# AMD 5950x or Intel 12 K? (Now that prices have dropped)



## Jrides (Apr 20, 2022)

Hi,

In other threads covering the subject, price and availability seem to play a major role in peoples suggestions.

Where I live the 5950X build with 64 GB DDR4 is $100 less than a 12900K with 64GB DDR5. it is $100 more than a 12700K with 64GB of DDR5. The price difference between the three is not a deal breaker. I am certain any of these solutions will work.

now that the price and availability where I am, has settled down a bit… Which is the smartest choice? Use will be Kontakt, Sample modeling, and some pretty CPU hungry mixing plugs (relatively speaking). 

take price and availability out of the equation… What do you think?


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## Jrides (Apr 24, 2022)

edit: going in a bit of a different direction.


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## Pictus (Apr 25, 2022)

AMD or Intel ?
The first law dictates, "the newest shine toy is always better". 
But I would take a look a this





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




The built-in GPU for the Intel is a bonus and make sure to check the RAM QVL compatible
list because they are VERY pick about RAM model.


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## Jrides (Apr 25, 2022)

Pictus said:


> AMD or Intel ?
> The first law dictates, "the newest shine toy is always better".
> But I would take a look a this
> 
> ...


Some good advice here. I will look into it. The thread you linked to, checked it out before I made this thread. It left me a bit more confused than when I started lol. Ultimately it devolved into some minutia that just didn’t benefit me. Hopefully someone smarter than me has read that thread and can give some perspective.


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## MartinH. (Apr 25, 2022)

Jrides said:


> Hi,
> 
> In other threads covering the subject, price and availability seem to play a major role in peoples suggestions.
> 
> ...


I'd take the one with lower power usage, that will save you money in the long run and helps a tiny bit with saving the planet too.


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## Loerpert (Apr 25, 2022)

It depends how well your DAW handles multithreading. I would pick AMD if you use something like VEP. Since the 5950X has twice as many performant cores. Remember that half of the intel cores are low power cores so they don't really add much in your case.


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## Jrides (Apr 25, 2022)

MartinH. said:


> I'd take the one with lower power usage, that will save you money in the long run and helps a tiny bit with saving the planet too.



yeah that’s a factor. It’s tricky though. Depending on where you get information Intel or AMD is better with power consumption. Apparently because of the efficiency course the Intel idols at like around 10w. So while the highs go really high the lows go really low. The real question is, what’s the average power consumption for audio work? I guess my track count probably won’t make it past 50. I’m guessing that won’t put the most strain on a modern system. So even thouh Intel draws a scary amount of power when pushed hard….. Not sure if I will ever see those numbers.


it would be nice to hear what Intel 12 K users are drawing power wise on average though.


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## Jrides (Apr 25, 2022)

Loerpert said:


> It depends how well your DAW handles multithreading. I would pick AMD if you use something like VEP. Since the 5950X has twice as many performant cores. Remember that half of the intel cores are low power cores so they don't really add much in your case.


I use reaper which has pretty good multithreading. Now that I think about it the CPU unfriendly plug-ins (other than physical modeling) that I was referring to won’t happen until the mixing stage. They won’t be run simultaneously in a live project. Good point about the CPU cores though. Something to think about for sure.


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## AceAudioHQ (Apr 25, 2022)

I've noticed in my personal use that the processor doesn't matter much, I use mainly Renoise (sometimes Reaper and Studio One), and I upgraded my i5-4670K processor from 2013 to a Ryzen 2600X and haven't really noticed any major difference, even though the new one gets about 14000 points in PassMark and the old one about 5500. I still have pretty much the same CPU usage and the projects that stuttered before, still stutter. I use very few samples, mostly sample libraries with midi, and I never bounce my tracks.


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## Jrides (Apr 26, 2022)

very interesting. However, I suspect the bottleneck for most people would be ram, not CPU. Which is why I am now leaning toward the AMD. Who knows if I will ever need more than 64 GB of RAM, but I wouldn’t want to be limited to that amount if it turns out not to be sufficient at some point.


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## Al Maurice (Apr 26, 2022)

I found that the major sticking point for me, was the latency of my PCs RAM and hard disc, replacing those with lower latency variants made a significant difference. So I agree these days CPU isn't really much of an issue as it once was.


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## Jdiggity1 (Apr 26, 2022)

Jrides said:


> very interesting. However, I suspect the bottleneck for most people would be ram, not CPU. Which is why I am now leaning toward the AMD. Who knows if I will ever need more than 64 GB of RAM, but I wouldn’t want to be limited to that amount if it turns out not to be sufficient at some point.


Why would the Intel option be limiting your RAM to 64GB?
DDR5 is expected to offer 128GB in a single stick eventually.


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## Tim_Wells (Apr 26, 2022)

Al Maurice said:


> I found that the major sticking point for me, was the latency of my PCs RAM and hard disc, replacing those with lower latency variants made a significant difference. So I agree these days CPU isn't really much of an issue as it once was.


Yep. That's why I went with the 5600X when I upgraded about a year ago. It uses less power and produces less heat. Not once have I maxed out the CPU.


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## AceAudioHQ (Apr 26, 2022)

It depends a bit on what kind of plugins you use if the CPU matters much, it seems that UVI workstation libraries load way faster with a faster CPU, probably because everything is inside one .ufs and it has to be unpacked when loading, also using something like u-he diva will make your CPU scream.

About ram, I never had any problems with 16gb, now I have 32 and haven’t noticed a big change, but I guess working with lots of wave files might require more, I always use just midi and only touch samples if I really have to.


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## Jrides (Apr 26, 2022)

Jdiggity1 said:


> Why would the Intel option be limiting your RAM to 64GB?
> DDR5 is expected to offer 128GB in a single stick eventually.


Right now you can’t use four sticks of DDR5 without issues. I have no idea if they will fix this with the current chipset. However… If they don’t, upgrading would require me to swap out motherboards. At most I would like to just be able to drop in extra RAM and be done for the next five years or so.


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## Jdiggity1 (Apr 26, 2022)

Jrides said:


> Right now you can’t use four sticks of DDR5 without issues. I have no idea if they will fix this with the current chipset. However… If they don’t, upgrading would require me to swap out motherboards. At most I would like to just be able to drop in extra RAM and be done for the next five years or so.


Fair enough.
Then I guess a DDR4 12k system is still an option?
I've been running a 12700k + 128gb DDR4 for a few months now. I'm done for the day, but tomorrow I'll see if I can get some power usage figures for you if you're still interested.
The 12700k doesn't get anywhere near as hot as the 12900k, from my understanding.


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## MartinH. (Apr 26, 2022)

AceAudioHQ said:


> I upgraded my i5-4670K processor from 2013 to a Ryzen 2600X and haven't really noticed any major difference, even though the new one gets about 14000 points in PassMark and the old one about 5500. I still have pretty much the same CPU usage and the projects that stuttered before, still stutter.


I don't know how passmark calculates its score but as far as I can tell from the following benchmark your new CPU is only single digit percentages faster on tasks that don't fully utilize all cores: 

https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i5-4670K-vs-AMD-Ryzen-5-2600X/1538vs3956
You might be able to gain more processing headroom by making changes to daw settings or project layout to ensure that the cpu load gets spread more evenly accross all available cores. I believe your stuttering projects are hitting the single core performance bottleneck because too many effects can't be calculated in parallel and have to run on the main thread. Try enabling anticipative fx in reaper if you haven't yet.


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## Jrides (Apr 26, 2022)

Jdiggity1 said:


> Fair enough.
> Then I guess a DDR4 12k system is still an option?
> I've been running a 12700k + 128gb DDR4 for a few months now. I'm done for the day, but tomorrow I'll see if I can get some power usage figures for you if you're still interested.
> The 12700k doesn't get anywhere near as hot as the 12900k, from my understanding.


Yeah. It’s an option. In fact your processor is the one I am thinking of getting in that lineup. Are you able to air cool the processor? If so, what type of CPU fan are you using? Which motherboard did you end up pairing with the chip?


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## AceAudioHQ (Apr 26, 2022)

MartinH. said:


> I don't know how passmark calculates its score but as far as I can tell from the following benchmark your new CPU is only single digit percentages faster on tasks that don't fully utilize all cores:


Yea I mean it is significantly faster in lots if stuff but I haven’t noticed much in daw use, I do have all 12 threads active in Renoise and I don’t think there are many other settings left to touch


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## Jrides (Apr 27, 2022)

Al Maurice said:


> I found that the major sticking point for me, was the latency of my PCs RAM and hard disc, replacing those with lower latency variants made a significant difference. So I agree these days CPU isn't really much of an issue as it once was.


Very interesting. What type of disc did you switch from? HDD to SSD? SSD to NVME? Something else?


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## Jdiggity1 (Apr 27, 2022)

Jrides said:


> Yeah. It’s an option. In fact your processor is the one I am thinking of getting in that lineup. Are you able to air cool the processor? If so, what type of CPU fan are you using? Which motherboard did you end up pairing with the chip?


Yeah I use a Noctua D15S. Nothing fancy, but a solid and reliable choice.
Idle temps around 30-32 degrees (Celsius), 40-50 under normal workloads, max temps about 68 degrees. Running at a core frequency of 4900MHz with the usual efficiency settings turned off, so it doesn't down-clock.
MoBo is a Gigabyte Z690 Aorus Pro ddr4.


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## Jrides (Apr 27, 2022)

Jdiggity1 said:


> Yeah I use a Noctua D15S. Nothing fancy, but a solid and reliable choice.
> Idle temps around 30-32 degrees (Celsius), 40-50 under normal workloads, max temps about 68 degrees. Running at a core frequency of 4900MHz with the usual efficiency settings turned off, so it doesn't down-clock.
> MoBo is a Gigabyte Z690 Aorus Pro ddr4.


OK. Thanks for this! I will take a look at the motherboard and do some research. I appreciate all the time everyone has taken to discuss this topic.


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