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  3. Intel or AMD with VSL

  • Intel or AMD with VSL

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    Hi everyone,

    My PC is finally giving up on me, so I'll be getting a new CPU/motherboard/RAM combination, and maybe a new GPU while I'm at it. It's lasted 11 years, I think that's good going.

    I remember it used to be the case that VSL users were advised towards Intel CPUs rather than AMD ones, as Intel ones ran VSL products better. Is that still the case please? I was stuck with an AMD one before, but might switch to Intel this time around if VSL stuff will work better.

    I'm currently looking at this Intel chip:

    https://pcpartpicker.com/product/WtyV3C/intel-core-i7-9700k-36ghz-8-core-processor-bx80684i79700kOr this AMD one (which can hyperthread, where the Intel one can't, so would probably be better):

    https://pcpartpicker.com/product/QKJtt6/amd-ryzen-7-3700x-36-ghz-8-core-processor-100-100000071box

    Thanks!

    AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-Core 3.59Mhz Processor, 64 GB RAM, Windows 10.0.19045, Cubase 10.5.20, Sibelius 7, VEP 5.4.16181, VIP 2.4.16399, Symphonic Cube, MIR Rooms 1-5, Suite, Choir, Organ, Imperial, Solo Voices, Dimension Strings, Historic Winds, World Winds
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    just read a bench test about the amd processor performance, i think i am leaning towards the amd processor
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    Hi Pyre,

    Recently bought AMD Ryzen 3900X, it's been a blaze so far. Even if VSL software favors Intel for whatever reason, it's not that noticeable when all those cores just shred (I can't confirm the bias, btw, just referring to your message). My thought - worry less about the CPU and invest the money saved by staying away from overpriced Intel, into more RAM, faster SSD, etc. They are quite important for performance, too, as has been discussed a lot of times here and elsewhere.

    Cheers,

    Crusoe.
  • bbeliusB
    bbeliusB
    Hi Crusoe, No bias, we simply don't have experience with the new AMD CPU architecture and too few user reports. So we can tell that certain Intel CPUs will work. For AMD it would be nice to get more feedback from users like you that use the new Ryzen CPUs :) Best, Ben
    Ben@VSL | IT & Product Specialist
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    Hi Ben,

    That's good to know. Without any extra knowledge of the specifics, one would think that the bias could be the case indeed (with Intel compiler around, and Intel's overall dominance not so long ago in the past).

    Just to add a bit of info on 3900X, all 12 cores get their share of work under a heavy load, resulting in not as much of a load on a single core, which is noticeable (Cubase and VE Pro 6). It's also worth noting that I still stay on the X370 platform, upgraded from Ryzen 1800X (which was pretty good, too, especially given its price). Works as a charm.

    Cheers,

    Crusoe.
  • bbeliusB
    bbeliusB

    Hi Crusoe,

    Thanks for the feedback. May I ask you a favor? I am really interested in the system latency values of your workstation.
    Could you download and start a tool named LatencyMon, let it run for ~5 minutes without any processing going in the background and then send me screenshots of the different results?

    Feel free to mail them to support@vsl.co.at and mention my name.

    Thanks!

    Ben

    Ben@VSL | IT & Product Specialist
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    Hi Ben,

    sure, I will send them some time soon. I think I have LatencyMon installed.

    Cheers,

    Crusoe.
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    Hi Ben and Crusoe

    I am on search for new pc .

    Can you post Latencymon numbers here please
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    Here's the results of LatencyMon run on my system.

    Cheers,

    Crusoe.
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    @crusoe said:

    Here's the[url=https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwiXq_Eby0bNOUdlbkhOZjg3TnJIR0Npd0g1WlRSWTZkNERz]results[/url]of LatencyMon run on my system. Cheers, Crusoe.
    What is the verdict now that there is a latency number? How do the new AMD chips compare to the intel chips? Is intel still better?
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    Hi crusoe, thanks for posting about your experience using the AMD Ryzen 3900X.

    I'm a tech-head and not a composer but a good friend of mine is. He's asked me to design him a super kick-ass slave computer to replace his three quad-core slave machines that run on 1Gbe ethernet that feed into Cubase. So far I've settled on these specs:

    Anyone else is welcome to weigh in as well. I want input on things like core-count vs. core-speed, issues with CPU bottlenecking, and threads per instance.
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    Hi Trickytrick,

    You are welcome. I wonder why you've selected a server CPU? This is not obvious to me at all. Also, I don't really understand the question about threads per instance. It's just a number of cores times two. Or you meant something else that I didn't quite grasp.

    Cheers,

    Crusoe.
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    Good Q. I'd rather have gone with a desktop-level processor, but he wants 256GB of RAM. All desktop processor memory controllers top-out at 128GB (except for the Intel i9-10980XE which is very likely the last of its socket-type and won't be upgradeable).

    Threads per instance" is a setting within the CuBase/VSL ecosystem that determines how MIDI channels are handled. However, I'm not very familiar with it and want to make sure it won't become a bottleneck at some point.
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    Ok, then I guess you need not concern yourself with the thread number. I don't know how it works exactly, but it's more or less a resource management thing. Any CPU of the grade you are aiming at is not a bottleneck. Not even remotely. This CPU will sit 97% idle in the stratospehere, while mere mortals, memory chips, SSDs and the like are trying to pull of the mighty feat of moving around those 256Gb of data.

    The shopping list looks fine to me. You might want to consider the newer Threadripper 3970X, although it has higher TDP, which is enough to substitute a fireplace, if your client needs one. Also, the audio interface could become a bottleneck, depending on what your client has right now. Samsungs are a good choice, btw, I'm not convinced by the performance of the new PCIe 4.0 modules. But this will probably change in the future.

    Good luck :)

    Crusoe.
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    Haha, threadripper was the first chip I Googled for this project. Unfortunately, *while it does support 256GB of RAM, it's 2x the price of the EPYC chip that I selected. Feedback appreciated though.
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    I've just had a look here:

    https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-amd_epyc_7302-996-vs-amd_ryzen_threadripper_3970x-948

    TR price is substantially lower, must be a different model pair that you looked at. Nevertheless, this page gives a pretty good idea of the comparative performance. 

    All the best,

    Crusoe.
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    Thank you for checking!

    However, the price listed on that site is wildly inaccurate. Check out both products on Newegg.com:

    • EPYC 7302 ($1,070): https://www.newegg.com/amd-epyc-7302-socket-sp3/p/N82E16819113593
    • THREADRIPPER 3970X ($2000): https://www.newegg.com/amd-ryzen-threadripper-2990wx/p/N82E16819113618 (even their Amazon link goes to a 7302 for $1.1k)

    I used CPU-Monkey for some of my research, so I'm glad that you pointed this out. I will not be going back to them as often now.
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    Holy ... Thanks for pointing this out :)
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    Hello everyone, 

    I'm sneaking into the conversation because I've just bought a pc with AMD processor to use as a slave machine but I'm having some CPU overload problems when using VEP7. First of all, it's a notebook MSI Bravo 15, AMD Ryzen 7 4800H 4.3 GHz, 64 GB DDR4 3200 MHz, 1TB SSD M.2 PCIe. 

    My VEP7 template has 6 instances. When I load it and connect all the instances to Cubase, the CPU usage is at 40% even if all the tracks are disabled and the project is not playing. Buffer size on Cubase is 2048 and on the VEP plugin is 2 buffers but I'm not noticing a big difference even if I set it to 4 buffers. 

    I tried to use it on old programming projects with just one instance as well (16 threads assigned to it). When it's not playing the CPU is at 15-20%. When it starts playing, CPU usage jumps to 40-60% for the most of the project and in a couple of parts in which almost all the instruments are playing, it goes to 90-98%, the audio is ruined and some samples keep playing like they are frozen and I need to disconnect the instance. This project has a lot of tracks (about 70/80) with different players on them (Synchron, Kontakt, Play, Sine). But it behave the same way in a couple of fast bars in another project with just 35 Synchron Player tracks. 

    When I load an instance in an empty project, the CPU usage is already at 11-12%. 

    I used to have 756 outputs per instance enabled but even if I reduced the number to less than 32 nothing's changed. 

    I honestly don't know what to think :'D 

    Or what the problem could be. I know people with less powerful computer than mine that have less CPU usage when using VEP. 

    Also, when VEP says CPU Usage 60%, in the MSI Dragon Center I read CPU Usage 34%.