu.

Will have standard mink setup :

SSD for boot (w7/64)
2 hdd (programs & data)
Inexpensive graphics

Peripherals:

Rme hammerfall & adat
Motu midi
Some usb stuff (bcf midi keyboard etc..)

Let's see ...".......


PS : any suggestions for performance comparison , maybe even with someone on an Intel platform ?

I am rarely using any vsti, reaper is mostly a tape machine and a midi sequencer.

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Old 10-05-2014, 05:34 AM   #66
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(blush)
Just bought an i7 4770 with Asus Z97-K mobo and 16gb of Gskill 1866 ram....
It better be worth the upgrade!
I don't think you have any reason to blush. After being in AMD camp for ages, last spring I finally went from a single core AMD x64 to i7 4770k with Asrock Z87 Extreme4 mobo. Naturally that doesn't give me any reasonable reference at all as to where AMD stands today. But running this system non-overclocked, there is nothing I can not do DAW wise without hiccups...all the while running all the fans at lowest possible speeds and regular temps still being around 32˚C, 37˚C during the hottest summer period. Less heat, less cooling, less noise, but no reduced performance. That it took couple hundred euros more to build this system instead of anything close enough by AMD was a moot point for me, I will run this for years and not have to think what to upgrade in the meanwhile to make it perform better.

At any rate, nice to hear something about where AMD is nowadays too!
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Old 10-12-2014, 02:53 AM   #67
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Originally Posted by AnalogPackrat View Post
We can all read wikipedia or AMD ad copy. But in reality it is a lot more complicated than that. The point is that a fancy high-powered GPU (currently) has no use in the DAW world. It's taking up half of your die area and dissipating heat in the same package making cooling more difficult and giving you nothing in return. Now if you're gaming or rendering graphics then maybe it helps. But I would argue that you would be much better off getting a dedicated GPU card for those use cases.



The benchmarks tell a pretty convincing story there. My point about the cache was that, for a DAW use case, using the die area for L2/L3 cache would be much more cost and performance effective than using it for GPU. Intel's on-board GPU is about right for the DAW use cases, takes up less area, and leaves more space for cache (or less cache, less die area and lower price for i3/i5).

BTW, I write low level high performance code for computer vision systems for a living. It's a lot easier to take advantage of the various SSE, FMA, and AVX instructions than it is to try to use a GPU. I'm sure it is the same for audio which is why you don't see much of anything in the VST world that works that way.

A P
Whoa!... I will over look your condescending notations about my "cut and paste" comments, if that's what your hinting at them as being. I think you missed my point entirely when I openly stated that this was "experimental". I don't make the processors, I just use them bra! So I'd appreciate it if you'd get off my back about how their designed! Not once have I ever advised or advocated anyone to use the processor that I am using. Everything I posted is in response to Q&A and what I have learned about the processor that I am using, if you got a problem with that, you are more than welcome to take that up with AMD...

BTW, Since you claim to be so knowledgeable about code, please educate us on the code of VST's and the recommended types of code for VST's that would best work for both AMD and Intel processing units for a DAW application... Or would you agree and say it doesn't matter, coz it's all 1's & 0's?

Have fun.

Last edited by ATX; 10-12-2014 at 03:10 AM. Reason: typo.
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Old 10-12-2014, 05:06 AM   #68
Mink99
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@analogpackrat

As we are in q & a mode now:

In how far does the context switching of "virtualised CPUs" called hyper threading affect the streaming performance ? As there is only one dedicated asio buffer, there should be some impact on that.
In how far does the context switching affect those vsts that are relying on an affinity model, so that they cannot be independently moved between CPUs ?
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Old 10-12-2014, 04:07 PM   #69
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ATX View Post
Whoa!... I will over look your condescending notations about my "cut and paste" comments, if that's what your hinting at them as being. I think you missed my point entirely when I openly stated that this was "experimental". I don't make the processors, I just use them bra! So I'd appreciate it if you'd get off my back about how their designed! Not once have I ever advised or advocated anyone to use the processor that I am using. Everything I posted is in response to Q&A and what I have learned about the processor that I am using, if you got a problem with that, you are more than welcome to take that up with AMD...
Sorry if that came off as harsh, but I think someone has asked some good questions and the HSA/Kaveri stuff is just muddying the waters. Yes, at some point it may be supported by SW developers, but it feels a lot like the Intel Itanium disaster to me. I'm not anti-AMD or anti-Intel, in fact there are some fundamental things about x86 that I hate (little endian sucks for image processing, why can't we have more than 8 GP registers in the 21st century, why were MMX and SSE hampered by limited registers).


Quote:
Originally Posted by ATX View Post
BTW, Since you claim to be so knowledgeable about code, please educate us on the code of VST's and the recommended types of code for VST's that would best work for both AMD and Intel processing units for a DAW application... Or would you agree and say it doesn't matter, coz it's all 1's & 0's?
I never claimed any detailed knowledge about VST implementation. I write image and video processing and analysis code. That has some similarities and some differences. Performance issues have some overlap, for example. VST developers cannot possibly perfectly optimize their code to run as fast as possible on all x86 HW architectures out there. Some apparently don't do a great job of optimizing at all. It isn't easy. But using SSE/AVX is currently your best bet for getting performance that is relevant in the DAW context.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mink99 View Post
@analogpackrat

As we are in q & a mode now:

In how far does the context switching of "virtualised CPUs" called hyper threading affect the streaming performance ? As there is only one dedicated asio buffer, there should be some impact on that.
In how far does the context switching affect those vsts that are relying on an affinity model, so that they cannot be independently moved between CPUs ?
I'm not a VST expert, so I don't know the answers to those questions. I imagine it varies greatly between different VSTs because all are not implemented to the same level of "quality", for lack of a better term. I do think there is some effect, but does it dominate given the other differences? For example, we talk about "cores" as though they are equivalent when they are absolutely not. The new Haswell cores are pretty far beyond what AMD is offering. Yes, they cost more. But they also have better performance per watt (which matters for cooling and noise).

Look here:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6355/i...architecture/8

and here:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5831/a...00m-a-new-hope

See all of the various execution units on the Haswell diagram? Each one can retire an instruction per cycle (in the best case). There are two that can do MMX/SSE/AVX floating point operations and four (with some overlap) that can do MMX/SSE/AVX integer/logical/shift operations. Now there are two dedicated load/store units. All of this means that without anyone having to recompile or redesign their code performance gains will occur. Of course, to use AVX (or AVX2 integer, permute, gather, etc.) will require recoding, but that is a lot easier than taking advantage of GPU via HSA.

Here's an interesting comparison of AMD's more numerous but less capable cores vs hyperthreading.

http://blog.stuffedcow.net/2014/01/a...yperthreading/

So the answer is not so simple at all. Never has been. It depends on a lot of factors. You pretty much have to try it out with your favorite VSTs to find out.

A P
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Old 10-22-2014, 04:01 PM   #70
ATX
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Quote:
Originally Posted by AnalogPackrat View Post
Sorry if that came off as harsh, but I think someone has asked some good questions and the HSA/Kaveri stuff is just muddying the waters. Yes, at some point it may be supported by SW developers, but it feels a lot like the Intel Itanium disaster to me. I'm not anti-AMD or anti-Intel, in fact there are some fundamental things about x86 that I hate (little endian sucks for image processing, why can't we have more than 8 GP registers in the 21st century, why were MMX and SSE hampered by limited registers).




I never claimed any detailed knowledge about VST implementation. I write image and video processing and analysis code. That has some similarities and some differences. Performance issues have some overlap, for example. VST developers cannot possibly perfectly optimize their code to run as fast as possible on all x86 HW architectures out there. Some apparently don't do a great job of optimizing at all. It isn't easy. But using SSE/AVX is currently your best bet for getting performance that is relevant in the DAW context.



I'm not a VST expert, so I don't know the answers to those questions. I imagine it varies greatly between different VSTs because all are not implemented to the same level of "quality", for lack of a better term. I do think there is some effect, but does it dominate given the other differences? For example, we talk about "cores" as though they are equivalent when they are absolutely not. The new Haswell cores are pretty far beyond what AMD is offering. Yes, they cost more. But they also have better performance per watt (which matters for cooling and noise).

Look here:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6355/i...architecture/8

and here:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5831/a...00m-a-new-hope

See all of the various execution units on the Haswell diagram? Each one can retire an instruction per cycle (in the best case). There are two that can do MMX/SSE/AVX floating point operations and four (with some overlap) that can do MMX/SSE/AVX integer/logical/shift operations. Now there are two dedicated load/store units. All of this means that without anyone having to recompile or redesign their code performance gains will occur. Of course, to use AVX (or AVX2 integer, permute, gather, etc.) will require recoding, but that is a lot easier than taking advantage of GPU via HSA.

Here's an interesting comparison of AMD's more numerous but less capable cores vs hyperthreading.

http://blog.stuffedcow.net/2014/01/a...yperthreading/

So the answer is not so simple at all. Never has been. It depends on a lot of factors. You pretty much have to try it out with your favorite VSTs to find out.

A P
No worries bro.

I appreciate your candor and your input. I'm not saying that the processor I am using is the be all, end all solution, if that sounded like a sales pitch, pardon it as a pun. :P

The original bone we were picking meat off of was "price vs. performance" without going broke in the process. I just didn't run out and grabbed the first processor I could find. I spent the better part of a year building this thing... A lot of the sound advice I have gotten was from Newegg, Linus Tech Tips, and Recording Revolution, and other forums, those guys are chock full of sound advice when selecting your tech. After months of research, I settled on the A10 series, because of it's suitability to perform double duty as an HTPC on one drive, and a DAW on the other... The 7850K seemed to fit that bill just right. True the tech is new, but it's still in the evolutionary stage just like everything else.

As for code, that's foreign language to me, as it is to many on here, ya might as well be speaking Martian.


Peace.
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Old 10-30-2014, 02:52 PM   #71
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A wonderful aspect of this debate: most seem to agree that we can build a (more than suficiently) powerful DAW system nowdays, for reasonable money, be it Intel or AMD.

Technology has surpassed the needs of the many, that's great.

If I had to build a system today, I'd go for an Intel Haswell quadcore. Best single-threaded performance, and lower power usage, by far. That does it for me. I tend to keep the system on a steady CPU load (i.e. plugins) for long periods of time, and low noise and heat are appreciated.

I wish AMD were equally competitive, because I like them more, but they aren't.

But as I started my post, you can't go wrong with either unless you have very specific/demanding requirements (in which case you can do even better on the server-type components).
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