# Ryzen 7 announced - and its looking good for composers



## colony nofi (Aug 29, 2022)

See here :








AMD Details Ryzen 7000 Launch: Ryzen 7950X and More, Coming Sept. 27th







www.anandtech.com





Its almost as if they're making them with composers in mind.... they're not. Its gamers they seem to be after. It just so happens that we as composers need similar things 
We need as fast a core zero (single core) as possible, but we do benefit from a decent degree of parallelisation.

The 7950 to me seems awesome. 5.7Ghz boost with 16(32) cores available. All for $700. With decent enough onboard graphics to not need an extra graphics card.

I can imagine a damn powerful machine can be made with this. AM5 platform = max 4 DDR5 (only) ram modules, which means likely max 256GB ram (expensive) with most here doing 64-128GB I imagine. 

We will wait for early October to get some performance figures, but folk are talking it beating out a 12900k by 15-20% on single core benchmarks as well as multi-core. I'll believe it when I see it, but I wouldn't put it past AMD either. It is after all a die shrink.

170W TDP is always going to be tricky for a super silent composition rig - but then if one can't manage it, the 110W chips still look excellent, just without the massive core count (which is only useful for some folk here anyway)

Super looking forward to this. Even as someone who mostly uses Macs.

(btw : I'm going to test a brand new TR-Pro workstation next week - wonder how it will do for massive sessions. 1TB ram... )


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## Pictus (Aug 30, 2022)

I believe they will be very good, what I do not know is how well is the compatibility with
different DDR5 RAM chips and mainly how well they work with 4 RAM sticks to achieve 128GB.


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## ZhangPietro (Aug 30, 2022)

The initial BIOS of AMD motherboards usually has a lot of bugs and takes a lot of time to fix.


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## colony nofi (Aug 30, 2022)

Pictus said:


> I believe they will be very good, what I do not know is how well is the compatibility with
> different DDR5 RAM chips and mainly how well they work with 4 RAM sticks to achieve 128GB.


Yeah - the whole DDR5 thing is going to be a whole thing in and of itself to watch. Having said that, I've already messed with a 12900k intel build running 128GB DDR5 (4x32GB sticks) and it was all running fine... I didn't spec the machine nor put it together, just played with it. 

The system was spec'd by a guy with far more knowledge of the general tech world than I'll ever have, and he said the AM5 platform should out of the gate be cool with 64GB DDR5 chips (x4)... who knows when they'll be available but I wouldn't want to see the price for those sticks of ram when they hit the streets.
At least there's also some pretty massive scaling going on with DDR5 on the server side of things, with 512GB sticks being demonstrated by Samsung showing off the new architecture + efficiencies. That kind of size blows my mind.


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## Pier (Aug 30, 2022)

The Cinebench R23 benchmarks are looking great.



https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu_benchmark-cinebench_r23_multi_core-16





https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu_benchmark-cinebench_r23_single_core-15



Single core, the Zen 4 chips are about 20% faster than the M2 chips:






And in multi core the 7950X really destroys the fastest M1 chip:


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## FireGS (Aug 30, 2022)

Really hope the USB issues of x570 are gone.


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## timbit2006 (Aug 30, 2022)

Pier said:


> The Cinebench R23 benchmarks are looking great.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I genuinely feel bad for anyone that got caught up in the whole M1 hype thing... That's rough lol.
I'm pretty excited for this. I'm definitely going to be putting together a 7950x with a 4000 series or AMD equivalent card as my next build.
I wonder how their mobile chipsets will do in comparison.


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## Pier (Aug 30, 2022)

timbit2006 said:


> I genuinely feel bad for anyone that got caught up in the whole M1 hype thing... That's rough lol.


The M1/M2 are amazing for laptops in terms of efficiency though.


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## timbit2006 (Aug 30, 2022)

Pier said:


> The M1/M2 are amazing for laptops in terms of efficiency though.


Yeah, that's why I really want to see how the 7000 series is in a mobile platform. I really need a new laptop for my "real job" as well haha. 
Really though I saw so many pretentious comments from M1 guys since they've been released(disclaimer:mostly on facebook groups, not here) that I don't mind being a bit of a jerk about it.


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## Oakran (Aug 30, 2022)

Well that's looking great but I guess the global economic/high energy cost crisis will likely cause this chip to be rare and expensive for quite some time don't you think ?


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## Technostica (Aug 30, 2022)

The one downside is that the TDPs have gone up a lot. 
I guess they are following Intel and pushing the clock frequencies well outside the efficiency range. 
If you under volt and even down clock slightly it should be okay.


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## José Herring (Aug 30, 2022)

timbit2006 said:


> I genuinely feel bad for anyone that got caught up in the whole M1 hype thing... That's rough lol.
> I'm pretty excited for this. I'm definitely going to be putting together a 7950x with a 4000 series or AMD equivalent card as my next build.
> I wonder how their mobile chipsets will do in comparison.


I was seriously looking at the M1. For years I've had Intel as a main machine and AMD as a slave machine. I was looking at rebuilding my entire setup just for something new and looking at the M1.....Not any more.
This chip looks like it's going to be killer and for a decent price. I look forward to when @Pictus can get more information on the best setups for music.


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## davidson (Aug 30, 2022)

And then next year apple will have the most powerful chip, and AMD the year after, then apple, then intel, then apple...

Same old, same old.


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## Pier (Aug 30, 2022)

davidson said:


> And then next year apple will have the most powerful chip, and AMD the year after, then apple, then intel, then apple...
> 
> Same old, same old.


Nah Apple has never had the most powerful chip. Not even close.


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## Getsumen (Aug 30, 2022)

davidson said:


> And then next year apple will have the most powerful chip, and AMD the year after, then apple, then intel, then apple...
> 
> Same old, same old.


Apple only won the efficiency war. They've never really focused, nor does it seem like they're trying to win performance.

For laptops the M chips are killer due to their power efficiency, but for these desktop situations it's really not as important


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## Pier (Aug 30, 2022)

Getsumen said:


> Apple only won the efficiency war. They've never really focused, nor does it seem like they're trying to win performance.


Of course Apple cares about performance. I mean look at the iPhone.

As for why they haven't released an ARM Mac Pro tower yet that can compete with the Threadrippers etc I have a couple of theories. It could be they hit some issues with scaling the memory and/or the number of cores. Or maybe they're just working on a completely new M2 or M3 Mac Pro and waiting to sell the current stock of Intel Mac Pro.


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## SharpDal (Aug 30, 2022)

Getsumen said:


> For laptops the M chips are killer due to their power efficiency, but for these desktop situations it's really not as important


Well, electricity bills are getting a bit ridiculous in Europe though...


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## Sunny Schramm (Aug 30, 2022)

colony nofi said:


> We will wait for early October to get some performance figures, but folk are talking it beating out a 12900k by 15-20% on single core benchmarks as well as multi-core. I'll believe it when I see it, but I wouldn't put it past AMD either. It is after all a die shrink.


forget the 12900k - the 13900k kills everything  

up to 68% higher performance than zen3 and alder lake.


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## RogiervG (Aug 30, 2022)

Pier said:


> Nah Apple has never had the most powerful chip. Not even close.


not true considering power consumption vs calculation power


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## Pier (Aug 30, 2022)

RogiervG said:


> not true considering power consumption vs calculation power


Obviously I'm talking about performance. I don't think efficiency comes to mind when someone talks about something being "powerful".


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## RogiervG (Aug 30, 2022)

Pier said:


> Obviously I'm talking about performance. I don't think efficiency comes to mind when someone talks about something being "powerful".


it provides a lot of power per watt though. and is quite powerful enough for many tasks (incl. music making). its all relative, even this upcoming amd cpu.


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## Pier (Aug 30, 2022)

RogiervG said:


> it provides a lot of power per watt though. and is quite powerful enough for many tasks (incl. music making). its all relative, even this upcoming amd cpu.


I agree.

But it's a simple fact Apple has never had the "most powerful CPU" (quoting the post I was responding to).



https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu_benchmark-cinebench_r23_single_core-15





https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu_benchmark-cinebench_r23_multi_core-16


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## rgames (Aug 30, 2022)

Pier said:


> Obviously I'm talking about performance. I don't think efficiency comes to mind when someone talks about something being "powerful".


From what I can see laptops these days are much more limited by thermals than processor, so something like "computing power per watt" is the major factor in laptops.

I'm in the process of replacing my laptop and from what I see the same processor with different thermal designs produces very different performance. Thermal throttling has always been an issue but it's even more so for recent CPUs.

Laptop performance these days seems to be a function of thermals, not processor.

But for music production it doesn't really matter because pretty much any processor will work. If you're rendering 4k videos or doing computational physics it matters.

rgames


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## Pier (Aug 30, 2022)

rgames said:


> From what I can see laptops these days are much more limited by thermals than processor, so something like "computing power per watt" is the major factor in laptops.
> 
> I'm in the process of replacing my laptop and from what I see the same processor with different thermal designs produces very different performance. Thermal throttling has always been an issue but it's even more so for recent CPUs.
> 
> ...


Yes, definitely. I think I've actually argued the same points in this very same thread.


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## David Kudell (Aug 30, 2022)

It's going to be 108 degrees for a full week where I live in SoCal.

My next CPU will definitely be Apple Silicon because my Intel iMac Pro is using 200W right now, the fans are noisily blowing hot air and heating up my whole studio.

Efficiency does matter.

Edit: (Ok, I realize this is an AMD thread, so if none of that matters to you, then it looks nice)


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## Pier (Aug 30, 2022)

David Kudell said:


> It's going to be 108 degrees for a full week where I live in SoCal.
> 
> My next CPU will definitely be Apple Silicon because my Intel iMac Pro is using 200W right now, the fans are noisily blowing hot air and heating up my whole studio.


The issue is most likely the poor cooling of the iMac Pro. Historically Apple has been quite bad at cooling but that's been specially an issue on the iMacs.

I live in Mexico and as you can imagine it does get quite hot around here. I barely ever hear the fans of my Ryzen PC. It's whisper quiet even during the hottest months of the year.

Edit:

I've been thinking that maybe from my last comments someone could think I'm an Apple hater or something.

Nothing could be further from the truth. I've been using Macs as my main computers for over 15 years. I'm actually writing this right now on an iMac 5K.


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## aeliron (Aug 30, 2022)

SharpDal said:


> Well, electricity bills are getting a bit ridiculous in Europe though...


luckily some laptops and PCs can still generate a good bit of heat for winter ...


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## NuNativs (Aug 30, 2022)

Unfortunately you have to run Windows...


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## gedlig (Aug 30, 2022)

NuNativs said:


> Unfortunately you have to run Windows...


That's the best part. Frakk ios


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## tabulius (Aug 30, 2022)

I have waited years and years (from the Zen gen 1 launch) and I think I'll finally make the jump to Zen 4 from old Intel 6700K. I don't work as a full-time composer anymore, but I'm still looking forward to building a new PC for music projects and gaming. When the next generation AMD GPUs launch I'll get one of those as well! Excited!


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## ibanez1 (Aug 30, 2022)

colony nofi said:


> See here :
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Beating out the 12900k by 15-20% is definitely nice but isn't this new chip going to be competing with the 13900k only a month later?

According to cinebench leaks here, it looks like the 13900k is close in multi-core while probably beating the new zen4 in single core (again all leaks so take with a grain of salt):








Intel Raptor Lake Core i9-13900K makes swift meal out of Core i9-12900K, Ryzen 9 5950X, and Ryzen 7 5800X in leaked Geekbench and Cinebench R23 benchmarks


Intel's upcoming 13th gen Raptor Lake flagship, the Core i9-13900K, has put up some impressive numbers in leaked Geekbench 5 and Cinebench R23 benchmarks. The Core i9-13900K shows perceivable improvements in single-core performance over the Core i9-12900K. The Raptor Lake behemoth is also able...




www.notebookcheck.net





It's probably worth seeing how this all shakes out in the next few months before investing in a new rig. If competition is close, hopefully it will also help drive down prices .


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## leonthomasian (Aug 30, 2022)

colony nofi said:


> ....
> 
> (btw : I'm going to test a brand new TR-Pro workstation next week - wonder how it will do for massive sessions. 1TB ram... )



Wow! What would be the price tag on that kind of workstation?


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## cedricm (Aug 31, 2022)

colony nofi said:


> See here :
> 
> 
> 
> ...


It will cost a pretty penny because of DDR5, extremely expensive new motherboards and need for a separate CPU cooler. 
The price /performance ratio will be better with Ryzen 5000 processors for many, many months.


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## zigzag (Aug 31, 2022)

From AnandTech:


> ​
> Interestingly, AMD offered performance figures for three different TDPs: 65W, 105W, and 170W. The greatest performance gains are actually at the lowest TDPs, where the 7950X saw a 74% increase in Cinebench R23 MT performance. These advantages actually decreased as TDPs went up, dropping to 37% at 105W, and finally 35% at 170W.


According to this, laptop Zen 4 CPUs might bring even bigger relative performance increase than desktop counterparts.


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## lokotus (Aug 31, 2022)

colony nofi said:


> Yeah - the whole DDR5 thing is going to be a whole thing in and of itself to watch. Having said that, I've already messed with a 12900k intel build running 128GB DDR5 (4x32GB sticks) and it was all running fine... I didn't spec the machine nor put it together, just played with it.
> 
> The system was spec'd by a guy with far more knowledge of the general tech world than I'll ever have, and he said the AM5 platform should out of the gate be cool with 64GB DDR5 chips (x4)... who knows when they'll be available but I wouldn't want to see the price for those sticks of ram when they hit the streets.
> At least there's also some pretty massive scaling going on with DDR5 on the server side of things, with 512GB sticks being demonstrated by Samsung showing off the new architecture + efficiencies. That kind of size blows my mind.


I am still searching for matched pairs of 4*32 GB DDR5. Have you found any specifically supported or did you simply try 2* (2*32) GB DDR5? Cheers, lokotus


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## Shad0wLandsUK (Aug 31, 2022)

Pier said:


> Nah Apple has never had the most powerful chip. Not even close.


Oh they have on paper though, and according to them that is something 

'THEIR' paper


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## Shad0wLandsUK (Aug 31, 2022)

We could all back to DOS or text-based operating systems. Those are sure to save some energy... and if the inappreciativeness does not end around here, I might just have to mandate it globally for the 2023 EU Summit


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## SupremeFist (Aug 31, 2022)

Pier said:


> Nah Apple has never had the most powerful chip. Not even close.


Wasn't the dual G5 the most powerful desktop CPU for a while?


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## Pier (Aug 31, 2022)

SupremeFist said:


> Wasn't the dual G5 the most powerful desktop CPU for a while?


Hmm good point. I don't know.

I can't find any benchmarks but the Dual Power G5 only lasted for a couple of months until the first Xeon Mac Pro was released. I imagine the Mac Pro must have been faster.


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## SupremeFist (Aug 31, 2022)

Pier said:


> Hmm good point. I don't know.
> 
> I can't find any benchmarks but the Dual Power G5 only lasted for a couple of months until the first Xeon Mac Pro was released. I imagine the Mac Pro must have been faster.


I was thinking of the dual-CPU (not dual-core) one, called 'liquid cool" here. Also the 68040 machines were fast in the 1990s. But for recent history your point stands.


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## Technostica (Aug 31, 2022)

I recall Apple claiming that the dual socket PowerPC was faster than Intel PCs, then they moved to the same Intel chips and claimed that the Intel Mac was faster than the PowerPC system it replaced.
It's called selective benchmarking and most of them do it at times. 
The PowerPC probably only led in software that used their vector processing units which were ahead of the pack at one point.


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## arrivu (Aug 31, 2022)

timbit2006 said:


> Yeah, that's why I really want to see how the 7000 series is in a mobile platform. I really need a new laptop for my "real job" as well haha.
> Really though I saw so many pretentious comments from M1 guys since they've been released(disclaimer:mostly on facebook groups, not here) that I don't mind being a bit of a jerk about it.


There won't be 7000 series for mobile platform anytime soon, since the 6000 series just launched beginning of the year. The 6000 series are the mobile processor which replaced the 5000 series mobile version.

With your urgency to get a new laptop with 7000 series might not become a reality, unless you can wait till who knows when next year.


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## EvilDragon (Aug 31, 2022)

That's a lotta TDP, damn. But also, base clocks across all cores at 4.5 GHz? That sounds really good to me (I'm running my now old and trusty i7-6700K at 4.5 GHz across all cores). I wonder how far would an all core overclock go on these...


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## colony nofi (Aug 31, 2022)

leonthomasian said:


> Wow! What would be the price tag on that kind of workstation?


About $20k Aud.
(but bare in mind, a bunch of that is for workstation gfx cards, storage and other bits and pieces. Still a truck load of cash)


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## colony nofi (Aug 31, 2022)

Technostica said:


> The one downside is that the TDPs have gone up a lot.
> I guess they are following Intel and pushing the clock frequencies well outside the efficiency range.
> If you under volt and even down clock slightly it should be okay.


eh - kinda. Its not that straight forward. As it turns out, these chips at least appear to be far more efficient than the last time round.

But even with that in mind (and they're significant efficiency gains) - getting a CPU all the way up to 5.7GHz is gonna take watts!


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## blaggins (Aug 31, 2022)

EvilDragon said:


> That's a lotta TDP, damn.


Ha yes. 170 is insane, isn't the M2 chip something like 20? Still, I'm not sure if I'd get too caught up in the difference of 150W unless it was for a laptop... At something like $0.12/kwH where I'm at (or 2x that in LA apparently, just looked that up, holy shit y'all) the additional cost per month for running it 12 hours/day, 7 days a week is something like $6.50/month for consumption or probably something like double that if you are cooling your room with a standard HVAC (and double that again if you are LA). It's like one fancy cocktail or a couple of lattes. Things to weigh in against what makes you happy in a CPU...


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## colony nofi (Aug 31, 2022)

tpoots said:


> Ha yes. 170 is insane, isn't the M2 chip something like 20? Still, I'm not sure if I'd get too caught up in the difference of 150W unless it was for a laptop... At something like $0.12/kwH where I'm at (or 2x that in LA apparently, just looked that up, holy shit y'all) the additional cost per month for running it 12 hours/day, 7 days a week is something like $6.50/month for consumption or probably something like double that if you are cooling your room with a standard HVAC (and double that again if you are LA). It's like one fancy cocktail or a couple of lattes. Things to weigh in against what makes you happy in a CPU...


So one needs to look closely at freq when talking about power use.
It may only take 65W to get to 4Ghz and then an extra 105 to get to 5.7 (I'm pulling numbers out my butt, but you get what I mean!). It is not linear put it that way.
So one can choose to underclock these chips and you start to see numbers far more like m1/m2. Here they're just taking advantage of the ability to throw power at the problem and get more compute, which is useful for a desktop computer in some circumstances. Particularly gaming.

If I remember some blender results I saw, M1 Ultra was roughly 25% under a 5950 while using 35-50% (so 50-65% less) power. The 7950 is far more efficient than the 5950, so I wouldn't be surprised that for the same level of compute, the 7950 is more efficient. But time will tell. No one has been able to run tests yet aside from what AMD showed us in their presentation, although I know a YouTuber who is expecting their samples to test late next week (with an embargo of course)


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## Laddy (Aug 31, 2022)

"As always, it's recommended to choose a dual-DIMM memory kit over a quad-DIMM configuration for Ryzen 7000. Dual-DIMM setups are better for signal routing and less stressful on the processor's IMC (integrated memory controller). For example, AMD only guarantees DDR5-5200 support on a 1DPC (DIMM per channel) configuration. In a 2DPC scenario, the official memory speed drops to DDR5-3600."








AMD Confirms DDR5-6000 RAM Is The Sweet Spot For Ryzen 7000 CPUs


Directly from the horse's mouth




www.tomshardware.com





What does this mean, that you should only use 2 memory sticks?


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## EvilDragon (Aug 31, 2022)

tpoots said:


> 170 is insane, isn't the M2 chip something like 20?


Sure but performance-wise it's no contest, obviously.


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## Nico5 (Sep 1, 2022)

I would like to see a graph plotting performance vs. heat - because that has practical implications in a music studio environment.


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## colony nofi (Sep 1, 2022)

Nico5 said:


> I would like to see a graph plotting performance vs. heat - because that has practical implications in a music studio environment.


Well - just performance vs power right? 
Keep it to things that are easy to measure.
Measuring heat off is kinda weird. How do you measure it? The heat out is a function of the speed of the air flowing through the case. So higher airflow = lower heat (as more air through heats up less)
So just measure the total TDP! Then its up to you how you choose to carry that energy away from the chip.

Or do you mean performance vs the temperature on die? And if so, where on the die? With modern dies, that becomes a tricky thing. Not every die has the hot spot in the same area. Do you measure the heat of the first core? And what does that mean when looking at different chips? The chips are all designed to function within different thermal envelopes (and some are designed to run at surprisingly high temps). Remember again that the temp of the die does not necessarily tell you much about the total energy being dissipated from the CPU. 

Of course - I'm willing to hear an argument for measuring temperature (heat) - but first we need to figure out what it is that you want to actually measure... and why. Until then, TDP under load is a great place to start when comparing systems, although knowing the output under standard composition conditions would be nice as well. For instance, when I ran an intel HEDT system for a project a couple of years back, our power draw was less than 50% the max rated for the chip, and we were running the audio system to the absolute maximum of what was possible. (Realtime audio makes running the chip to max out a CPU extremely hard for most modern chips.)


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## Technostica (Sep 1, 2022)

Nico5 said:


> I would like to see a graph plotting performance vs. heat - because that has practical implications in a music studio environment.


With Zen 4 being built on a 5nm node versus 7nm for Zen 3, the chiplets will have much denser circuits.
On top of that, the TDP for the 16C chip has jumped from 105W to 175W, so it doesn't bode well for the thermal density and therefore the chip temperatures.

With Zen 3, I read that the 5800X was the worst for temps due to being a single chiplet with the full 8 cores.
The 59xx chips didn't consume much more power than the 5800X, but the cores were spread over two chiplets, making the thermal density much lower and easier to cool.
So the Ryzen 7 7700X might be the problematic one and the Ryzen 9 7900X might be the sweet spot!
I'm thinking in terms of quiet cooling here.


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## blaggins (Sep 1, 2022)

Nico5 said:


> I would like to see a graph plotting performance vs. heat - because that has practical implications in a music studio environment.


Is heat an issue because of fan noise? I'm just curious since the average difference here is likely something on the order of running a 75W incandescent lightbulb... I get that it's extremely concentrated in a small space so it must be actively shunted elsewhere but there are quiet ways to do this (huge case with big/low-RPM fans combined with water cooling), but on the whole the concern about heat confuses me. It just doesn't seem like a big deal? (unless of course it's a laptop we're talking about, I don't like to use batteries for heating my lap either).


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## Pier (Sep 1, 2022)

I'm not sure how this works... but it seems the efficiency when not pushing the CPU is much higher than when reaching max TDP.

According to AMD, the efficiency of Zen 4 at 65W TDP is 74% higher than Zen 3.


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## rgames (Sep 1, 2022)

tpoots said:


> Is heat an issue because of fan noise? I'm just curious since the average difference here is likely something on the order of running a 75W incandescent lightbulb... I get that it's extremely concentrated in a small space so it must be actively shunted elsewhere but there are quiet ways to do this (huge case with big/low-RPM fans combined with water cooling), but on the whole the concern about heat confuses me. It just doesn't seem like a big deal? (unless of course it's a laptop we're talking about, I don't like to use batteries for heating my lap either).


The issue is getting the heat out of the chip. The thermal interface is limited by the size of the chip and you can only get so much heat out through a given area. If they made huge chips then yes, heat could be more easily dealt with. But big chips create other problems, so... Catch 22.

I haven't looked at desktops in a while but are there thermal throttling issues with newer chips? I'm talking about real-world use, not unrealistic benchmarks. Seems thermal throttling is a real-world issue for laptop users these days but I'm not sure about desktops.

Temperature is an issue from the standpoint of damage to the chip but the chips take care of themselves in that regard. Unless you're seriously tweaking the BIOS and/or hardware you're not going to burn up a chip.

Regarding noise, my system is fairly loud. But it's another room and I can't hear it when I'm in the studio. I can, however, occasionally hear coil whine from my Samsung monitor... And I used to hear transformer noise from my overhead lights before I replaced them. So I'd say noise isn't really an issue unless you can't put the machine in another room or don't have $50 to spend on extension cables. Even in the same room I'd say it's a minor issue for music because music production doesn't use much CPU and near-zero GPU. So you should be able to run pretty cool and quiet when working on music. It might sound like a wind tunnel when you're rendering videos but presumably that's less of an issue. So, overall, I'd say noise isn't much of an issue for most people.

rgames


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## Pier (Sep 1, 2022)

Nico5 said:


> I would like to see a graph plotting performance vs. heat - because that has practical implications in a music studio environment.


Noise really depends on how you set up your PC.

A 100% silent PC with passive cooling is possible but it can be expensive.

I hate fan noise but I'm quite happy with current setup. The fan noise of my Ryzen PC is whisper quiet. Sometimes I leave it on while working on my iMac and I forget it's there.

Most of the noise comes from the GPU and CPU fans. The trick is feeding enough fresh air to those with the case fans so that they work as less as possible. It might seem counterintuitive, but the more fans you add to the case, the less noise you will have. Most motherboards these days allow you to configure fan curves so that the fans are running so slowly you don't hear them at all unless you're pushing the PC hard.

Another tip is getting a GPU that turns off the fan if you're not gaming like the Asus Strix series.

On my CPU I have the Noctua NH D15 which is one of the most efficient coolers in the market. It's so good I could remove one of the two fans it comes with.

Personally I've never bothered with liquid cooling... but it's an option to consider. I remember years ago a friend had this huge 100% passive radiator.






Or you can just put the PC in a closet or in a machine room somewhere else 😂

That said, I can totally see the argument of getting a Mac Studio to not have to deal with this stuff, if the performance is good enough for the use case.


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## Mornats (Sep 1, 2022)

tpoots said:


> something like $0.12/kwH


Wow, in the UK it's currently £0.28 per kWh/h with it increasing to £0.52 by the end of the year*. That's $0.32 and $0.60 respectively at current exchange rates.

* This is the energy price cap that the government has imposed on suppliers but it's expected that most or all will charge this.


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## Pier (Sep 1, 2022)

Time to put solar panels in the house!


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## Technostica (Sep 1, 2022)

Regarding temperatures:









AMD Ryzen 7000 CPUs Reportedly Run Hot, Ryzen 9 7950X Hits Up To 95C Thermal Threshold at 230W, Ryzen 5 7600X Up To 90C at 120W


AMD Ryzen 7000 CPUs including the Ryzen 9 7950X are going to run really hot and consume the full package power as reported in a rumor.




wccftech.com


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## colony nofi (Sep 1, 2022)

I feel like a few things are not being understood.

I'm going to generalise here just to simplify the discussion.

The actual maximum die temperature DOES NOT MATTER when designing a cooling system for a cpu. 
Instead, you just figure out the maximum wattage you need to dissipate from the CPU. 

It might take a little while to think about this and completely understand what is going on. But everything is much easier if we just think in Watts. You might have a die that reaches 70C in your 20C room or another that reaches 100C in your 20C room - but both COULD be requiring the same amount of cooling in watts. And in that situation both would work equally well with the same identical cooling setup.

So you need to figure out is the total thermal energy that needs to be dissipated. That is measured in watts.

Some thought is required in designing the system to transfer the energy away from the die, and then the temps might play into the design a little, but this is not a problem for the designers of these systems, generally not us end users who just throw the systems together.

As composers, we need to think about HOW we dissipate that energy off into the free air space. 
So we design around systems that can dissipate the number of watts required with the least amount of SPL.

This is why manufacturers of passive cases list very clearly the maximum thermal dissipation value in watts. 

170W is the absolute PEAK for these new CPU's. From personal experience, I very much doubt there is any composition workflow that will cause the CPU to draw the full 170W. Please ping me if anyone achieves this. I really am interested.

My best guess is that it will sit under 100W. There may be other things composers choose to use their machines for that can cause the CPU use to spike (gaming!) but not day to day composition. Mixing complicated sessions (ie surround or atmos or immersive) is about the closest I've ever seen to getting to 60% use of a modern CPU.

When we "run out of CPU" we are generally running out of headroom just on the first core. Thats one of 8, 12, or even 16 cores. One core at max on these new machines is around 12W peak for the 7950.

Personally, if I needed to design a new system around these chips, I'd air cool with massive 200mm fans (1 in, 1 out) and a CPU cooler with 120mm fans intake and outlet. Spinning SLOW. If all you are using the machine for is composition, I think you could get your noise figure down to below 20dB just with these 4 fans.

In our studios we run a Xeon based file server which draws up to 70W power for the CPU, and around 150W with all the drives and ethernet going full bore. It is cooled by 3 x 80mm case fans (clever layout with a passive CPU cooler) into a sealed rack space, which then has 200mm fans for fresh air intake and outlet. These 200mm fans easily handle that load running at 3-400rpm. I can hear them in that room (not a studio) when they're running at 800, but they're essentially silent (aside from air whooshing) at 400rpm. 

Now - we DO measure the CPU temp to make sure things are working properly. But this is done so we can measure the performance DELTA which is the important figure. We just need to know that the system is keeping the cpu temps down under all circumstances, including if aircon fails (which is does for 12+ hours)

Oh - another aside. Liquid cooling was mentioned. This can be an excellent way of getting heat off a CPU - but you still need to cool the liquid, which often uses a tonne of fans. Bigger rads with more fans are your friend there, and getting bloody good pumps are a must to keep noise levels down. I have only ever seen one composer use liquid cooling in a pro environment, and he had TWO pumps in parallel (VERY clever) just in case one ever died... also meant they could run at much lower rates / lower noise level. 

One final note - @rgames : Aside from a few outliers, thermal throttling is not something that any desktop machine needs to worry about . One would have to stuff up the cooling system massively to have that occur on a modern desktop case.


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## Nico5 (Sep 1, 2022)

I was talking about heat (at forest level, not at tree level) rather than power in an attempt to have this thread not just talk about the cost of electricity (which in my case would be a rather low impact), but the cost (and design effort) of heat management:

to actually get to those high performance numbers, and 
the cost of keeping heat management quiet enough for a music studio
In other words, I don't care much about the extra electricity, but am more interested in the costs of required cooling parts as a result of pushing performance up beyond certain levels. And if I need to keep my DAW computer away from my mixing room, that involves long cables at best and possibly an entirely more complicated network topology. 

Upgrading CPU, motherboard and RAM is relatively trivial (unless you change CPU architecture ) - powerful, yet quiet cooling is getting less trivial with each generation.


p.s. 
I've been running my music studio on a Windows platform for the last 20 years and use Apple stuff as my daily drivers for the last 15. And there's a pretty good chance, it will stay split that way for some time. I'm rather familiar with the relative merits and the pain points of each platform (plus a few Linux flavors). Bringing up the topic of heat is *not* related to platform wars. Heat management is as important for the new MacBook Air M2 as it is for the latest Intel and AMD offerings, plus graphics cards and even modern SSDs have heat management implications.


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## colony nofi (Sep 1, 2022)

Nico5 said:


> I was talking about heat (at forest level, not at tree level) rather than power in an attempt to have this thread not just talk about the cost of electricity (which in my case would be a rather low impact), but the cost (and design effort) of heat management:
> 
> to actually get to those high performance numbers, and
> the cost of keeping heat management quiet enough for a music studio
> ...


I get what you're saying, but unfortunately I think there is a penny still to drop.

Watts is just a measurement of power.

And power can mean a tonne of different things.

It is a measurement that quantifies (measures) the rate of energy transfer.

What (haha) this means is that when I talk about needing to dissipate 100W of heat from a CPU die, it has nothing to do with power draw (again in Watts) of a computer at the power-plug. (Note : see below...of course a cpu DRAWS at least that amount of power... but its not relevant to the design of the cooling.).
It is just a measurement to help design the cooling system.

It may take zero watts of electrical power to dissipate 100W of power from a CPU if it is done passively. It could take 300W if using extremely inefficient systems. The power it takes to reduce the temp of the die is related only to efficiency of the cooling method, not to the power draw of the CPU.
Say you cool with liquid nitrogen... to work out the power used to cool the CPU, you would need to look at the power used to make the liquid nitrogen in the first place to come to some sort of figure.

Now to my note from above. If a CPU needs to dissipate 100W of energy, then it is using at LEAST 100W of power from the electrical outlet. But thats just the CPU power draw. (Its more than 100W because other componentry is involved that is not 100% efficient / looses power as heat... for example the power supply, or the voltage regulators on the motherboard.)

So - I'm talking about the same things you are. . I'm just talking in Watts as it is the most useful measurement. Joules per second. How many joules per second do we need to transfer away from the CPU and dissipate into the air? How do we do that? This is a far more useful frame to look at the problem than just "heat". Heat is a measurement of energy - joules. Watts is a measurement of heat divided by time. Joules per second.


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## blaggins (Sep 1, 2022)

We might be overthinking things. One very reasonable shortcut is to take the total power draw of the whole system (watts) and assume 100% of it turns to heat in the end. This gets back to the principal of energy conservation. Moving the heat away from the computer is basically free since low voltage fans draw incredibly little power relatively speaking. One way it the other, the heat just ends up in your studio... 150 watts in, 150 watts of heat out. Since the computer is adding heat equivalent to it's power draw, you'll have to remove that amount of heat.

Now if your studio is cold then you're in luck. Otherwise you are probably running an HVAC system and I think the efficiency of those is roughly 70ish%? This part I'm fuzzy on and that's why I originally just doubled the electric cost to get to the total cost (to account for consumption and dealing with the heat). 

If anyone truly wants a rabbit hole on this stuff check out literature pertaining to estimating savings of moving server computer resources from on-prem to cloud. Datacenter ppl are passionate about cooling and operating costs.


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## colony nofi (Sep 1, 2022)

blaggins said:


> We might be overthinking things. One very reasonable shortcut is to take the total power draw of the whole system (watts) and assume 100% of it turns to heat in the end. This gets back to the principal of energy conservation. Moving the heat away from the computer is basically free since low voltage fans draw incredibly little power relatively speaking. One way it the other, the heat just ends up in your studio... 150 watts in, 150 watts of heat out. Since the computer is adding heat equivalent to it's power draw, you'll have to remove that amount of heat.
> 
> Now if your studio is cold then you're in luck. Otherwise you are probably running an HVAC system and I think the efficiency of those is roughly 70ish%? This part I'm fuzzy on and that's why I originally just doubled the electric cost to get to the total cost (to account for consumption and dealing with the heat).
> 
> If anyone truly wants a rabbit hole on this stuff check out literature pertaining to estimating savings of moving server computer resources from on-prem to cloud. Datacenter ppl are passionate about cooling and operating costs.


Yeah this is a pretty good way of looking at it, only the CPU is just one piece of the cooling pie.
Graphics card, motherboard components (chipsets / vrms etc), power supply and of course drives can all significantly add to the mess. But we are just really looking at CPU in this thread...


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## Nico5 (Sep 1, 2022)

I'm not disagreeing with any parts of any of your posts. Maybe with the exception of



colony nofi said:


> ... unfortunately I think there is a penny still to drop.



You're talking about "power" in physics terms. Totally correctly and in much more detail than I could.



colony nofi said:


> Watts is just a measurement of power.



However, colloquial English by non-engineers - as evidenced in this thread - quickly led the conversation to just the cost of the CPU power draw per kWh at the electrical outlet, and not the arguably much more critical part of the discussion in a music studio: What it takes to keep the studio quiet.

At what point in the performance curve should I expect to have to invest in liquid cooling? Or a computer room? Or a sound insulated box with air intakes and vents outside of the studio, etc.

From what I've seen, there's not enough hard data and discussion on that side - and my original post was just my expression of desire for the more information on the Watts output (in the form of heat) rather than the Watts input (in the form of electricity). I realize they are related/proportional. But exactly how much? Is pretty much all of the Wattage going into the CPU effectively wasted as heat? Or is it 10%? (I'm using extremes for illustration). Is the percentage worse in the newer CPUs? Or better? Or it depends on where in the performance curve you are? -- I would really love to see more detailed data on that. Because there's probably points of diminishing returns for music studio people like us. I would love to know where those points are.


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## colony nofi (Sep 1, 2022)

Nico5 said:


> At what point in the performance curve should I expect to have to invest in liquid cooling? Or a computer room? Or a sound insulated box with air intakes and vents outside of the studio, etc.


Ah I am sorry if I misinterpreted.

The discussion of when to invest in liquid cooling is an interesting one - and different folk have different opinions on it. However, I personally am quite comfortable with being able to cool a pc with a cpu drawing 170W using slow fans. I just finished an installation where we had 4 unreal servers running 2 workstation gfx cards each - air cooled - with 280W thread rippers - al air cooled. Now I wouldn't put these in a studio, but the actual cooling being done was very effective (and these machines are running 10 hours a day at more than 90% capacity on CPU and GFX.

There is loads of hard data around on what cooling you need - and therefore how noisy that cooling will be. Its just potentially not as straight forward as going "with a CPU < 300W TDP I'll choose X brand of water cooler" or "with 200W TDP Cpu its better to go air cooled in a silent box".




Nico5 said:


> desire for the more information on the Watts output (in the form of heat) rather than the Watts input (in the form of electricity). I realize they are related/proportional. But exactly how much? Is pretty much all of the Wattage going into the CPU effectively wasted as heat? Or is it 10%?



This is thankfully straight forward. Watts input from the power cable = watts out. For the entire computer. So then, if you measure the total watts being used at the power outlet you'll know EXACTLY the amount of energy being "shed" from the computer. Conservation of energy is our friend. That energy in (in the form of electricity) needs to go somewhere. And for all intents and purposes, if the entire computer was in a sealed box and you measured the change in temperature inside that box in watts it would equal the power draw at the socket in watts. There is VERY tiny amounts of energy going out as sound and possibly light with a few small leds - but its not worth worrying about that.

So. Watts in (electricity) = Watts out (99%+ as heat). No difference from pc's 30 years ago to now, and never will be any different.

None of the energy is wasted. Its doing something - its allowing calculations to take place. And in doing so, the energy transfers from voltage & current to heat.

In order to plan for cooling, one just needs to figure out how to effectively get the heat energy from very tiny locations (the CPU die) to dissipate in the air. No matter the cooling solution you choose, ultimately the air around the computer will be heated up in the same way a heater of the same wattage as your computer would work. We use fans to spread the heat through MORE of the air. Higher airflow = less heat building up in areas, making the transfer of energy harder. (ie, a 90-20degree drop in temperature means more energy is being taken out of that system than a 90 to 40 degree drop. I mentioned temperature delta earlier - this is what I meant.)

The decision to use sealed boxes with controlled inlets and outlets really just allows one to control the sound of the energy transfer system. One can use clever plenums designed similarly to airconditioning or fresh-air silencers for studios (even going as far as using static pressure / changes in pressure to help with air movement and minimise the number of fans required). The math isn't that hard. However, as a very amateur carpenter, they're a pain to make. Fun and rewarding when you get it right though.


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## colony nofi (Sep 1, 2022)

And one final thought.
About CPU efficiency.
So Watts in (electrical energy) = watts out (mostly heat energy)

When we talk about CPU efficiency, we are basically asking "how many calculations (measured however you like... Flops is often used...*floating-point operations per second*) can be made per watt of power used (which ends up as heat). We often look directly at the CPU efficiency because it is a large variable in the whole computer. But it is still important to look at the efficiency of your power supply (which converts one voltage to several smaller outputs of lower voltage with some heat being generated... 15% goes to heat ish) and any other power hungry part of your system. In a large cloud storage centre, the efficiency of the drives (how much energy is used - converted to heat - per TB of data stored) becomes incredibly important. But I'm WAAAAY off topic now.


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## Nico5 (Sep 1, 2022)

colony nofi said:


> Ah I am sorry if I misinterpreted.
> 
> The discussion of when to invest in liquid cooling is an interesting one - and different folk have different opinions on it. However, I personally am quite comfortable with being able to cool a pc with a cpu drawing 170W using slow fans. I just finished an installation where we had 4 unreal servers running 2 workstation gfx cards each - air cooled - with 280W thread rippers - al air cooled. Now I wouldn't put these in a studio, but the actual cooling being done was very effective (and these machines are running 10 hours a day at more than 90% capacity on CPU and GFX.
> 
> ...


Thank you for that post - so looking at the power consumption curve, plotting additional Watts consumed for performance gained should give us a good idea of where the points of diminishing returns are. 

But I've not been having the easiest time to find graphs that plot this relationship.

Interestingly enough, there's also a weird temperature anomaly in one I found:






3DCenter Forum - Intel - Alder Lake - Review-Thread - Seite 23


Intel - Alder Lake - Review-Thread Prozessoren, Chipsätze und Mainboards




www.forum-3dcenter.org


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## colony nofi (Sep 2, 2022)

Nico5 said:


> Thank you for that post - so looking at the power consumption curve, plotting additional Watts consumed for performance gained should give us a good idea of where the points of diminishing returns are.
> 
> But I've not been having the easiest time to find graphs that plot this relationship.
> 
> ...


My gut feeling is there is some gremlin in the system (perhaps the test system) for that result. I would re-run the tests a few times, but increasing efficiency at that kind of power doesn't immediately make sense to me.

Also - bare in mind that for audio (as mentioned earlier) I doubt you will EVER see anything over 60-65% CPU use of a chip that is designed like a 12900ks or 7950 before getting audio dropouts due to the nature of realtime audio systems. The really EXCELLENT part of this is that (at least the last time I looked), 60% cpu use = (approx) 30% of the power use. So a 70% reduction in power use. And something like that is seen on these alder-lake power consumption results.

In designing a cooling system for the 12900 or 7950x, I would measure the power use at both max cpu (using an artificial CPU benchmark) AND with a test DAW session at the moment things break down. Then I would tune the cooling to match the power output at the level the DAW session needs, while having overhead for higher CPU when needed (knowing it might just get louder at that moment!)

Does that make sense?
Oh - and the "point of diminishing returns" is actually just above zero (ish). Once a CPU is running at around 10% use, every % of use = a higher amount of power use than the previous percentage. So when you ask "where the points of diminishing returns are" - well, the returns are continuously diminishing! Its not a linear curve though - its likely exponential (I've never really looked into it, but on paper that makes sense to me unless I'm using a wrong formula without thinking straight... happens a fair bit...)


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## Nico5 (Sep 2, 2022)

colony nofi said:


> So when you ask "where the points of diminishing returns are" - well, the returns are continuously diminishing! Its not a linear curve though - its likely exponential


Yes exactly, and the non-linearity is the interesting part. In the chart I had referenced, it would seem that you get almost 90% of the performance from about half of the maximum power and about 2/3 of the maximum temperature (obviously influenced by the cooling system in that particular computer). 

I find that very valuable data - but either I'm failing on my searching-foo or that way of comparing CPU's at partial wattages between generations and architectures is not that easily available. 

For example, now I'd like to know what performance I can expect from the new Ryzen CPU's for about 125 Watts or even at 100 Watts, rather than their maximum. 

Maybe that's much better than the current generation Intel CPUs - or maybe it's not so much.

By the way, Intel has a little free utility for both MacOS and Windows that relates to our conversation topic. Unfortunately it's only for up to 10th generation Intel CPUs:


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## marius_dm (Sep 2, 2022)

timbit2006 said:


> I genuinely feel bad for anyone that got caught up in the whole M1 hype thing... That's rough lol.
> I'm pretty excited for this. I'm definitely going to be putting together a 7950x with a 4000 series or AMD equivalent card as my next build.
> I wonder how their mobile chipsets will do in comparison.


LOL. I'm perfectly fine taking an inconsequential performance hit in order to be mobile, thank you.

And BTW, since when is it OK to directly compare Mobile SOCs to Desktop discrete CPUs? A desktop CPU better have higher performance when you throw an additional 100W at it.


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## marius_dm (Sep 2, 2022)

rgames said:


> From what I can see laptops these days are much more limited by thermals than processor, so something like "computing power per watt" is the major factor in laptops.
> 
> I'm in the process of replacing my laptop and from what I see the same processor with different thermal designs produces very different performance. Thermal throttling has always been an issue but it's even more so for recent CPUs.
> 
> ...


I agree. In my mind, thermal performance is part of the overall performance of a processor.


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## Nimrod7 (Sep 2, 2022)

Pier said:


> Time to put solar panels in the house!


I have solar panels, but the sun here serves decoration purposes, it doesn't emit heat.


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## thevisi0nary (Sep 2, 2022)

13600k and 7950x will be the stars of this release cycle IMO.


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## FireGS (Sep 2, 2022)

I was looking into this, it all seems too good to be true at the price point.

No one here has mentioned the price tags of the AM5 motherboards. Holy. Fuck. $1500!?









GAMINGDEPUTY


‏‏‎‎‏‏‎ ‎News, Reviews & Insights



www.gamingdeputy.com


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## timbit2006 (Sep 2, 2022)

FireGS said:


> I was looking into this, it all seems too good to be true at the price point.
> 
> No one here has mentioned the price tags of the AM5 motherboards. Holy. Fuck. $1500!?
> 
> ...


The lower cost B650 series is coming in October. It's supposed to be around 125 starting price for those. I'm not sure what difference of features there are.


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## FireGS (Sep 2, 2022)

timbit2006 said:


> The lower cost B650 series is coming in October. It's supposed to be around 125 starting price for those. I'm not sure what difference of features there are.


This is a first generation socket and CPU and chipset -- IMO there is absolutely no reason to not buy the highest-end motherboard you can for longevity. Replacing a motherboard is the worst replacement to make on a computer due to some operating systems not liking it, and if you have to reinstall an OS and all of your software -- that's a bigger problem for us than for gamers or content consumers.

So if you want to have a motherboard with all of the frills, expansion ports, USB ports, and the full 24 PCI lanes -- you're forced into the higher price tiers. All of the other boards at lower costs are simply handicapped boards. You're usually not doing yourself any favors by cheaping out on a motherboard.

But at these prices.....? Jeeez.


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## Pier (Sep 2, 2022)

timbit2006 said:


> The lower cost B650 series is coming in October. It's supposed to be around 125 starting price for those. I'm not sure what difference of features there are.


I've been happy with my B450 motherboard and Ryzen CPU but personally I would wait a year or two before moving into the AM5 platform and the Zen 4 chips.

Being an early adopter tends to be a risky affair.


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## timbit2006 (Sep 2, 2022)

Pier said:


> I've been happy with my B450 motherboard and Ryzen CPU but personally I would wait a year or two before moving into the AM5 platform and the Zen 4 chips.
> 
> Being an early adopter tends to be a risky affair.


Yeah, I'm planning on scoring a nice used 5950X when everyone upgrades.

More than likely the current prices aren't the proper long term price for the motherboards and they will come down quite a bit to what the current generation is priced at.


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## Nimrod7 (Sep 3, 2022)

I'll wait for the 13gen to appear and probably build a new (non music) system by the end of year. 

I often choose the Pro-Art series as a motherboard of choice. If you're interested for thunderbolt connectivity, multiple high-speed USB, and 10g ethernet that's the way to go without consuming PCI slots. However it doesn't come cheap.


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## Russell Anderson (Sep 3, 2022)

Wow, I wonder if I can sell my current (and pretty new) motherboard/CPU and GPU close to when that 7950 is released. 5950X has been great but I can still bring it to its knees with a single plugin, depending on the plugin. I only use my GPU for more frames on a 4K tv.

Probably not. I don't really want to have to think about computers again for another 2 years or so, I have projects to work on and I'm not struggling for processing. But damn! Looks great.


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## HCMarkus (Sep 3, 2022)

timbit2006 said:


> I genuinely feel bad for anyone that got caught up in the whole M1 hype thing...


Don't cry for me, Argentina. 

The new AMD CPUs look superb, but I'm just enjoying getting work done on my 20-core M1.


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## SupremeFist (Sep 3, 2022)

Russell Anderson said:


> Probably not. I don't really want to have to think about computers again for another 2 years or so, I have projects to work on and I'm not struggling for processing. But damn! Looks great.


I think this is also a legit reason to prefer Macs: one avoids option paralysis and fomo. (Of course PCs are great for people who enjoy configuring their own stuff!)


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## thevisi0nary (Sep 3, 2022)

timbit2006 said:


> I genuinely feel bad for anyone that got caught up in the whole M1 hype thing


If an M1X MBP ran Windows natively I would get one and never look back, there is nothing comparable for mobile CPUs. For desktop it’s a different story, but they are still excellent chips and a first gen product (M2 only just released).


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## CSS_SCC (Sep 3, 2022)

Nimrod7 said:


> I'll wait for the 13gen to appear and probably build a new (non music) system by the end of year.
> 
> I often choose the Pro-Art series as a motherboard of choice. If you're interested for thunderbolt connectivity, multiple high-speed USB, and 10g ethernet that's the way to go without consuming PCI slots. However it doesn't come cheap.


The issue on the new series of AM5 motherboards (at least for me) is that most of the motherboards announced are in fact less feature rich than the AM4 that they were supposed to replace: most of the AM4 X570 motherboards had 5 PCIe slots and 8 SATA.
The newer generation 2-3 PCIe expansion slots:








ROG Crosshair X670E EXTREME


Designed for the most demanding fans, the ROG Crosshair X670E Extreme features 20 + 2 power stages, DDR5 support, five M.2 slots, ROG Gen-Z.2, a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 front-panel connector with Quick Charge 4+ Support, dual USB4®, PCIe® 5.0 and onboard Wi-Fi 6E.



rog.asus.com









ASRock > Motherboard







www.asrock.com




https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/All-Series?fid=2559%2C2735








Take Over - MSI AMD X670 & B650 Motherboards


MSI X670 and B650 motherboards release the true performance of AMD Ryzen 7000 Series processors, featuring PCIe 5.0 and DDR5. Also, MSI has Premium VRM Design, M.2 Shield Frozr, Wi-Fi 6E, PD60W, Smart Button, M.2 Gen5, USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 Type-C.




uk.msi.com


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## QuiteAlright (Sep 4, 2022)

CSS_SCC said:


> The issue on the new series of AM5 motherboards (at least for me) is that most of the motherboards announced are in fact less feature rich than the AM4 that they were supposed to replace: most of the AM4 X570 motherboards had 5 PCIe slots and 8 SATA.
> The newer generation 2-3 PCIe expansion slots:
> 
> 
> ...


I don't know about others here, but 3 PCIe expansion slots are probably enough for me. On the other hand, the huge prices for new motherboards aren't sitting well with me. I suppose that if one waits until the end of the year, the cheaper ones will be released? I've always been a little confused by AMD's strategy of having multiple chipset options.


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## FireGS (Sep 4, 2022)

QuiteAlright said:


> I don't know about others here, but 3 PCIe expansion slots are probably enough for me.


...right now. But what about in 4-5 years near end-of-life for AM5? Are you positive that's all you'll need? I didn't expect to need 12 USB ports, but here I am hurting for more. Just sayin', but never buy a motherboard for what you need right now.


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## marius_dm (Sep 12, 2022)

Intel’s mic drop: https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/12/...-cpus-raptor-lake-6ghz-stock-8ghz-overclocked


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## Technostica (Sep 12, 2022)

FireGS said:


> ...right now. But what about in 4-5 years near end-of-life for AM5? Are you positive that's all you'll need? I didn't expect to need 12 USB ports, but here I am hurting for more. Just sayin', but never buy a motherboard for what you need right now.


I've been building myself systems since the mid 90s and have a good idea of what my requirements are.
There has often been a temptation to over-spec the motherboard, but I don't bother and haven't regretted it.
There is an issue now with PCIe SSDs that might make me rethink that.
But even then, I'd probably rather save money now and upgrade to larger SSDs in the future, rather paying a lot for extra PCIe slots now.
Not sure how many slots to expect as there are still a limited number of lanes with AM5, albeit they are much faster in some cases.
So a board could potentially split one PCIe 5.0 x8 into four PCIe 4.0 x4 which would be useful for SSDs.
The cost though!


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## ibanez1 (Sep 12, 2022)

marius_dm said:


> Intel’s mic drop: https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/12/...-cpus-raptor-lake-6ghz-stock-8ghz-overclocked


This is why I said earlier in the thread it will be more interesting once both companies release their new line since the timing is so close. It's a great time right now for consumers with this level of close competition for cpus


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## gedlig (Sep 12, 2022)

marius_dm said:


> Intel’s mic drop: https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/12/...-cpus-raptor-lake-6ghz-stock-8ghz-overclocked


The mic drop depends on the price and how many cores it'll have, imo. Still cpu preference hugely depends on use case :D


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## mscp (Sep 12, 2022)

David Kudell said:


> It's going to be 108 degrees for a full week where I live in SoCal.
> 
> My next CPU will definitely be Apple Silicon because my Intel iMac Pro is using 200W right now, the fans are noisily blowing hot air and heating up my whole studio.
> 
> ...


Invest in A/C. But if you like Macs for any other reason, just stick to them.

If you're the kind of person, like me, who like to have the entire template at your disposal without having to turn stuff on/off, you will be incredibly upset with the M1s and will soon require another computer to run VEP on. That's what I ended up doing.

Once both my computers wear out (M1 Max and PC-VEP), I don't know which course I'll take, but if the PC market continues to supply amazing CPUs, I might go all in with the PCs.


----------



## ibanez1 (Sep 12, 2022)

gedlig said:


> The mic drop depends on the price and how many cores it'll have, imo. Still cpu preference hugely depends on use case :D


Price is one thing but as far as core count goes from most rumors, it looks to be 24 cores and 32 threads. I think "how many cores" is probably not the metric you mean but rather what the multi-threaded performance is at stock settings. Core count, thread count, per clock performance, all core max frequency, cache, and the memory subsystem can all effect this .


----------



## gedlig (Sep 12, 2022)

ibanez1 said:


> Price is one thing but as far as core count goes from most rumors, it looks to be 24 cores and 32 threads. I think "how many cores" is probably not the metric you mean but rather what the multi-threaded performance is at stock settings. Core count, thread count, per clock performance, all core max frequency, cache, and the memory subsystem can all effect this .


I did mean core count, cause you render more tiles with more cores and threads :D But yeah, that speed also depends on other factors


----------



## SupremeFist (Sep 12, 2022)

mscp said:


> If you're the kind of person, like me, who like to have the entire template at your disposal without having to turn stuff on/off, you will be incredibly upset with the M1s and will soon require another computer to run VEP on. That's what I ended up doing.


Isn't that just about RAM rather than raw CPU cycles? (Honest question.) And are you using a non-Logic DAW? (Ditto.)


----------



## xepocal (Sep 12, 2022)

marius_dm said:


> Intel’s mic drop: https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/12/...-cpus-raptor-lake-6ghz-stock-8ghz-overclocked


As crazy fast as this generation of CPUs is going to be, power efficiency is quickly becoming a serious factor for making new purchases - at least for Europeans. Absolute performance might be less relevant than performance / watt this generation.


----------



## ibanez1 (Sep 12, 2022)

gedlig said:


> I did mean core count, cause you render more tiles with more cores and threads :D But yeah, that speed also depends on other factors


Sure just making a point that core count / thread count are useful as a starting point but MT performance from key benchmarks gives a better purchasing metric.


----------



## ZeroZero (Sep 12, 2022)

I think the DDR5 issues are key to upgrade path. I would not jump yet, wait at least a year, maybe two then wow! Current max ram sticks (single) are 32 gb and not competitively priced. Theoretical limit is 1 TB!!!! per stick! Also the DDR5 speed gains at the moment are not worth the costs. I think the lowest Mhz is about 4200? Which is OK, but given time we could see 6k.
I am dreaming of the future wre we have 4tb of 6k mhz RAM a system drive with 7200 M.2 NMVE, or faster and blazing fast multicore chips of a good size per chip. When such systems can be build it may even be that building such systems for even the most heavy music productions loads, would be overkill. I think this is about 2 years away, if Russia behaves itself.

Why you should not buy DDR 5 Yet


----------



## ZeroZero (Sep 12, 2022)

xepocal said:


> As crazy fast as this generation of CPUs is going to be, power efficiency is quickly becoming a serious factor for making new purchases - at least for Europeans. Absolute performance might be less relevant than performance / watt this generation.


Was thinking that the electricity wastage heats my studio


----------



## EvilDragon (Sep 12, 2022)

marius_dm said:


> Intel’s mic drop: https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/12/...-cpus-raptor-lake-6ghz-stock-8ghz-overclocked


Meh, probably needs liquid nitrogen cooling and has 500W TDP 

And still probably that big.LITTLE crap? Gimme a break.


----------



## ibanez1 (Sep 12, 2022)

EvilDragon said:


> Meh, probably needs liquid nitrogen cooling and has 500W TDP
> 
> And still probably that big.LITTLE crap? Gimme a break.


Better than skylake per clock performance on the little cores and you get 4 of them in the same area as 1 big core on Alderlake. "crap" is an interesting summary you have of that result lol.


----------



## EvilDragon (Sep 12, 2022)

For a desktop workstation I want all cores on equal standing. Accept no substitutes.

DAWs don't really like when OS scheduler shuffles threads from performance to efficient cores, this is where you get CPU spikes and dropouts, when you wouldn't get them if all cores simply performed the same, at the same fixed clock. It also messes with the old adage of "if you need to load more things in your project, raise the buffer size to make CPU breathe some", because this automatically means that processing would eventually be shuffled from P to E cores and you actually get _worse_ performance at higher buffer sizes as a consequence (IIRC this is also a problem on M1 Macs). So what you do then is you need to limit your DAW process to only run on P cores, and E cores are then just snoozing doing nothing. Big whoop. Not interested in that crap.


----------



## ibanez1 (Sep 12, 2022)

EvilDragon said:


> For a desktop workstation I want all cores on equal standing. Accept no substitutes.
> 
> DAWs don't really like when OS scheduler shuffles threads from performance to efficient cores, this is where you get CPU spikes and dropouts, when you wouldn't get them if all cores simply performed the same, at the same fixed clock. It also messes with the old adage of "if you need to load more things in your project, raise the buffer size to make CPU breathe some", because this automatically means that processing would eventually be shuffled from P to E cores and you actually get _worse_ performance as a consequence (IIRC this is also a problem on M1 Macs). So what you do then is you need to limit your DAW process to only run on P cores, and E cores are then just snoozing doing nothing. Big whoop. Not interested in that crap.


Sure. Is this actually happening with Alderlake systems running DAWs though? I'm running both Reaper and cubase on my 8P+8E alderlake laptop with compositions with 40+ active tracks + multiple reverbs and EQs + ozone without any dropouts. 

As a comparison point, the baseline per clock performance of the E-core >= last gen workstation per-clock performance. The OS scheduling should be saturating the big cores with the first 8 busiest threads with a possible 1 time task migration from launching on the small cores and then spilling the remaining threads on the small cores.

I understand staying away if people are actually hitting these issues but i'm not sure that the M1 Mac small core performance design point is the same as the E-cores.


----------



## liquidlino (Sep 13, 2022)

Pier said:


> Time to put solar panels in the house!


You're obviously not familiar with UK weather?


----------



## gedlig (Sep 13, 2022)

liquidlino said:


> You're obviously not familiar with UK weather?


You just need to put up enough panels for those 15 seconds of sun to give a year's worth.


----------



## thevisi0nary (Sep 13, 2022)

EvilDragon said:


> For a desktop workstation I want all cores on equal standing. Accept no substitutes.
> 
> DAWs don't really like when OS scheduler shuffles threads from performance to efficient cores, this is where you get CPU spikes and dropouts, when you wouldn't get them if all cores simply performed the same, at the same fixed clock. It also messes with the old adage of "if you need to load more things in your project, raise the buffer size to make CPU breathe some", because this automatically means that processing would eventually be shuffled from P to E cores and you actually get _worse_ performance at higher buffer sizes as a consequence (IIRC this is also a problem on M1 Macs). So what you do then is you need to limit your DAW process to only run on P cores, and E cores are then just snoozing doing nothing. Big whoop. Not interested in that crap.


I’ve wondered about this too and had a thread about it on the reaper forum, but I have yet to see an actual instance that points to it being a problem with ADL (not sure about Apple Arm). Would be nice to see some tests on this specifically.


----------



## ibanez1 (Sep 13, 2022)

thevisi0nary said:


> I’ve wondered about this too and had a thread about it on the reaper forum, but I have yet to see an actual instance that points to it being a problem with ADL (not sure about Apple Arm). Would be nice to see some tests on this specifically.


I hope there is eventually a larger suite of benchmarks for these types of concerns. Since Alderlake's release, i've seen a lot of generalizing about hybrid == compromised system on all kinds of different workloads. Most of it centers around comparing the small cores to the design point of phones and small form laptops / tablets where the use case is purely for battery life and idle processing. These cores have a lot more compute than that.


----------



## rgames (Sep 13, 2022)

thevisi0nary said:


> I’ve wondered about this too and had a thread about it on the reaper forum, but I have yet to see an actual instance that points to it being a problem with ADL (not sure about Apple Arm). Would be nice to see some tests on this specifically.


I’ve been testing a new laptop with a 12950HX processor (8+8) and the real-time performance is horrible out of the box. Orchestral tutti sections that ran on my 8850 laptop (6C/12T) will not run at all on the 12950. That’s at 20 ms latency with onboard audio.

The CPU usage is vastly lower, of course, but the stutters and crackles make it unusable. I’m still debugging but man, it looks really bad so far.

I’ll post some measurements in another thread when I run out of ideas.


----------



## thevisi0nary (Sep 14, 2022)

ibanez1 said:


> I hope there is eventually a larger suite of benchmarks for these types of concerns. Since Alderlake's release, i've seen a lot of generalizing about hybrid == compromised system on all kinds of different workloads. Most of it centers around comparing the small cores to the design point of phones and small form laptops / tablets where the use case is purely for battery life and idle processing. These cores have a lot more compute than that.



Yeah provided the thread director does it’s job properly I’m not sure the E-cores are a detriment. It’s set up to load a single thread on all P-cores, then start utilizing E-cores before utilizing hyper threading on the P-cores. 

If your workload is at the point of using more than a single thread on all P-cores, sending them to E-cores isn’t costing you performance vs splitting work on a P-core since the E-cores are more than half as powerful. What I’m unsure about is how the thread director handles bouncing threads between the two and when it decides to do so.

Regardless it would be most useful to see an actual test.


----------



## thevisi0nary (Sep 14, 2022)

rgames said:


> I’ve been testing a new laptop with a 12950HX processor (8+8) and the real-time performance is horrible out of the box. Orchestral tutti sections that ran on my 8850 laptop (6C/12T) will not run at all on the 12950. That’s at 20 ms latency with onboard audio.
> 
> The CPU usage is vastly lower, of course, but the stutters and crackles make it unusable. I’m still debugging but man, it looks really bad so far.
> 
> I’ll post some measurements in another thread when I run out of ideas.


Not the best comparison since laptops are a closed product, two laptops with the same cpu can perform totally differently.

For what it’s worth I have a 12700k and haven’t had any problems in this regard, but that’s anecdotal and I have yet to try pushing it to its limit.


----------



## rgames (Sep 14, 2022)

thevisi0nary said:


> Not the best comparison since laptops are a closed product, two laptops with the same cpu can perform totally differently.
> 
> For what it’s worth I have a 12700k and haven’t had any problems in this regard, but that’s anecdotal and I have yet to try pushing it to its limit.


Yeah agree two laptops with same processor can produce very different results. My hope is it's a driver problem.

Many years ago I had an HP laptop that had major real-time issues when booted from the then-new NVMe drive but ran fine when running from a SATA SSD. It took several months but HP eventually came out with a BIOS fix that got it working from the NVMe drive. Hopefully it's something like that, and hopefully it gets fixed faster than it took HP to fix that problem.


----------



## ZeroZero (Sep 14, 2022)

rgames said:


> I’ve been testing a new laptop with a 12950HX processor (8+8) and the real-time performance is horrible out of the box. Orchestral tutti sections that ran on my 8850 laptop (6C/12T) will not run at all on the 12950. That’s at 20 ms latency with onboard audio.
> 
> The CPU usage is vastly lower, of course, but the stutters and crackles make it unusable. I’m still debugging but man, it looks really bad so far.
> 
> I’ll post some measurements in another thread when I run out of ideas.


I had thisexperience some years ago with a core i7, the laptop performance was way behind PC performance for the time. I gavev up on laptops tehn. Battery life was terrible too


----------



## rgames (Sep 14, 2022)

rgames said:


> Yeah agree two laptops with same processor can produce very different results. My hope is it's a driver problem.
> 
> Many years ago I had an HP laptop that had major real-time issues when booted from the then-new NVMe drive but ran fine when running from a SATA SSD. It took several months but HP eventually came out with a BIOS fix that got it working from the NVMe drive. Hopefully it's something like that, and hopefully it gets fixed faster than it took HP to fix that problem.


Update - turns out VEPro had turned on the "Stretch" function for every artic of every instrument in my template. I guess it did that as part of the new install? It's not turned on anywhere in my desktop or other laptop where I used the template previously. So that's a mystery to me.

But after spending 20 min turning them all off (need a global disable, VSL...) the performance improved dramatically. Audio performance is now basically equivalent to the 6C/12T 8850 but it plays back video much better.


----------



## Dracarys (Sep 14, 2022)

Does it matter that the 13900k base clock is only 3ghz versus 4.5ghz on the 7850? Is it work waiting until next year for AMD's 3d cache versions?

I was really considering AMD but there's going to be a lack of motherboards until next or the following year compared to Intel (especially for Micro ATX builds). I like this idea of being able to use z590 motherboards still. Also, I don't see a real advantage in being forced to use DDR5, and I've ready there's issues when only having 4dimm slots 32gb x 4. That would be insanely expensive with DDR5.


----------



## Pictus (Sep 14, 2022)

Dracarys said:


> Does it matter that the 13900k base clock is only 3ghz versus 4.5ghz on the 7850? Is it work waiting until next year for AMD's 3d cache versions?


No.


Dracarys said:


> I was really considering AMD but there's going to be a lack of motherboards until next or the following year compared to Intel (especially for Micro ATX builds). I like this idea of being able to use z590 motherboards still. Also, I don't see a real advantage in being forced to use DDR5, and I've ready there's issues when only having 4dimm slots 32gb x 4. That would be insanely expensive with DDR5.


Well, we do not know how stable the new AMD are, any bugs with the new DDR5 memory controller?
But you can not use Z590 with Intel 12/13 generation, right now it is Z690 and the next will be Z790.








Intel's Raptor Lake Reportedly Has 350W Turbo Mode, But Only on New Motherboards


When Raptor becomes Velociraptor.




www.tomshardware.com


----------



## Dracarys (Sep 15, 2022)

Pictus said:


> No.
> 
> Well, we do not know how stable the new AMD are, any bugs with the new DDR5 memory controller?
> But you can not use Z590 with Intel 12/13 generation, right now it is Z690 and the next will be Z790.
> ...


3d cache really not worth the wait?

Yes Z690 is what I was referring to. Thanks!


----------



## Pictus (Sep 16, 2022)

Dracarys said:


> 3d cache really not worth the wait?
> 
> Yes Z690 is what I was referring to. Thanks!


You are welcome, I do not know.
For the 5800X3D the DawBench the result was "meh", but DawBench is not perfect.








DAWBench DSP / VI Universal - Cross Platform DAW Benchmarks : - Page 30 - Gearspace.com


Hey All, Quick heads up for the latest DAWbench Radio Show Episode. Music Tech Pioneers III : Sequential Circuits : Rise, Fall, Return ! 'UMII , You Me ' Uploaded Now across all of the major pod casting platforms. A few links below , but easily found on most others with a search. Podcast Home...



gearspace.com




Maybe for the new 7000 CPUs with better architecture it will have more impact.


----------



## xepocal (Sep 16, 2022)

According to German c't Magazine, 3D cache is great for DAW workloads.






Max tracks without audio dropouts.
Crazy gains from the regular 5800X.


----------



## Pictus (Sep 16, 2022)

xepocal said:


> According to German c't Magazine, 3D cache is great for DAW workloads.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Yes, but the results they presents are very strange like the 12700 beating the 12900K.
I trust more the DawBench.


----------



## blaggins (Sep 16, 2022)

Pictus said:


> Yes, but the results they presents are very strange like the 12700 beating the 12900K.
> I trust more the DawBench.


Hwat... does an M1 Ultra really beat out a Threadripper to this degree??


----------



## mscp (Sep 16, 2022)

SupremeFist said:


> Isn't that just about RAM rather than raw CPU cycles? (Honest question.) And are you using a non-Logic DAW? (Ditto.)


No. Having instances ON require CPU processing.
I use Nuendo.


----------



## xepocal (Sep 16, 2022)

I'm just guessing, but maybe the reason they're getting such a massive performance uplift from 3D cache in their benchmarks is the same reason going from DDR4 to DDR5 improves DAWBench polyphony scores by >50% and the Apple M1 scaling almost linearly between its different versions? Being able to move data much more quickly, rather than having faster cores? The M1 takes the cake, doubling bandwidth with every version.


----------



## Pictus (Sep 16, 2022)

blaggins said:


> Hwat... does an M1 Ultra really beat out a Threadripper to this degree??


I have no idea.


----------



## MarcusD (Sep 26, 2022)

Benchmarks are in! Just need scan pro audio to do one..


----------



## zigzag (Sep 26, 2022)

I didn't know Ryzen had optional ECO modes. It seems interesting for lowering noise from fans. 

Restricting the power on the Ryzen 9 7950X by around 61% (170 to 65 W) loses around 18-19% in CineBench R23's multi-threaded performance and only around 0.3% in the single-threaded test.







But what's up with this 30 sec boot time issue?! It seems it's best to wait a bit, if you don't want to be a beta tester. 

Overall, performance uplift (excluding gaming) is quite impressive.


----------



## Pier (Sep 26, 2022)

zigzag said:


> But what's up with this 30 sec boot time issue?! It seems it's best to wait a bit, if you don't want to be a beta tester.


I have this on my B450 motherboard too 😂

It only happens when booting after a power loss, not on a normal reboot.

Honestly, it's not a big deal. I only reboot when the power goes off or I want to apply a Windows update. Maybe once or twice every month.


----------



## MarcusD (Sep 26, 2022)

Haven’t checked the article yet. But the slow boot time is probably due to the bios been an early build. It should get better over time with bios updates.


----------



## Technostica (Sep 26, 2022)

This is interesting as it shows how high the power consumption is for sustained loads and also for bursty loads like games and other apps.








AMD Ryzen 9 7950X Review - Impressive 16-core Powerhouse


The Ryzen 9 7950X is a monster CPU. When paired with the right workload it will eat even the 12900K for breakfast. As our review shows, the performance uplifts can be massive: +30-50% gen-over-gen is totally possible. What makes things complicated though, is that keeping the beast cool is almost...




www.techpowerup.com


----------



## zigzag (Sep 26, 2022)

Pier said:


> I have this on my B450 motherboard too 😂
> 
> It only happens when booting after a power loss, not on a normal reboot.
> 
> Honestly, it's not a big deal. I only reboot when the power goes off or I want to apply a Windows update. Maybe once or twice every month.


That's a long time to be a beta tester 🤣

For AM5 it seems to be some sort of bug, that is supposed to be fixed with a BIOS update. 

For long boot times after a power loss there's usually a setting in BIOS that fixes that. Called "Fast boot after AC power loss" or something similar. 

I know as I put my workstation into hibernation almost every night, and switch off power on the power strip 😄 ... so that it doesn't wake up by itself in the middle of the night (something Windows likes to do). Long boot times after a "power loss" can be quite annoying. I don't know why fast boot isn't the default setting.


----------



## Pier (Sep 26, 2022)

zigzag said:


> Called "Fast boot after AC power loss" or something similar.


Thanks I'll check that!


----------



## CSS_SCC (Sep 26, 2022)

zigzag said:


> I didn't know Ryzen had optional ECO modes. It seems interesting for lowering noise from fans.
> 
> Restricting the power on the Ryzen 9 7950X by around 61% (170 to 65 W) loses around 18-19% in CineBench R23's multi-threaded performance and only around 0.3% in the single-threaded test.
> 
> ...


It looks like it's related to optimizing the memory performance profile. See here:


----------



## MarcusD (Sep 26, 2022)

Interesting, so the boot loop is adjusting RAM timings until optimal setting are found. Pretty cool. Shame it’s such a butt clenching experience 🤣


----------



## Technostica (Sep 27, 2022)

zigzag said:


> I didn't know Ryzen had optional ECO modes. It seems interesting for lowering noise from fans.
> 
> Restricting the power on the Ryzen 9 7950X by around 61% (170 to 65 W) loses around 18-19% in CineBench R23's multi-threaded performance and only around 0.3% in the single-threaded test.


It's not restricting the power to 65W, but the TDP.

These are AMD's TDP profiles and the second figures are for package power tracking (PPT), which is the maximum that the chip will use:

170W = 230W 
105W = 142W
65 W = 88W

So the difference in maximum watts that can be used is actually greater than the difference in TDP; 142W v 105W.
AMD did state a few weeks ago that these chips are very efficient at 65W TDP
What they didn't make clear at the same time, is that they can be very underwhelming at maximum TDP in terms of efficiency.
Much closer to Intel at that level.


----------



## easyrider (Sep 27, 2022)

I’m super happy with my 5950x and windows 11 pc. Water cooled, silent and powerful. Using thunderbolt interface without issue and everything just works.

I’ll swap out the motherboard chip and ram when I feel the need to upgrade but I doubt it will be anytime soon. 

That’s the beauty of PC. Keep your system and windows install and just swap out the motherboard chip and ram and BOOM you’re current Gen in around 20 mins


----------



## MarcusD (Sep 27, 2022)

Products have launched on Scan!


----------



## Pictus (Sep 27, 2022)

zigzag said:


> *Restricting the power on the Ryzen 9 7950X by around 61% (170 to 65 W) loses around 18-19% in CineBench R23's multi-threaded performance and only around 0.3% in the single-threaded test.*


*This is the way! *


----------



## MarcusD (Sep 28, 2022)

Interesting watch, this legend de-lidded a 7900x and built a direct-to-die cooling solution, dropping the temps by 20 degrees. Interesting, it shows that if AMD changed the design (without backwards compatibility for cooling solutions in mind) the CPU could run much cooler.


----------



## Pictus (Sep 28, 2022)




----------



## MarcusD (Sep 28, 2022)

Pictus said:


>



Nice! 

Going to wait just a little longer for some more benchmarks (audio ones), then look at pricing up a 7900x or 7700x build.


----------



## CSS_SCC (Sep 28, 2022)

I have, as a curiosity, priced the equivalent of my current system, just updated to AM5: even with the price of NVMe SSDs and graphics cards coming down quite a lot, it will still cost me an extra £650-700. And from the reviews that I have seen, the 5950X that I currently use is extremely efficient by comparison and nearly silent (with the exception of very heavy rendering). So, at least until the next generation, of both CPUs and GPUs, I am staying on AM4.


----------



## MarcusD (Oct 10, 2022)

Interested to see benchmarks of the 13700k compared to the Zen 7900x. Anyone else waiting to upgrade?


----------



## zigzag (Oct 10, 2022)

MarcusD said:


> Interested to see benchmarks of the 13700k compared to the Zen 7900x. Anyone else waiting to upgrade?


I'm. But current motherboard prices are insane.


----------



## Pictus (Oct 10, 2022)

The AMD 7000 is doing very well in the Linux tests




__





AMD Ryzen 9 7900X / Ryzen 9 7950X Benchmarks Show Impressive Zen 4 Linux Performance Review - Phoronix







www.phoronix.com













b650 | Newegg.com


Search Newegg.com for b650. Get fast shipping and top-rated customer service.




www.newegg.com


----------



## easyrider (Oct 10, 2022)

zigzag said:


> I'm. But current motherboard prices are insane.


The should drop in price overtime…£550 for a motherboard is insane!


----------



## Nimrod7 (Oct 10, 2022)

MarcusD said:


> Interested to see benchmarks of the 13700k compared to the Zen 7900x. Anyone else waiting to upgrade?


I do, but I am waiting also the motherboards to get released.

I am looking forward for the ASUS ProArt Z790 (and whatever equivalent is to the AMDs) to get released and have some reviews before upgrading.

Highly likely to aim for February since both platforms will be out, and most of the reviews will be circulated by then.

Apart from prices getting more reasonable (hopefully, you never know) It will give some time also to the manufacturers to adjust for changes such as cooling mounts for the new processors, or accommodate for the weirdness with the size and weight of the RTX4xxx.


----------



## MarcusD (Oct 10, 2022)

Nimrod7 said:


> I do, but I am waiting also the motherboards to get released.
> 
> I am looking forward for the ASUS ProArt Z790 (and whatever equivalent is to the AMDs) to get released and have some reviews before upgrading.
> 
> ...


ASUS ProArt motherboards check all the boxes! Was looking at one for a 5950x build, but they're so expensive + the new stuffs here. Seeing as I'm still using a 1800x (Shocking right?) would make sense upgrading to AM5 - that is, if intel doesn't sway me.

In any case, just need a CPU, DDR5 RAM and a new case. Will recycle the PSU, GPU, Storage, NVME etc... I have a suspicion the 13700K might be better bang for buck. 2 more Cores than the 7900x, for less money. Although the Cache is double on the 7900x. How performance translates, no idea until the benchmarks are in. Just have to wait and see I guess!


---* UPGRADE* ---

Raptor Lake 13700k
ASUS ROG STRIX Z790-F Gaming WIFI (rather have a none WIFI / RGB version)
128GB Corsair DDR5 Vengeance Black (5600)
Fractal Define 7 Black Case

Upgrade Total = £1859

AMD 7900x
ASUS TUF Gaming X670E-PLUS
128GB Corsair DDR5 Vengeance (5600) AMD optimized
Fractal Define 7 Black Case

Upgrade Total = £1874


----------



## Pictus (Oct 10, 2022)

If you go for Intel at some point in time the socket will bent the CPU, better get this


----------



## zigzag (Oct 10, 2022)

MarcusD said:


> Raptor Lake 13700k
> ASUS ROG STRIX Z790-F Gaming WIFI (rather have a none WIFI / RGB version)
> 128GB Corsair DDR5 Vengeance Black (5600)
> Fractal Define 7 Black Case
> ...


Are you sure you can run 4 sticks of DDR5 memory at 5600 MHz?


----------



## Technostica (Oct 10, 2022)

The board reviewed here allows you to use four PCIe 5.0 m.2 drives whilst limiting the graphics card slot to PCIe 5.0 x8.









Gigabyte B650E AORUS Master Review


Gigabyte readies the budget-friendly AORUS Master built upon the B650E chipset. Offering a robust 16+2+2 VRM configuration, DDR5 support, PCIe Gen5 and four M.2 Gen5 sockets, Gigabyte is setting the playing field for things to come. Does the B650E AORUS Master have what it takes to win over the...




www.techpowerup.com


----------



## CSS_SCC (Oct 10, 2022)

MarcusD said:


> ASUS ProArt motherboards check all the boxes! Was looking at one for a 5950x build, but they're so expensive + the new stuffs here. Seeing as I'm still using a 1800x (Shocking right?) would make sense upgrading to AM5 - that is, if intel doesn't sway me.
> 
> In any case, just need a CPU, DDR5 RAM and a new case. Will recycle the PSU, GPU, Storage, NVME etc... I have a suspicion the 13700K might be better bang for buck. 2 more Cores than the 7900x, for less money. Although the Cache is double on the 7900x. How performance translates, no idea until the benchmarks are in. Just have to wait and see I guess!
> 
> ...


Bouth of them would be very nice as a configuration for other people, but the limitations of both motherboards make them a no-go for me as I need at least three PCIe full-size slots available: GPU, RedNed PCIeR, 10GB network card and Thunderbolt/USB 4 - at least one port.


----------



## MarcusD (Oct 10, 2022)

zigzag said:


> Are you sure you can run 4 sticks of DDR5 memory at 5600 MHz?


Ooh, good point. I’ve not checked that! Are they getting down clocked? it a Bios thing?


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## Semarus (Oct 10, 2022)

MarcusD said:


> Ooh, good point. I’ve not checked that! Are they getting down clocked? it a Bios thing?


Watched several reviews pre and post launch, and it seems if you want the higher capacity dimms, at the higher speeds, you want to stick to two dimms, not four. That said, there aren't any kits maxing out RAM capacity at the preferred speeds just yet, so I'm thinking it's best to wait a bit for better kit compatibility.


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## Nimrod7 (Oct 10, 2022)

CSS_SCC said:


> Bouth of them would be very nice as a configuration for other people, but the limitations of both motherboards make them a no-go for me as I need at least three PCIe full-size slots available: GPU, RedNed PCIeR, 10GB network card and Thunderbolt/USB 4 - at least one port.


The ProArt Creator (at least the Intel version) has 10Gb Ethernet & 40 Thunderbolt 4 onboard. You don’t need a PCI.
For the same reasons I am also going to get this board.


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## CSS_SCC (Oct 10, 2022)

As always, the devil is in the details (from the manual):
ProArt Z690-CREATOR WIFI: M.2_4 slot shares bandwidth with SATA6G_5~8. SATA6G_5~8 will be suspended once either a SATA or NVMe device is detected at M.2_4 (basically you are losing 4 SATA ports)

And on AMD side:
ProArt X670E-CREATOR WIFI: M.2_3 slot shares bandwidth with PCIEX16_3. When PCIEX16_3 is in operation after adjusting in BIOS settings, M.2_3 slot will only run at PCIe x2 mode. (And it only has 4 SATA ports in total anyway - all my samples are on 4 SATA SSDs plus two SATA HDDs for general storage.)


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## zigzag (Oct 10, 2022)

MarcusD said:


> Ooh, good point. I’ve not checked that! Are they getting down clocked? it a Bios thing?


Yes. It's memory controller thing, which is located in the CPU (it used to be in the northbridge). (I'm not sure, if motherboard also influences memory speed.)

Here are the specs for Ryzen 7950X.


> Max Memory Speed
> 1x1R 5200 MT/s
> 1x2R 5200 MT/s
> 2x1R 3600 MT/s
> 2x2R 3600 MT/s


1x1R means 1 DIMM per channel of single rank memory. 1 DIMM per channel translates to two sticks as DDR is dual channel memory.

But to complicate things, these are JEDEC standard speeds. XMP/EXPO are OC profiles that allow faster memory speeds than in JEDEC standard. AMD has stated that 6000 MHz is optimal for the 7000 series (so higher than 1x1R 5200 MHz JEDEC), but this is for 2 sticks of single rank memory (1x1R).

Since most of (all?) 32 GB DDR5 sticks are still dual rank, that means you need 4 sticks of dual rank memory (2x2R) to reach 128 GB. Unfortunately, I haven't seen anywhere what's the maximum supported speed when using 4 sticks of dual rank memory and XMP/EXPO.


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## SimonCharlesHanna (Oct 10, 2022)

So this thread reminded me I need to upgrade my PC - can I get some opinions on this Ryzen 9 build?


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## MarcusD (Oct 10, 2022)

zigzag said:


> Yes. It's memory controller thing, which is located in the CPU (it used to be in the northbridge). (I'm not sure, if motherboard also influences memory speed.)
> 
> Here are the specs for Ryzen 7950X.
> 
> ...


So it’s reasonable to say getting 4 x 32GB at 5600Mhz is pointless. They’ll only be down-clocked.

There’s no 64GB sticks out ATM either 🙁 I guess 3600MHz would have to be the cut off for 128GB, currently.

Unless I go for 64GB, but I really want the 128GB. Oh boy. Is there any news for 64GB sticks coming for DDR5? I’ve not looked.

Edit: thinking about it, might be another reason to go for the Intel. I’m sure I read somewhere the Raptor Lake CPU’s also supported DDR4.

Would need a motherboard that supported DDR4 and 5.
Then use DDR4 to get the 128GB speeds, but also have the comfort in knowing upgrading to DDR5, later, is possible.


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## zigzag (Oct 10, 2022)

MarcusD said:


> So it’s reasonable to say getting 4 x 32GB at 5600Mhz is pointless. They’ll only be down-clocked.
> 
> There’s no 64GB sticks out ATM either 🙁 I guess 3600MHz would have to be the cut off for 128GB, currently.
> 
> ...


Unfortunately yes. Instead of 5600Mhz, you can probably save money and buy 4 x 32GB 4800MHz DDR5 (which is the slowest DDR5). I don't know, if it'll run any higher than 3600MHz though. 

Or 2 x 32GB of higher clocked DDR5. 64GB modules will probably come out at some point in the future, but I haven't heard any news of when it'll come out.

Intel's Raptor Lake does support both DDR4 & DDR5, but a motherboard is either DDR4 or DDR5, not both. So, upgrading from DDR4 to DDR5 is not possible, unless you replace the motherboard. Advantage of DDR4 is lower price and better latency at lower clocks.


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## MarcusD (Oct 10, 2022)

zigzag said:


> Intel's Raptor Lake does support both DDR4 & DDR5, but a motherboard is either DDR4 or DDR5, not both. So, upgrading from DDR4 to DDR5 is not possible, unless you replace the motherboard. Advantage of DDR4 is lower price and better latency at lower clocks.


Suspected that would be the case. Shame no MOBO can do both. Could be DDR4 for me then, the alternative is to get 64GB then wait for the sticks to do 128GB and sell off the old ones. Could use the extra to go for the better CPU too, hmmm decisions.


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## Pictus (Oct 11, 2022)

zigzag said:


> Yes. It's memory controller thing, which is located in the CPU (it used to be in the northbridge). (I'm not sure, if motherboard also influences memory speed.)


It does influence, how the copper wiring is made will have more or less interference.
The better AM5 motherboards have 8 PCB layers, more layers = better copper wiring pathways.
For AM5 make sure to buy DDR5 that is EXPO.








AMD Zen 4 Ryzen 9 7950X and Ryzen 5 7600X Review: Retaking The High-End







www.anandtech.com




It gives better tweaking and *compatibility*.


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## Pictus (Oct 11, 2022)

SimonCharlesHanna said:


> So this thread reminded me I need to upgrade my PC - can I get some opinions on this Ryzen 9 build?


It is too early to know if this motherboard(the BIOS) is good or not.
IF it is for audio and not gaming/video editing there is no need for a GPU card.
Make sure the RAM is EXPO
For PSU I like the Corsair RMX series.

Some tweaks for NVIDIA/AMD/Intel you may like





Nvidia Driver, no latency anymore?


Hi all! We all know that AMD drivers have from far, less latency than Nvidia drivers, and for that reason we all recommand an AMD graphic card for audio working. But recently i have dealt with a new install on a PC with an Nvidia graphic card. And when i updated to the latest driver i saw an...




vi-control.net


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## Pictus (Oct 12, 2022)

https://gearspace.com/board/music-computers/1389499-ryzen-7000-series-4.html#post16207320


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## John Longley (Oct 12, 2022)

Pictus said:


> https://gearspace.com/board/music-computers/1389499-ryzen-7000-series-4.html#post16207320


Sequoia runs horribly under load, so that’s a pretty good indication the chip has power lol


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## CSS_SCC (Oct 20, 2022)

Interesting update about performance per Watt (includes the new Intel CPUs):


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## zigzag (Oct 30, 2022)

MarcusD said:


> So it’s reasonable to say getting 4 x 32GB at 5600Mhz is pointless.


I found some more info regrading 4 sticks of DDR5 with Ryzen 7000 CPUs:



> Without any adjustments to the voltage and memory settings, DDR5-3600 CL30 is what you’ll find on the memory settings after the system boots up. We didn’t manage to get the system to run at DDR5-6000 using four sticks but DDR5-5600 is still possible and it only requires minimal adjustments on the memory-related voltages like the VDD, VDDP, and a bit on the VSoc.











Gigabyte X670E AORUS MASTER Hands-On and Overview


Looks like Gigabyte is paying a lot of attention to details this time when designing the X670E AORUS Master and it's definitely worth the praise.




www.tech-critter.com





With some tweaking it seems it's possible to overclock 4 sticks of DDR5 to higher frequencies.

On Reddit people are reporting various highest clocks they manage to achieve with four sticks, but probably not all of them do exhaustive stability tests.


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## MarcusD (Oct 30, 2022)

zigzag said:


> I found some more info regrading 4 sticks of DDR5 with Ryzen 7000 CPUs:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Thanks for this. I guess it’ll be more apparent over another month as people do more testing. Interesting none the less.

Little undecided over the 7900x still. Actually considering the Intel 13700K. Either way both are good, Intel build would be slightly cheaper though.


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## zigzag (Oct 30, 2022)

MarcusD said:


> Little undecided over the 7900x still. Actually considering the Intel 13700K. Either way both are good, Intel build would be slightly cheaper though.


Not only cheaper, Intel 13700K has slight performance advantage over 7900x. Additionally, Intel MBs are also cheaper than AM5. So, price-performance 13700K is a clear winner. 

The main reason I'm considering AMD at the moment is platform longevity. AMD stated that it would support the AM5 socket until _at least_ 2025 and I'm counting to upgrade, just before AM6 is released, by replacing only the CPU. Although, 2025 is only 3 years away, so there is possibility that performance difference won't be big enough to warrant the upgrade. I'm kind of hoping AM5 socket support will be extended even a bit beyond 2025. 

Also, advantage of 13900K over 7950x isn't as clear as with 13700K vs 7900x.


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## MarcusD (Oct 30, 2022)

zigzag said:


> Not only cheaper, Intel 13700K has slight performance advantage over 7900x. Additionally, Intel MBs are also cheaper than AM5. So, price-performance 13700K is a clear winner.
> 
> The main reason I'm considering AMD at the moment is platform longevity. AMD stated that it would support the AM5 socket until _at least_ 2025 and I'm counting to upgrade, just before AM6 is released, by replacing only the CPU. Although, 2025 is only 3 years away, so there is possibility that performance difference won't be big enough to warrant the upgrade. I'm kind of hoping AM5 socket support will be extended even a bit beyond 2025.
> 
> Also, advantage of 13900K over 7950x isn't as clear as with 13700K vs 7900x.


Something along these lines is what I'm thinking. Need to read up more on the MOBO, but at a glance it looks OK. Don't need the WIFI or RGB stuff, but this one has enough IO, SATA and NVME slots for my liking and is not too pricey. If I can get 5 - 7 years out of it (with extra RAM added later) I'll be happy.


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## Pictus (Oct 30, 2022)

zigzag said:


> Not only cheaper, Intel 13700K has slight performance advantage over 7900x. Additionally, Intel MBs are also cheaper than AM5. So, price-performance 13700K is a clear winner.


The 13700K is a winner, but not in AVX-512.


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## muziksculp (Oct 30, 2022)

Hi,

About the *Intel® Core™ i9-13900K Processor. *I'm planning of have two custom PCs built for me using this processor. 

Any tests done using it for DAW/Audio applications ? 

Thanks,
Muziksculp 
​​


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## Pictus (Oct 30, 2022)

muziksculp said:


> Hi,
> Any tests done using it for DAW/Audio applications ?


Hi, check





DAWbench 2021 Suite - Intel 12th Gen Results.


DAWbench Suite - AMD 7000 and 13th Gen Intel results https://gearspace.com/board/showpost.php?p=16229111&postcount=934 The new CPUs are factory overclocked, by tweaking we can reduce the max wattage and use air cooler. Intel Core i9-13900K vs. AMD Ryzen 9 7950X at 125W and 65W...




vi-control.net


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## xepocal (Oct 30, 2022)

Pictus said:


> The 13700K is a winner, but not in AVX-512.


IIRC Intel decided to gut AVX-512 from their consumer CPUs.

Shame really. Processing audio samples is often ideal for SIMD. For the (few) well-coded plugins out there, halving the SIMD width by upgrading to a newer Intel platform means potentially halving the performance.


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## zigzag (Oct 31, 2022)

xepocal said:


> IIRC Intel decided to gut AVX-512 from their consumer CPUs.
> 
> Shame really. Processing audio samples is often ideal for SIMD. For the (few) well-coded plugins out there, halving the SIMD width by upgrading to a newer Intel platform means potentially halving the performance.


AVX-512 instructions in Zen 4 are mostly double pumped 256 bit, not native 512 bit. But even though there isn't 2x performance uplift for all instructions, there are still some performance gains compared to AVX2:
- new instructions in AVX-512 enable to vectorize things that weren't possible with AVX2
- it has a bit less overhead as it needs less instructions to saturate the vector units
- no additional thermal issues (no CPU throttling when AVX-512 is used)






Zen4's AVX512 Teardown - mersenneforum.org
 

Zen4's AVX512 Teardown Hardware



www.mersenneforum.org


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