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  3. More cores or faster processors?

  • More cores or faster processors?

    R
    R
    Hello sirs and ma'ams,

    I am putting together a PC for the first time in a while and wondering what VE PRO would be better served with - a six core i7 at 3.2ghz, or a slower chip but dual xeon E5. Obviously, the new E5's are much more expensive so I am wondering if I'm better off with two separate i7 systems, or spend the $$$ and get a monster dual Xeon.


    I would love feedback from anyone with PC build knowledge.
    Thank you!
  • C
    C

    Either one of those processors is going to completely crush an incredibly large template.  I have four cores i7 and never, and I mean never even come close to maxing out CPU.

    Once you already have such an enormous process (either above) the biggest thing that you will see an improvement in will be:

    1.  The speed of your memory combined with it's size.  If you are able to get say 16GB of 1333MHZ RAM in one motherboard, but 16GB of 1600 to 2000MHZ memory with the other one, it will be significantly better performance to get the faster memory machine.

    2.  The specific brand and type of hard drive controller.  The more stable the driver, and faster the interface will deliver far better results (this will be the drive you are streaming your samples from, as well as your second seperate drive to house your DAW installation, and possibly a 3rd one for where you actually record to).  If your hard drive interface is to slow to keep up with what your trying to do (overloading 500 tracks in your DAW with 500 different sampled instruments and playing them all at the same time) it will translate to CPU overload.  The problem is the hard drive can't keep up with giving the system what is being asked.  So you will find the CPU getting crushed at 100% while it continues to crush your hard drive in attempt to get what it needs.  They end up killing each other.  This issue was a total nightmare for me for many years with Logic 9 on my macbook pro.

    3.  If you are using tons of plug-ins on your channel strips (reverbs, eq's etc) then absolute raw CPU power is critical.  If you are more of a person who uses very little plug-ins on channel strips like me, and more on the ammount of instruments, tracks and samples loaded at one time, my memory size and speed, as well as my hard drive are more important.  The CPU's are already at the point of tolerating a template bigger than anything I have been able to create so far and I only have 4 cores.

    If you are using something like UAD for your plug-ins this means you are using even less of system resources, which gives even more reason to not need the incredible increase in price.  If you are using something like MIR PRO, go for the Xeon setup.  It will have a faster memory bridge most likely, and definitely has a better processing design.

    Maestro2be
  • R
    R
    Thanks for the detailed response! This is incredibly helpful.

    To your points, I think I am going with the i7 3930k and an ASUS Sabertooth X79 motherbaoard (http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_2011/SABERTOOTH_X79/#specifications). It has Quad Channel with 1600MHZ RAM, so it'll be able to take full advantage of the CPU 3930k's quad channel memory access.
    Regarding Hard Drives, the Sabertooth has an Intel controlled RAID setup of 2 x SATA 6gb and 4x SATA 3gb. It also has a Marvell controller for SATA 6 but it looks like it performs poorly:

    http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/motherboards/2011/11/30/asus-sabertooth-x79-review/5

    This test really underscores your point about the importance of a good hard drive interface. The Marvell controlled SATA 6gb write time is 157 MB/sec and the Intel controlled SATA writes at 523 MB/sec! A huge difference considering they are both SATA 6.

    This machine will be used as a Satellite so I could potentially RAID 0 portion or all of the Intel SATA storage. This would be 2xSATA6 and 4xSATA3. I would then keep all samples on a large 2tb drive internally in case of failure, so I could swap out a failed SSD drive fairly easily.

    How necessary is RAID 0? If a drive fails in RAID 0 setup how easy is it to detect which one it is?

  • C
    C

    RAID 0 does indeed have a pretty significant increase in reading times and for samples this is critical.  It is becoming less and less critical the more memory you have though.  However, if you use VI PRO and decide to lower the allowed sample size alloted to memory (by choosing to stream more from hard drive than memory) RAID 0 again has a huge benefit to you.  If you can afford it, I would recommend the RAID 0 just because there is no doubt it will result in less CPU hit, and faster throughput for more instruments to run smoothly without pops and clicks.  Keep in mind that you are concerned with WRITE speeds for the drive you are RECORDING to.  You are concerned with READ times from the drives you are READING samples from.

    Changing the hard drive will be as simple as removing the one, plugging in the other and initializing it in the RAID software/hardware manager.  Then format it, and copy over the samples from your 2TB drive and you are ready to go.  It would have you down a few hours from the moment you arrived at home with the replacement drive.

    As far as detecting which one failed, this will be MUCH easier to do if you have it as its own RAID 0 that does not contain the system partition (the partition which your operating system is installed on).  This way you can clearly boot up and use the software monitor to tell you which failed, and could probably also see which one it is inside the hardware RAID controller manager which you access during bootup (you would see it say something like, to access the RAID Manager hit CTRL + M).

    Maestro2be
  • V
    V
    I have an I7 3930k. It's a great choice. I am running about four instances of VEP5 with lots of convolution and such on each channel (30+ channels) and I am using only 27% of my total CPU power. I also use Finale, which is a CPU hoarder. Needless to say, if you can afford it, buy it. You wont be disappointed and you will not have to replace it for a very, very long time. With this build, I focused on SSD's. Just about anything with a Sandforce 2 controller is going to take care of business. One of those will be much faster than several mechanical drives in a RAID 0. But they are still quite expensive and you have to build based on you budget. That said, ALL of the advice from the other posters is good advice. Best of luck.