# Intel Turbo Boost and realtime audio processing



## Mandaman (Aug 23, 2017)

As you know, realtime audio processing needs good single threaded performance and therefore a high CPU clock speed.

But I am confused by the whole base frequency and turbo boost frequency thing. How does it affect realtime audio processing? For example, looking at the new i9-7820X 8-core, its cores have a base frequency of 3.6 GHz, a turbo boost 2.0 of 4.3 GHz and a turbo boost 3.0 of 4.5 GHz. Now if you compare this to say, the new i7-7740X quad-core, with a base frequency of 4.3 GHz and a turbo frequency of 4.5 GHz, am I right in assuming that the i7-7740X quad-core would be more suitable for demanding realtime audio processing because if its higher base clock speed?

As I understand it, the turbo boost is applied to whatever single core needs it. So does the turbo boost take away clock speed from all the other cores equally (diminishing their speed) or do you actually need to disable some of the cores entirely to get the boost?

And what's the difference between Turbo Boost 2.0 and 3.0?

Thanks in advance to anyone who can clear this up for me!


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## jamwerks (Aug 23, 2017)

Keep in mind that you will probably be overclocking. Not sure how that changes the equation.


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## chimuelo (Aug 24, 2017)

This test seems to imply the new quad core using Z370 chipset performs better than the i7 7700k.
Faster than the i7 @ 4.7GHz while running cooler and @ 4GHz, which means this i3 8000 series Coffee Lake is the fastest single core performing CPU ever.

https://www.eteknix.com/performance-figures-leaked-for-the-i3-8350k-quad-core-coffee-lake/


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## Publius (Aug 24, 2017)

One aeternal truth here is that intel's product designations are prolix and overly confusing. Now we have an i3 that is faster than an i7. Well, anyway... Just to help me have a more precise idea of what is being discussed, does 'realtime' audio performance mean playing the music on the computer, midi and all, and hearing it, as opposed to an offline render process? At first when I heard realtime audio, I kept thinking of a life music rig, like a band where plug-ins like auto-tune and reverb might be used--but I think 'live music' is the descriptor for this.


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## Mandaman (Aug 24, 2017)

Publius said:


> Just to help me have a more precise idea of what is being discussed, does 'realtime' audio performance mean playing the music on the computer, midi and all, and hearing it, as opposed to an offline render process?



Yes. That's exactly what I mean by that, Publius.


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## JohnG (Aug 24, 2017)

I turn off Turbo Boost and a lot of other "management" components in the BIOS. My reasoning is that much of what I think of as "general computing" is conceived for "burst power," by which I mean focusing a lot of computing into a task while postponing other things ever so slightly. While great for many applications, that notion seems the antithesis of what we do. 

Moreover, the "throttling" stuff in the BIOS and many other management details are clearly intended at least in part to reduce power use. For people who are sitting at a desk all day, answering the occasional spout of email in between meetings, power management makes sense -- when the computer's not fully occupied, why waste power and heat?

By contrast with all the above, what we need is full-tilt consistency and max power on all cylinders at once when playing back orchestral-level complexity for computers.

I may be missing things but that's my reasoning, bolstered by things I've read hear, on Gearslutz, and in some user manuals.

Kind regards,

John


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## Symfoniq (Aug 24, 2017)

Mandaman said:


> As you know, realtime audio processing needs good single threaded performance and therefore a high CPU clock speed.
> 
> But I am confused by the whole base frequency and turbo boost frequency thing. How does it affect realtime audio processing? For example, looking at the new i9-7820X 8-core, its cores have a base frequency of 3.6 GHz, a turbo boost 2.0 of 4.3 GHz and a turbo boost 3.0 of 4.5 GHz. Now if you compare this to say, the new i7-7740X quad-core, with a base frequency of 4.3 GHz and a turbo frequency of 4.5 GHz, am I right in assuming that the i7-7740X quad-core would be more suitable for demanding realtime audio processing because if its higher base clock speed?
> 
> ...



When Intel CPUs turbo-boost, they shouldn't throttle the other cores below their base clocks. All 8 cores on the 7820X, for example, should run at a minimum of 3.6 GHz. If cooling is sufficient, all 8 cores can boost up to 4 GHz, several can boost to 4.3 GHz simultaneously, and the highest-performing, "favored" core can boost to 4.5 GHz.

TechReport reported DAW Bench results in their recent Threadripper review, and the 7740X didn't fare well against the 7820X. Clock speed matters, but the 7820X has plenty of it, and twice the cores. Scan Pro Audio didn't specifically test the 7740X, but they have tested the 7700K (which should be comparable for numerous reasons), and again, the 7820X handily outperforms it.

Whether you actually need that extra performance is a different question.


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## JohnG (Aug 24, 2017)

Symfoniq said:


> ll 8 cores on the 7820X, for example, should run at a minimum of 3.6 GHz. If cooling is sufficient, all 8 cores can boost up to 4 GHz, several can boost to 4.3 GHz simultaneously, and the highest-performing, "favored" core can boost to 4.5 GHz.



Maybe. I am not so sure there is a "base" level at which everything runs. Until I turned off all that rubbish my cores reported running often below 2.0GHz on a 4.xGHz processor.


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## Symfoniq (Aug 24, 2017)

JohnG said:


> I turn off Turbo Boost and a lot of other "management" components in the BIOS. My reasoning is that much of what I think of as "general computing" is conceived for "burst power," by which I mean focusing a lot of computing into a task while postponing other things ever so slightly. While great for many applications, that notion seems the antithesis of what we do.
> 
> Moreover, the "throttling" stuff in the BIOS and many other management details are clearly intended at least in part to reduce power use. For people who are sitting at a desk all day, answering the occasional spout of email in between meetings, power management makes sense -- when the computer's not fully occupied, why waste power and heat?
> 
> ...



Turbo-boost is essentially manufacturer-approved overclocking. It's "power on all cylinders" plus a shot of nitrous oxide. Turning off turbo-boost deprives you of some extra performance, unless you've already overclocked the CPU.

It's possible to turn off CPU down-clocking while keeping turbo-boost enabled (just set minimum CPU performance to 100% in your Windows power settings).


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## Symfoniq (Aug 24, 2017)

JohnG said:


> Maybe. I am not so sure there is a "base" level at which everything runs. Until I turned off all that rubbish my cores reported running often below 2.0GHz on a 4.xGHz processor.



Either minimum CPU performance was set below 100% in your Windows power settings (most likely), or your CPU was throttling due to high temperatures (less likely).

My Xeon turbos up to 3.8 GHz all the time, but never goes below its base clock of 3.4 GHz.


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## Mandaman (Aug 25, 2017)

Symfoniq said:


> All 8 cores on the 7820X should run at a minimum of 3.6 GHz. If cooling is sufficient, all 8 cores can boost up to 4 GHz, several can boost to 4.3 GHz simultaneously, and the highest-performing, "favored" core can boost to 4.5 GHz.
> 
> TechReport reported DAW Bench results in their recent Threadripper review, and the 7740X didn't fare well against the 7820X. Clock speed matters, but the 7820X has plenty of it, and twice the cores. Scan Pro Audio didn't specifically test the 7740X, but they have tested the 7700K (which should be comparable for numerous reasons), and again, the 7820X handily outperforms it.



Very enlightening. Thanks, Symfoniq!

By that reasoning, I guess the i7-7900X could be even better for realtime audio processing, in spite of its lower base frequency of 3.3 GHz, because it can turbo boost just as high as the 7820X and has bigger L3 cache..


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## Publius (Aug 25, 2017)

There is a gui based setting in windows control panel, I think power management, where you can specify that cpu runs full speed all the time. I was getting clicks in my audio until I set this. I think the cpu auto speed-up was not fast enough to handle audio playback.


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## JohnG (Aug 25, 2017)

Publius said:


> I think the cpu auto speed-up was not fast enough to handle audio playback



Exactly.

My experience is that any number of these "management" functions are too slow for real time music playback. At least if you're writing for virtual orchestra-plus.


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## Nathanael Iversen (Aug 25, 2017)

I would place base clock (or ability to overclock) very high on the list. My rig runs substantially better with a 4.4Ghz processor than a 3.6Ghz part locked at 3.9Ghz Turbo by the motherboard. I would not consider a 3.3Ghz base core speed for my main DAW. I would not want the noise of the cooling solution needed to run the 7900X at 4.0 GHz. It is a great processor, but my sense is that a 7700k at 4.5Ghz is about ideal. I'm on a 4790k from a few generations ago and it is wonderful for real-time performance. The 7700K does even better for about the same outlay - I just had motherboard and RAM that made the 4790K a drop in upgrade...


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## rgames (Aug 26, 2017)

Yes - it's all a bit confusing. But there is logic to it if you understand the history of microprocessor development.

Here's the short explanation: the CPU will change its speed as it thinks necessary. It does that to balance power consumption against required processing power. Higher speeds will usually give you better realtime performance, all other things equal. Compare CPUs based on whatever is the highest number for a given processor family (i3, i7, i9 etc). The base speed is kind-of meaningless these days.

Here's the long explanation: every CPU has a base clock. This is its "usual" operating speed except that it's almost never at it's "usual" operating speed. So it kind-of has no meaning. But just think of it that way.

Then there's Turbo Boost (or just Turbo). Turbo Boost ramps UP the clock speed when the CPU has a lot of processing to do. Nowadays most CPUs have several processing cores, so the question arises: should I boost all the cores or just some? That's where Turbo Boost Max 2.0 and 3.0 come in - they separate the boost into one part that applies to all cores and another that applies to only some (I think the limit is two right now). So you might have a base frequency of 3.7 GHz that gets boosted to 4.3 GHz for most cores and 4.5 GHz for one or two.

Then there's EIST. EIST ramps DOWN the clock speed (relative to the base speed) when the CPU doesn't have much to do. If your CPU is just sitting there, why waste power and energy? Might as well clock it down.

So, bottom line: Turbo moves the clock speed UP and EIST moves the clock speed DOWN.

As far as the link to realtime performance: yes, running the CPU full-tilt at max frequency all the time will almost always provide the best performance. But you do that at the expense of increased power consumption.

So here's a question: what is good enough?

I've found that I get "good enough" performance leaving all the clock-speed adjustment features at stock settings. I do, however, overclock the CPU, so its Turbo frequency is higher than what you get straight out of the box. I recommend everyone do that: it has no practical negative effects and can provide a good performance bump. And it only takes about 10 minutes to set up.

rgames


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## tack (Aug 26, 2017)

rgames said:


> I do, however, overclock the CPU, so its Turbo frequency is higher than what you get straight out of the box. I recommend everyone do that: it has no practical negative effects and can provide a good performance bump.


I thought when you overclocked (or generally fiddled with the stock multiplier) turbo boost was disabled? And so if your overclock is lower than the CPU's boost frequency then you could actually impair performance for single threaded tasks.

In fact, after Googling this before clicking post, I see Gamers Nexus has coincidentally answered this exact question on a video posted today.


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## Nathanael Iversen (Aug 26, 2017)

My 4790K is locked at 4.4Ghz. It does not have Turbo since I've changed the clock multiplier to overclock. I might be able to mess around and get a little more out of it, but I'm stable at 4.4Ghz and very happy in Cubase. At 3.9Ghz (locked Turbo frequency) of a 4771 (no overclocking possible), I regularly had dropout and CPU overloads. I don't with the 4790K.


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## rgames (Aug 26, 2017)

tack said:


> I thought when you overclocked (or generally fiddled with the stock multiplier) turbo boost was disabled? And so if your overclock is lower than the CPU's boost frequency then you could actually impair performance for single threaded tasks.


I've never overclocked below the highest spec frequency so maybe that could happen. But I'm not sure why you would do that. Maybe what you're saying is that Turbo is disabled, the overclock is the base and EIST drops it from there. I suppose you could think of it that way - that gets at the fact that the "base" frequency is kind-of meaningless.

My i9 7900x is overclocked to 4.5 GHz and it runs between 1.2 and 4.5 GHz. I think the base frequency is something like 3.7 GHz but it almost never runs at that speed. Seems like when I was setting it up and paying attention it was either at 1.2 GHz, around 3 GHz or at 4.5 GHz.

With Cubase up and running my full template I don't think I saw it drop below 4.5 GHz.

When doing video rendering it floats from about 4.0 GHz to 4.5 GHz.

With only this browser up and running it's sitting at 1.2 GHz.

rgames


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## Mandaman (Aug 28, 2017)

rgames said:


> My i9 7900x is overclocked to 4.5 GHz and it runs between 1.2 and 4.5 GHz. I think the base frequency is something like 3.7 GHz but it almost never runs at that speed. Seems like when I was setting it up and paying attention it was either at 1.2 GHz, around 3 GHz or at 4.5 GHz.
> 
> With Cubase up and running my full template I don't think I saw it drop below 4.5 GHz.



Richard, do you find that the i9 7900x gets considerably hotter at 4.5 GHz?

Also curious to hear if you guys think the i7 7820x could outperform the i9 7900x in terms of realtime audio processing..


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## rgames (Aug 28, 2017)

Mandaman said:


> Richard, do you find that the i9 7900x gets considerably hotter at 4.5 .


I looked at it when I first set it up but can't recall the details. It does run hotter than other processors but not enough to worry about. It never got anywhere close to the spec max even when under entirely unrealistic loads.

Intel has smart engineers who give the chip the ability to protect itself. So just run it and see what happens - you can't hurt it unless you manually disable the protection mechanisms. I haven't seen any issues in the month or so that I've been using it.

rgames


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## Symfoniq (Aug 28, 2017)

I just built a new 7820X system over the weekend. Based on the stress testing I've done so far (AIDA64), I think the heat issues with Skylake-X have been overstated.

Using a Noctua NH-D15S CPU cooler with a silent fan profile and stress testing with AIDA64, I'm not seeing temperatures exceed 68C with all 16 threads at 100% utilization. I've also tried overclocking all cores to 4.2 GHz, and with the fan profile set to standard, temperatures are not exceeding 65C.

I'm sure temperatures can go much higher with AVX512-intensive workloads, but that's hardly relevant for my purposes. If its relevant to yours, buy a Skylake-X motherboard that allows you to set AVX negative offsets (the ASRock X299 Taichi has this option).



Mandaman said:


> Also curious to hear if you guys think the i7 7820x could outperform the i9 7900x in terms of realtime audio processing..



Scan Pro Audio's DAW Bench results show the 7900X having the edge over the 7820X. However, it also shows the 7820X having 84-88% of the 7900X's performance for 60% of the cost, which is why I decided to go with the 7820X.


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## jamwerks (Aug 29, 2017)

Was reading about the upcoming I7 8700 (6 cores). Seems to be right in the sweet spot in many respects! But of course limited to 64gb ram.


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## Mandaman (Aug 29, 2017)

Great info, Symfoniq. Thanks for sharing.



jamwerks said:


> Was reading about the upcoming I7 8700 (6 cores). Seems to be right in the sweet spot in many respects! But of course limited to 64gb ram.



Yeah, a drawback for me..


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## chimuelo (Aug 29, 2017)

Thank AMD.
Forced Intel to dump 6 years of chips into the market in an 8 month period.
I'm excited about the Empire striking back in 2018.
The latest Intel chips are pretty impressive as the watts dropped and IPC rose.
The i3 8450 is one bad ass quad.
First quad to have 128GBs DDR4 wins the race next year.


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## jamwerks (Aug 29, 2017)

The I7 8700 is reportedly 14% faster than the 7700. Not sure how many Pci E lanes it has access to. The new AMD (with 64) is the clear winner there. My new 2-machine setup would be I7-8700 (daw) & 7800 (slave) 64 + 128gb ram


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## Guy Rowland (Oct 24, 2017)

Belatedly joining this party - hello everyone. I'm looking at it all again, being profoundly unhappy with the performance in Cubase of my stock 4930k. My gut tells me it's the single core performance that is letting me down - Omni might well make it go nuts and fall over on just a few patches if they happen to be vaguely taxing.

Have to say, the 8700k is very appealing, and I think I can live with the 64gb limit. I'm a little more concerned about the lanes - there's only 16, plus another 4 effective mobo lanes (if I understand that right, and I can't fully pretend I know what that means). I'll have at least one NVMe drive - possibly partitioned as boot and a sample drive, at least 3 SSDs and 4 regular drives. A lotta drives. Oh, and 2x GT610 graphics cards. Is that going to cause me trouble do you think?

Otherwise it'll be one of the i9s or higher end i7s in the same range... with those I was concerned about single core performance, but Richard's experience is encouraging. I definitely need to keep the rig cool enough to run near-silent, which my current one does.


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## EvilDragon (Oct 24, 2017)

If your 3 SSDs (and other drives) you mention are SATA, they aren't taking any PCIe lanes since they don't go direct to the CPU like m.2 drives. Even 16 lanes should be fine for that one NVMe and two 6 years old GPUs.


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## Øivind (Oct 24, 2017)

just for info: i get some strange peaks in the red on realtime processing in Cubase if i have Turbo boost turned on, turned it off, smooth sailing.


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## Guy Rowland (Oct 24, 2017)

Thanks Mario, that's good to know - I forget all this stuff so quickly, I seem to have a tiny ability to retain information about computer architecture. I realised my other issue might be that the board that Scan recommend for compatibility - the Asus Prime Z370-A - only has 6x SATA ports, meaning I'm one short. Oh... just realised I'm combining 2 SSDs with the NVMe, so actually I might just get away with it.

Olvind - I will definitely try turning off Turbo Boost, worth a shot. There's lots of other things I dislike about my current rig, but if it can work better in the meantime I'd be delighted.


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## EvilDragon (Oct 25, 2017)

You can always add more SATA ports via PCIe cards... though in that case you can mostly say goodbye to TRIM on SSDs (which is not a huge deal if you connect non-SSDs to it, or if you just put libraries on those SSDs and read from them, not write/delete an awful much on them).


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## Guy Rowland (Oct 25, 2017)

EvilDragon said:


> You can always add more SATA ports via PCIe cards... though in that case you can mostly say goodbye to TRIM on SSDs (which is not a huge deal if you connect non-SSDs to it, or if you just put libraries on those SSDs and read from them, not write/delete an awful much on them).



...and there might be space issues with 2 (albeit fanless) graphics cards. Sure there would be enough space for one, but with that motherboard I was thinking an additional USB header wouldn't hurt.


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## EvilDragon (Oct 25, 2017)

You should be fine with any ATX mobo, don't go with mATX.


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## Guy Rowland (Oct 25, 2017)

Grr - these NVMe slots share with the sata ports:

*1. The M.2_1 socket shares SATA_1 port when use M.2 SATA mode device. Adjust BIOS settings to use a SATA device.
*2. The M.2_2 socket shares SATA_56 ports when use M.2 PCIE mode device in X4 mode. Adjust BIOS settings to use M.2 PCIE devices in X4 mode.

...so I think yeah I'd need an additional SSD card, about which:

* For 2 SSD on CPU support, install a Hyper M.2 X16 card (sold separately) into the PCIeX16_2 slot, enable this card under BIOS settings.
** For 3 SSD on CPU support, install a Hyper M.2 X16 card (sold separately) into the PCIeX16_1 slot, enable this card under BIOS settings.

(though that's confusing as the Hyper M.2 X16 is an NVMe card, not SATA? I was thinking something like this - https://www.scan.co.uk/products/lyc...ernal-4-port-low-profile-pcie-20-host-adapter )

The Z370 boards all seem to share these kind of limitations. Do you think that will create any bottlenecks? Probably ok if I use the conventional drives on those ports?


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## jamwerks (Oct 25, 2017)

Though the 8700k seems to be a real performer, the pcie lane question is a major issue for us. Guess Z99 is really what we need!


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## EvilDragon (Oct 25, 2017)

Guy Rowland said:


> The Z370 boards all seem to share these kind of limitations.



Any boards that have m.2 ports will share with SATA ports, it's how Intel designed things, AFAIK... So if you have m.2/NVMe drive installed, it uses the same bandwidth that SATA ports do, in that case you *cannot* have anything plugged in those SATA ports, they effectively don't exist anymore.

Easy solution would be getting a PCIe card with 4 SATA ports for your rust drives, like the one you linked to, yes. Should be just fine, since rust drives cannot hope to ever saturate the bandwidth of a single PCIe lane... well, perhaps if all 4 do huge sequential reads all at once, but still, it's 250 MB/s bidirectional with PCIe 1x... But the card you linked to is 2x, so that's 500 MB/s... 4 rust drives on it will be just fine.


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## Guy Rowland (Oct 25, 2017)

Again, thanks Mario - that all makes sense to me.


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## chimuelo (Oct 26, 2017)

jamwerks said:


> The I7 8700 is reportedly 14% faster than the 7700. Not sure how many Pci E lanes it has access to. The new AMD (with 64) is the clear winner there. My new 2-machine setup would be I7-8700 (daw) & 7800 (slave) 64 + 128gb ram



True about reportedly.
Two extra i5 7000 Series Cores does raise IPC on multithread Apps.

Lifers in benchmarking gear agree Intel’s single core performance is better than AMD.
But their IPC selective benchmarks show performance gains from i7 2600/3770 to current chips is only 10% over several years of i7.

They had no need to do better as AMD was out of the game.
They wisely shrank their designs, lowered TDP and greatly improved their GPU.

Tesla is a well run company.
The day after AMD lost 10 points in the market, they offered contracts to use their chips in upcoming cars.
Profits plus Tesla’s up front R & D money means AMD will make Intel earn their money in 2018.
No more biz as usual.

Good for us, and those like us..


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## chimuelo (Oct 27, 2017)

EvilDragon said:


> Any boards that have m.2 ports will share with SATA ports, it's how Intel designed things, AFAIK... So if you have m.2/NVMe drive installed, it uses the same bandwidth that SATA ports do, in that case you *cannot* have anything plugged in those SATA ports, they effectively don't exist anymore.
> 
> Easy solution would be getting a PCIe card with 4 SATA ports for your rust drives, like the one you linked to, yes. Should be just fine, since rust drives cannot hope to ever saturate the bandwidth of a single PCIe lane... well, perhaps if all 4 do huge sequential reads all at once, but still, it's 250 MB/s bidirectional with PCIe 1x... But the card you linked to is 2x, so that's 500 MB/s... 4 rust drives on it will be just fine.



They’re finally explaining that in their manuals too.
I adopted M.2s back in the Samsung XP941 era with ASRock Z97.
I don’t think they expected it’s popularity and demand to be so quickly sought after.
Les Tokar at SSD Review was using TBolt and triple M.2s.
None of us could boot from M.2s or get our. SSDs working right.
Hit and miss was painful unless you owned a benching Chassis.

Fun times.
I’ve learned to read manuals since then again.


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## Guy Rowland (Oct 28, 2017)

As ever Chumeulo I'm slightly confused by some of your words, but certainly the 8700k DAWbenches considerably higher than the 7700K:











http://www.scanproaudio.info/2017/1...00k-as-the-i7-range-gets-a-caffine-injection/


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## khollister (Nov 6, 2017)

Guy,

Let me try to fill in some gaps...

There are CPU PCIe lanes and chipset PCIe lanes. As I recall (may be slightly off), the recent Intel chipsets (Z170/270/370 & X99/X299) have 24 lanes. These are used for all 6 of the SATA6G ports (there's 12 lanes gone), the USB ports, the 1X PCIe slots, often (not always) the 4X slots and sometimes the on-board M.2 NVME ports. The CPU lanes (16-44 depending on CPU) are used for the 8x and 16x PCIe slots and sometimes the M.2 NVME ports.

Ultimately, you need an in-depth review of the motherboard to see what is mapped to what. However there are some clues in the MB manuals:

If the NVME ports steal SATA ports, they are on the chipset lanes.
If they steal 4X PCIe slots (some MB's do), it's more complicated. They could be on the chipset lanes or the CPU lanes depending on how the 4X slots are connected.
The Z370 boards usually have 2 16X slot connectors with a note that the first one is 16X only if the second is not used. If both are used, they both fall back to 8X. On an 8700K, that is all of the 16 lanes. Everything else is on the 24 chipset lanes.

In your specific case, the problem with a 16 lane CPU is 2 discrete graphics cards will use all of the CPU lanes, leaving one or 2 4X slots (assuming they aren't conflicting with the M.2 ports) you could use for additional M.2 drives. Also be aware than many/most MB M.2 ports are in locations that do not cool well, leading to thermal throttling f the M.2 drive.

I think the 8700K is the hands down choice when cost is taken into account (assuming you don't need 128GB RAM). The big question is why do you need 2 graphics cards rather than using the integrated GPU (which will do at least one 4K 60Hz display)?

In your example, you could use both NVME ports and still have 3 SATA6G ports for your SATA SSD's. The HDD's can be connected to SATA3G ports. I need to check the Z370 specs, but there are often additional SATA ports provided by 3rd party chipsets such as ASMedia and Marvel.

UPDATE: The Asus PRIME z370-A MB has no additional SATA ports. It has 1 4X slot that appears to be active regardless of the NVME configuration. So you could add a 4X card with multiple SATA3G ports to run the HDD's.


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## PaulieDC (Jun 2, 2018)

JohnG said:


> Exactly.
> 
> My experience is that any number of these "management" functions are too slow for real time music playback. At least if you're writing for virtual orchestra-plus.


Bingo. I just upgraded to a 14 core i9 with a massive Noctua air cooler and it runs just fine, all guns a-blazin'. The last thing we need is some Intel engineer's interpretation of when we best need power. It's a VI workstation for pete's sake, unlike an office PC, thie thing needs to run for what it was designed for. I'm fairly sure the guys on the Nascar circuit wouldn't be keen on testing an engine that only runs at 50% until some algorithm decides it's time to kick it up to full power.


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