# Any reason to ever get a Xeon?



## Gerhard Westphalen (Nov 14, 2017)

From what I've read on here it seems that i7's are better for realtime performance. It seemed like the only time you'd want a Xeon is for a slave where you need a tonne of cores (and speed isn't so important). 

With the new i9's you can get 18 cores so it seems like that would outperform pretty much any Xeon system. Is there anything that such an i9 couldn't handle? Would a single one of these slaves be able to handle the absolute max that any composer would throw at it? Say, massive orchestra action cue with 4 mic positions loaded on everything and low preload buffer settings? 

The only reason I can see to get a Xeon is to get more than 128GB. If you only need 128GB, would it ever make sense to get a Xeon system?


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## thereus (Nov 14, 2017)

You can do 128GB with an i7 or an i9.


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## chimuelo (Nov 14, 2017)

I use an i7 5775C which was a Xeon but rebranded to make room since Intel was dumping chips at a fast rate for a while now.
This chip is now called v6, and has different cache.
But the only real difference is being a higher binned Chip, best on the wafer.

Chipsets for Xeons allow more features and are higher quality.
The 5775C has a 128MB L4 Cache meant for iGPU.
But disabling the iGPU allows the audio apps to use it.

It’s a low TDP 3.3GHz that gets as much work as my i7 4790k CPUs that are running at a faster clock.

I’ve been using Server Boards for a while now with the lower featured chipsets.
Mostly H97.

Found my sweet spot.

Xeons with C236 chipsets are pretty nice if you want more RAM than the consumer boards offer.


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Nov 14, 2017)

chimuelo said:


> I use an i7 5775C which was a Xeon but rebranded to make room since Intel was dumping chips at a fast rate for a while now.
> This chip is now called v6, and has different cache.
> But the only real difference is being a higher binned Chip, best on the wafer.
> 
> ...



I'm looking into building a monster slave to end all slaves for someone so I'm looking into if an i9 will give the necessary performance. It seems like other Hollywood composers using a single slave have something like a dual 14 core Xeon E5-2680 v4. I'm not sure if all of the performance power is necessary (or even usable) and if an i9 will be enough.

My 6 core i7 has been enough for me to create dense mockups using 3 mic positions but I was using high buffer. This computer will need to work at a lower buffer. I'm thinking 10 cores at ~4GHz should be enough.


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## chimuelo (Nov 14, 2017)

Sounds big and bad already.
Still going to basically be i7 7000 Series Cores.
The new chipsets are always going to help out with addressing additional Cores though.
Now if we could get software developers to break down and write fresh code.
I’m excited my Hardware DSP Developer is releasing new drivers.
It’s been 9 years, and I’m excited as in a few years I can select mature products that keep rolling out every few months.

Intel just discontinued i7 6000 chips.
Hell they are only a couple years old.
No time to see Server Boards or more H series variants....

You’ll be happy with a huge fast Slave.


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