# New PC - CPU Question



## Peter Walker (Jan 7, 2022)

Hi all, I'm in the market for a new PC as my current one is creaking along with my new hobby of writing music (it's also starting to struggle a bit with Photoshop for my photography). I'm fairly comfortable with most other aspects of a PC apart from the CPU...not sure why, but can't get my head around how they compare! Anyway, I don't have a huge budget (maybe up to £1500) and have seen two PC options that are very similar except CPU:

Option 1 - Intel® Core™ i7-11700, 2.5 GHz / 4.9 GHz
Option 2 - AMD Ryzen™ 7 5800, 3.40 GHz, up to 4.60 GHz with Max Boost

Would one of these be better for music production? I had read that single core performance is more important than how many cores you have (although I think these both have 8 anyway). My current PC has an i5-8400 CPU @ 2.80GHz which seems faster than the base i7 although I assume that's not the case?

I use FL Studio and would like to be able to easily run a few instance of Kontakt alongside BBCSO Core.

Any guidance would be much appreciated!
Peter


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## mohsohsenshi (Jan 7, 2022)

Hi, Peter





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





According to a DAW Bench test, option 2 AMD 5800 is the better choice for music production.

But your current 8400 is good enough for a BBC core template within 50 instances, any cpu equal to 8th gen core/zen 2 or later is no longer a bottle neck for Vi.


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## easyrider (Jan 7, 2022)

Peter Walker said:


> Hi all, I'm in the market for a new PC as my current one is creaking along with my new hobby of writing music (it's also starting to struggle a bit with Photoshop for my photography). I'm fairly comfortable with most other aspects of a PC apart from the CPU...not sure why, but can't get my head around how they compare! Anyway, I don't have a huge budget (maybe up to £1500) and have seen two PC options that are very similar except CPU:
> 
> Option 1 - Intel® Core™ i7-11700, 2.5 GHz / 4.9 GHz
> Option 2 - AMD Ryzen™ 7 5800, 3.40 GHz, up to 4.60 GHz with Max Boost
> ...


Hold tight…5800X3D is coming in spring









AMD CPUs in 2022: Zen 4 in Second Half, Ryzen 7 5800X3D with V-Cache by Spring







www.anandtech.com


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## Peter Walker (Jan 8, 2022)

Thank you both. I'll take a closer look at the AMD one


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## glyster (Jan 27, 2022)

A lot applications can take advantage of multicore now. So don’t let the old idea of single core performance influence you too much.


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## Peter Walker (Jan 28, 2022)

Ended up going for something different as I found one I liked on sale:

i7-12700K, 32GB DDR5, GeForce RTX 3070 8GB, 1TB SSD + 1TB HDD

No complaints so far...much quicker than my last PC, although still to properly put it through its paces


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## vitocorleone123 (Jan 29, 2022)

glyster said:


> A lot applications can take advantage of multicore now. So don’t let the old idea of single core performance influence you too much.


Eh. There's still a lot to it, unfortunately. This is because of the way DAWs tend to allocate/assign resources.


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## sostenuto (Jan 31, 2022)

Is ASUS ROG Strix Z690-F the ideal, current MB for the i7-12700K _ of Desktop Win11 Pro, Reaper DAW build ?
Also _ dedicated DAW (no gaming, etc. _ which graphics for twin 1920 x 1200 HP ZR2440 monitors ?


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## Pictus (Jan 31, 2022)

It is a good motherboard and you may try with the onboard GPU
as this motherboard has a DisplayPort and HDMI port.


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## sostenuto (Jan 31, 2022)

THX ! 
nVidia modules _ and waaay too much physical space, even in Server cases. Invades PCIe slots for other needs.


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## colony nofi (Jan 31, 2022)

glyster said:


> A lot applications can take advantage of multicore now. So don’t let the old idea of single core performance influence you too much.


Sorry - when talking about real-time audio, this is misleading.



vitocorleone123 said:


> Eh. There's still a lot to it, unfortunately. This is because of the way DAWs tend to allocate/assign resources.



Yes.

The nature of how a DAW works means that it is not inherently scalable across cores. Yes, there are many things that *can* be spread over cores, but since it is a real time system, a single core (first core) still takes on a role which means it cannot wait for the other cores / everything needs to happen in a timed system (thus the use of buffers and higher buffers = larger loads possible) etc.

For most folk using loads of sample libs, one will find that the efficiency and clock rate of your first core will determine much about the performance of a system. 

It is eye opening to go through various DAW bench results and paste them up against other more well known industry benchmark tools. DAWS do not scale across cores like many other benchmarks do for productivity apps. It is closer to some games, which also are limited by the first core performance at times)


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