# Question about multicores



## Macrawn (Sep 24, 2020)

I'm going to upgrade my pc this year. 

Don't know if I'll go intel or amd. 

Anyway let's say I get a 32 core threadripper. If I have say 64 tracks that is 2 tracks per core. Seems like I could run any insert imaginable, like reverb on every insert if I wanted with that kind of system and not even worry about cpu intensive processing plugins. 

Am I thinking about cores wrong? How much processing can a single core do independently?


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## d.healey (Sep 24, 2020)

Which DAW?


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## Macrawn (Sep 25, 2020)

I have Cubase and Studio One. 
Maybe just assume for a moment that the daw can handle diverting jobs to cores efficiently. At any rate all of the daws will make strides in the next year regardless given that 20+ cores will be a standard soon. 

I'm just curious as to the advantages of say 32 cores over say 8 when I have a lot of individual tracks with cpu intensive processes on them.


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## Alex Sopala (Sep 25, 2020)

Assuming an optimized program and a CPU that isn't too bad on latency (and any other latency issues dealt with), you can throw more stuff at it without it choking.

Worth mentioning that AMD is in the process of releasing new stuff in the near future, so if you can wait until then to see if the latency reviews are good, I'd do that. As of right now, 32 cores from AMD (3970x) is $2k, while the 28 core Xeon Platinum 8180 from Intel is more like $9.5k. The issue as it stands right now is that Threadripper's current design introduces latency due to the chiplets, which I'm hoping is improved upon with the Zen 3 design.

With DAW stuff, I've heard around here that clock speed is king generally speaking, but even then it's not a black-and-white thing. Scanproaudio has some DAWbench benchmarks to look at that can give you a general idea of what each CPU can pull off.


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