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Why NOT build a new DAW with AMD Ryzen 9 3950X processor?

Synetos

Departed Member
I have been back and forth on building a new machine and then tabled it because of this Corona Virus thing. This has given me more time to think about what I should build when the time is right.

My world is not so much needing ton of instruments playing concurrently, as much as I just like having them all loaded and ready to go. So I use VEP for that. Like many others, I tend to spend too much time fiddling with my computers, rather than making music...as I am right now as I write this.

But assuming I were going to build a new machine, why wouldn't I want this AMD rig?

Technical reasons for, or against, it in a DAW or VEP slave.
 
... thought I'm still privately excited about a 3960 or 3970 threadripper once a few little bugs/niggles are worked out.
But yes. 3950x is excellent in most circumstances... leading the pack in many, and close to the 10980 in others.
 
... thought I'm still privately excited about a 3960 or 3970 threadripper once a few little bugs/niggles are worked out.
Can you tell me what bugs are the primary obstacles? I don't know much about AMD in the proaudio world, so it would help me to know what kind of issues I might have.
Thanks
 
The AMD motherboards do not like the UAD cards...
 
The AMD motherboards do not like the UAD cards...

don’t have one:P
 
No experience to give, but interested by the 3960x. Yes, almost twice price, but I'd rather wait a bit more.
 
I'm still going through the same conundrum .. Intel vs AMD .. I've put my research in a table:

2020-03-Intel-X299-vs-AMD-X570-for-DAW-01.jpg

An interesting subject is the amount of lanes that are handled directly by the CPU. For Intel 10920X / 10940X that is 48 lanes, and if combined with say the X299X Master mobo the CPU is directly connected to ALL of the PCI-e slots + TWO M.2's. Very cool.

In case of the 3950X though, the CPU only does 20+4 lanes, and it usually has a straight line to the first PCI-e slot (= the GPU) + the first M.2. The rest of the devices go through the X570 chipset, and then through the 4x PCI-e gen 4 lanes that run in between the X570 chipset and the CPU ==> in terms of speed, and roughly speaking: 4x PCI-e gen4 = 8x PCI-e gen3 (correct me if I'm wrong). So there's a possible bottleneck if you have SATA's and M.2's and other PCI-e devices running along side each other, all going through the chipset, and making their way to and from the CPU in *just* those 4 lanes. Not sure what effect this has on overall performance, but I thought it was interesting to note.

The main deal breaker for me is MEMORY: I could easily start with 128 GB RAM on the Intel - 4 bars of 32 GB - and leave space for an upgrade to 256 GB. Or just stick with 4x 32 GB, ideally spread over the 4 memory channels that the X299 platform offers. That versus the 128 GB @ 3600 MHz on AMD which is not supported yet .. and: will this ever be supported? Also these are only available in 2 kits of 2x 32 GB, with no clear indication if they will run stable, even at a lower clock - which means lower performance, as Pete from Scan has showed us a couple of times over.

Right now the Intel platform seems to be the way forward for the reason mentioned above. Budget wise, and for reasons of actual AVAILABILITY, I would end up with the 10920X. Over time I might upgrade to 10980XE. Motherboard: Gigabyte X299X Master; an impressive motherboard, and it wins imo over the X570 Master - although the X570 Master is great as well (but man I dislike fans on mobo's).

However, there is also the elephant in the room: Intel 14 nm is DATED at this point.

To be clear, I'm not a fanboy of any team here .. just looking for the best solution for a composition / VI driven DAW.

What I really wanted was a Threadripper 3960X setup on the TRX40 Designare mobo (3 fans, ugh). Those CPU's are not optimal for DAW yet so it seems .. possibly next gen TR?

In October the new gen 'consumer' AMD's will be announced. Waiting might be the best thing to do after all. Perhaps we will see a successor to the 3950X - and it remains to be seen if the AM4 socket will again be used.

Easy choice NOT :)
 
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I am still flop-flopping, so I am waiting.

In fairness, I probably wouldnt have even considered an AMD rig if the Intel CPUs were plentiful. It is pathetic that there isnt anything available. I dont get why. I do not think we can blame CoronaVirus for it, because it has been getting progressively worse.

The situation has forced me to really think about how I use my DAW and VSTs. There are workarounds to making things doable on 1 computer. Many great recordings have been made on much less of a computer setup than I am currently using.

I always seem to suffer from an endless case of gearitis. I think I am going through withdraw as I am detoxing from gear lust. Wait for it....oh yes...maybe I can find some shiny new VST to buy instead. haha
 
@Dunshield - great chart and info.
Its kinda apples to oranges though. The 3950X should really be compared to a 9990k in terms of the TYPE of system AMD is pitching it against. It is not a HEDT segment design, and so the advantages of the intel chip are generally platform related.
The real comparison is 10980X vs 3960/70/90 threadrippers. And then you get motherboards that are apple's to apple's (and show how intel are a gen behind in many parts)

For intel, they are having massive issues getting the 109XX chips into the wild for a number of reasons. If they were more available, they really do make interesting (extremely capable and powerful) DAW chips, especially since their price has been halved in response to the AMD salvo.

Now the threadrippers really show incredible promise. On paper, and also in general testing. But not yet for DAW use. There are some issues still which means performance is not where it should be for low latencies (and really isn't much better than 3950X at higher latencies) but there are people much smarter than me beavering away at figuring this all out.

The threadripper platform knocked it out the park. The memory setup in particular is extremely clever. And PCIe 4 is a massive win as well for those of us who need lots of potential expansion of different kinds.

I've only played with one machine so far (researcher friend who uses it for serious number crunching) and its performance advantage over a 10940 was mind boggling. Its a beast waiting to be unleashed.
 
For intel, they are having massive issues getting the 109XX chips into the wild for a number of reasons.
Thanks for a really helpful post. Do you, or anyone, know why the Intel chips are so scarce?
This has been going on long before Covid-19.
 
Do you, or anyone, know why the Intel chips are so scarce? This has been going on long before Covid-19.
Intel have had a major manufacturing issue for years which has led to them still being stuck on 14nm fabrication processes the first of which was first released in 2014.
During this 3+ year ongoing delay in the release of 10nm chips AMD have been resurgent which has led to Intel releasing higher core count chips on 14nm than they ever planned to.
More cores means bigger chips which leads to less chips per wafer and also usually lower yields as the larger the chip the more are defective.
The bottom line is that they are supply constrained as they literally don't have the manufacturing capacity to meet demand.
So they focus on the higher margin chips (Data Centre/Sever) and also maybe those where they have fixed contracts to supply.
I'd have thought that the HEDT chips would get at least some love but a possibility is that since AMD are kicking them hard here with ThreadRipper and even the 12/16 core mainstream parts, that Intel are keeping all the good chips for Xeons.
HEDT buyers are probably less conservative than Workstation/Server so will move to AMD whereas the latter are more likely to stick with Xeons.
So the failed chips that only have ~12 or less working cores can go to HEDT and the 14 core and up are Xeon only.
So the higher core count HEDT chips are a paper launch but it gives a vague impression that Intel have something to compete with AMD.
Smoke and mirrors trying to cover over a very major manufacturing disaster.
 
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Thanks for that detailed insight..Technostica

So, for a single large DAW PC build, are there ZEON options that would make sense, that would be available now?

Is this why Apple only offers XEON's in the new MacPro?

The move to single PC/DAW isnt going to be achievable if the CPUs are never gonna materialize.

It's starting to sound like VEP farms built with 9900k or AMD's, may be the only option for now? Bummer
 
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Xeon's are generally not worth it for DAW use compared to HEDT. Although this is a value judgement that each individual will need to make.

Apple use Xeon's for their own reasons - and they are so far outside of most of the considerations you and I need to make for a DAW that its not funny. So much of the new mac pro is marketing / positioning / about image / catering to the Pixar/animation type crowds.... (and this is coming from someone with a number of studios all on apple macs!). Up until 3 years ago, I aligned with much of the decision making apple were making as a DAW user, but no longer. The rise of the HEDT segment has changed things for me.

HEDT features like max memory, memory architecture, addressing of CPU cores all just makes sense for DAWS. Consumer level chips (bog standard i7's and i9's) are still great for DAWS where realitime audio performance is key (which is a large proportion of people here) - since there are chips that can do 5GHtz sustained over all cores!

There are many who are in the camp of GHtz is king - whereby my experiences say the situation is far more nuanced than that. The way I see it is that there needs to be a balance of single core performance (known in DAW coding circles as the "core 0" problem) and the ability to scale across many cores for processing, routing and the like. I personally use a lot of CPU grunt. DAWBench has managed to demonstrate much of this by using two different tests for their CPU benchmarks. Often the answer is somewhere in between.

Back to Xeon. Some of the lines are really blurry. Intel consider some of the Xeon-W line to be in the HEDT segment. But confusingly, many other parts of the Xeon line is geared towards servers rather than workstations. This makes it difficult for consumers for sure.

The right Xeon machine might just be the monster you are looking for. I would personally look much closer at the HEDT segment first. The 109XX chips are not impossible to get - just tricky. Talking direct to local suppliers might just find you a chip you'd like.

And I'll hang on and just wait for a little while for more threadripper updates in respect to low latency DAW use.... and potentially even look at the more consumer level 4950X slated for Q3/Q4 this year if the memory architecture hits the mark.
 
Xeon's are generally not worth it for DAW
^^ this!!!

There are now and then users in support complaining that they spend thousends of dollars/euros for a dual-CPU, insane core-count setup, and the performance is so bad even the old system worked better.

I work with an i5 8600k, OC @4.5 GHz base clock w/o turbo and any other power savings, and this CPU is not alone affordable but also the performance is great. I could overclock it further, but I like my system silent, so I decided it is not worth to me to push it further.
Of course, many of you need more performance, especially when writing for film. Fine, get the i7 or i9 instead of a Xeon.
I suspect most people don't even take the time to flip the switches to set the system into a high-performance mode. Nowadays most computers are used as glorified type-writers, encyclopedia or television. Of course it does not make sense to keep the CPU at 100% performance all the time for these kind of uses, so many power saving options were implemented.

If not already done, start improving your systems performance for free by setting Windows' power-savings option to high-performance mode, the scheduler to background tasks, und switch off CPU power-savings options in the bios.
This should give you enough additional performance to wait for the next-gen Intel or AMD Ryzen CPUs and see how they perform.
The current Ryzen processors are looking promising, but some weird shortcuts were made, some to allow high core count at low prices, others for marketing reasons. I hope they will improve on these issues in the next gen.
 
Now having said all that... there have been various xeon based workstations through the years that have been monster DAW's as well. Some of the HP Z-series workstations from 3 or 4 years ago come to mind... expensive, but incredibly powerful. And just happened to work frigging well for DAW sessions where tonnes of processing power was needed (for example, massively multi-channel immersive mixing, or even some simple 7.1 / dolby atmos mixing.)
But not for straight sample-based writing.

Many composers these days are mixing as they write - especially for docos / lower budget films... even mixing straight into 4.0 or 5.0... while writing with large kontakt templates. These guys often need more than a 9990k based system gets you.
 
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