CPU data

ecc83

Well-known member
The current (October) issue of Sound on Sound magazine contains an article on the relative performance of lots of processors as they would be stressed in an audio context.

Much of the text is impenetrable to this old valve jockey but I have gleaned s few conclusions, hope they are right!

For the home recordist, even one doing pretty big multitrack projects an i5 processor is the best bang for buck.

It is processor SPEED that is most important for audio work not number of cores.

There are some i7 variants that are powerful yet consume less power than most. These are suitable for a totally silent, fanless, no mechanics build.

The top line Xeons are more suitable where you need shedloads of memory (in excess of 64G!) and are thus the choice of the video boys.

Just my understanding.

Dave.
 
interesting. ive not had issues with the i3 and max'd the ram recently and didnt notice a big change.

i5... BestBang

fanless meaning water cooled? freon cooled?
 
"fanless meaning water cooled? freon cooled? "

Article didn't amplify CC but I assumed freaking big heatsink?

Oh and, I double the ram in this i3 laptop a year or so ago to 8G. No change that I notice except that it runs a bit warmer! I think you have to be editing "Pirates" or sommat to notice 32G of ram is struggling!

Dave.
 
i worked at intel when the fan thing was required for the first time for their cpu chips, overheating and failures. If I recall it was 66mhz or 60 mghz, the first Pentiums following the shrink 486CPU timeframe.
someone during that time came up with gluing the fan on the cpu and the production lines were started up again, we were shutdown due to overheating failures! the quantity of transistors created too much heat.

decades later, i asked a young EE who had said that heat was the same reason they started splitting cores, even fans & heatsinks couldnt cut it, to reduce heat...

I dont study this stuff. the first Pentiums had 1.2 million transistors, Wiki says 3.1million, hot and the fan things became the norm.

the new cpus per wiki, have 5 billion transistors!:eek:....dammn....at 20nanometer geometrys(tiny transistors!)
looks like graphics cards chips are up to 15 trillion! transistors...damn thats some heat there.

interesting...Fanless = IcePipe = heatsink with water sealed inside pipes...pretty wild stuff.

https://www.quietpc.com/nof-icepipe
 
i worked at intel when the fan thing was required for the first time for their cpu chips, overheating and failures. If I recall it was 66mhz or 60 mghz, the first Pentiums following the shrink 486CPU timeframe.
someone during that time came up with gluing the fan on the cpu and the production lines were started up again, we were shutdown due to overheating failures! the quantity of transistors created too much heat.

decades later, i asked a young EE who had said that heat was the same reason they started splitting cores, even fans & heatsinks couldnt cut it, to reduce heat...

I dont study this stuff. the first Pentiums had 1.2 million transistors, Wiki says 3.1million, hot and the fan things became the norm.

the new cpus per wiki, have 5 billion transistors!:eek:....dammn....at 20nanometer geometrys(tiny transistors!)
looks like graphics cards chips are up to 15 trillion! transistors...damn thats some heat there.

interesting...Fanless = IcePipe = heatsink with water sealed inside pipes...pretty wild stuff.

https://www.quietpc.com/nof-icepipe
Hey coolcat. P60 was my first real DAW box, run with Digi Session8. Cost a fortune!
 
The current (October) issue of Sound on Sound magazine contains an article on the relative performance of lots of processors as they would be stressed in an audio context.

Much of the text is impenetrable to this old valve jockey but I have gleaned s few conclusions, hope they are right!

For the home recordist, even one doing pretty big multitrack projects an i5 processor is the best bang for buck.

It is processor SPEED that is most important for audio work not number of cores.

There are some i7 variants that are powerful yet consume less power than most. These are suitable for a totally silent, fanless, no mechanics build.

The top line Xeons are more suitable where you need shedloads of memory (in excess of 64G!) and are thus the choice of the video boys.

Just my understanding.

Dave.

I have a Xeon something or other. Never even get close to capacity with 16 GB RAM, and I do lots of tracks and thinking nothing of chucking many instances of VSTis, and reverbs and whatever on my 40 -50 track tunes. Also very quiet. I mention this only because I never see them mentioned around here in CPU discussions.
 
Built a PC around the i7 6700K this year and it's pretty peppy. Have yet to overload it buuuuuuuuut I haven't really tried yet.
 
"fanless meaning water cooled? freon cooled? "

Article didn't amplify CC but I assumed freaking big heatsink?

More than likely, yes a big ass heatsink. Water cooling has come a long way though (I was part of the first few thousand computer users to ever do such a thing to their home PC, which required trip(s) to Home Depot - now you can order the entire unit for $100 :D ). But the inherent issues and possible maintenance with water cooling makes a passive cooling solution more realistic and certainly practical. But really, the best cooling solution is a low RPM high CFM fan (think 120mm) on a huge heatsink. I use a 92mm low RPM fan to accomplish a mostly noise-free recording environment. I often track mic'd acoustic parts 3 feet from my computer case.

Regarding core quantity v core speed - it really depends on the application. Programs can be written optimally to utilize multiple cores in a way that will create huge performance gains. It also depends on the work type being done by the CPU. I'm not an engineer so that's as far as I ever felt I needed to go, but there's certainly tons of information online about how computer operations are handled, etc. More cores AND higher processing power is always a win. But if you have to decide on one or the other, the answer is really "It depends".
 
I have a Xeon something or other. Never even get close to capacity with 16 GB RAM, and I do lots of tracks and thinking nothing of chucking many instances of VSTis, and reverbs and whatever on my 40 -50 track tunes. Also very quiet. I mention this only because I never see them mentioned around here in CPU discussions.

Me too, man.
I have 12 cores at 2.66 (x5660), upgradable to 3.4.
Per-core the xeons aren't hot at all - in fact they're pretty poor, but for multicore applications they're still beasts.
It would get laughed at in gaming, for example, but for media work it's fantastic.

Pinky's reply came in at the same time as mine but yeah.....^^ it depends.
 
That's an interesting read!
Whether it's true or not I read that Protools, in particular, has very good multicore support and i think that's evident in the CPU meters, observing how it dynamically allocates the work load.
For what I'm doing I've been more than happy but then, I was pretty happy on an i5 too.

I don't do much video work but that's somewhere I saw a huge boost in performance.
Again, that's not to say I wouldn't have seen the same boost or better from a top i7 chip. I don't know.
 
That's an interesting read!
Whether it's true or not I read that Protools, in particular, has very good multicore support and i think that's evident in the CPU meters, observing how it dynamically allocates the work load.

Sonar seems to balance the work out as well, if you believe their CPU meter.
 
They have closed system liquid cooling now and it's cheap. Still uses a fan to cool the radiator though.

I stuck the H60 (corsair) in my machine. It's pretty darn quiet.

I don't overclock though.

I love the look of custom cooling systems but dang you can get into some cash on that stuff.
 
They have closed system liquid cooling now and it's cheap. Still uses a fan to cool the radiator though.

I stuck the H60 (corsair) in my machine. It's pretty darn quiet.

I don't overclock though.

I love the look of custom cooling systems but dang you can get into some cash on that stuff.

That's one of the new kits I referenced previously.

You bring up a good point though - it still uses a fan, so it still makes *some* noise. Unless overclocking or running a very high end, high-heat generating cpu in a poorly vented case, it's probably unnecessary to go with water given the multitude of good heatsinks and variable RPM fans available. Yeah, it's only $100 for the water kit, but it takes up a decent amount of room in the case and costs about twice other fan/heatsink (non-water) solutions. And even being somewhat a pioneer in using water, I've never gotten completely comfortable with the idea of water + electronics. There are things that can go wrong, and the consequences are dire for the computer. It's actually why I stopped - I started to NEED my computer, and couldn't stand the thought of it dying for something as silly as a few MHZ, decibels, or degrees of cooling.
 
This link then? It's quite short*, looks more like an update to the prior more detailed 2015 article:

[url=http://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/intels

Yes, the articles don't become free for 3 months (I think it is 3) . Is there an option to buy it as a .pdf for £0.99?

Dave.
 
That's one of the new kits I referenced previously.

You bring up a good point though - it still uses a fan, so it still makes *some* noise. Unless overclocking or running a very high end, high-heat generating cpu in a poorly vented case, it's probably unnecessary to go with water given the multitude of good heatsinks and variable RPM fans available. Yeah, it's only $100 for the water kit, but it takes up a decent amount of room in the case and costs about twice other fan/heatsink (non-water) solutions. And even being somewhat a pioneer in using water, I've never gotten completely comfortable with the idea of water + electronics. There are things that can go wrong, and the consequences are dire for the computer. It's actually why I stopped - I started to NEED my computer, and couldn't stand the thought of it dying for something as silly as a few MHZ, decibels, or degrees of cooling.


$60 actually. It's the corsair H60. Nothing fancy but effective. You would really have to go out of your way to make those things leak. It's not like a custom loop with user installed fittings. Nothing can really come apart unless you really wrench on it somehow.

I only went with it because honestly it's not THAT much more than a fan heat sink combination.
 
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