Yes, DAWs are those rare programs, for the time being, that can utilise every CPU core you have at your disposal nicely, aside from video editors and A/V encoders/decoders, 3D renderers and similar, and it doesn't work at all like VirtualMark described it. That is, unless you have a really hungry plugin that pegs one core to the brim, and there are no such plugins, as far as I'm aware. One of the most demanding plugins I know - Diva, can work with multiple cores nicely, as well as Kontakt sampler. Reaper assigns plugins/processes, not sends or chains, per different core/thread, nicely balancing the load. Cubase does it in a similar fashion, other DAWs probably, too. So is it better to have a 4 GHz 4 core CPU, or a 2 GHz 8 core CPU? It doesn't really matter as results are the same with DAWs.

However, I've heard that AMD CPUs sound more analogue, give you a warmer sound.

 

Last edited: Feb 24, 2016

@SineWave

However, I've heard that AMD CPUs sound more analogue, give you a warmer sound. "


I`d buy that for a dollar!

 

Do not wait for it, it could be until early 2017 you will have a chance to buy it....

AMD golden age for me was the AMD XP Athlon 3000+ and ofc the Opteron 150 series.
I had a some really nice benches on different LVL's. OC level 1 + 2.
AMDGeeks

I hope AMD get a killer CPU again, would buy it for sure!

 

jeez a lot of intel fanboiisms

there are some slight benefits betwen some cpu on either side, but the heat myth in the advent of 1kg coolers is just stupid
no one should care!
Intel has been Exposed as even going as far es changing the code in benchmarks so intel looks better
like crystal disk, cpuz and all the others
so how can you trust a company like VW who cheats customers
and nvidia did the same got exposed and now there is a better competition with amd

but on the cpu market there is none / until now i hope
because we the consumers will benefit from that
case in point
the difference betwen an i7 2700k & i7 6700k
is so minimal that intel isn´t sure how to market it, so with the help of microsoft
rumors are the next iterations of windows will only use next gen chips

Fanboyism fucks everyone!

 

There is a point of diminishing returns when it comes to multi core computing. And as I said, it only takes one core to be maxed out to slow the entire system down. You have completely ignored this point.

Imagine this project:

Track 1 - audio file, compressor, eq.

Track 2 - synth, eq.

Track 3 - sampler, compressor, eq, distortion, eq, limiter, reverb, delay, eq, compressor etc


From the above, imagine that all tracks are being processed by different cores, but track 3 is maxing out one core. You cannot add any more effects to track 3, the audio will start crackling and cutting out. And each effect on track 3 needs to wait for the output of the previous one before it can process it, so parallel processing is out. Adding more and more cores won't do anything at all in this situation.

Now imagine this:

Track 1 >---|
Track 2 >---| Group 1 - compressor, eq
Track 3 >---|

If all those tracks are routed to group 1, and that group has effects, then it's like adding that effect onto the end of each track. More serial processing! The group track needs to wait for the output of the 3 tracks before it can affect the audio, do you follow?

Another problem - having a 32 core CPU will mean that it has to run at a much lower clock speed than a quad core, as there will be much more heat generated. So the single core performance will be limited even further. And overclocking potential will also be greatly reduced.

There is a sweet spot that we have to find between amount of cores and single core performance. More and more cores is definitely not going to give you more performance, and will actually hinder performance in many cases due to the lower clock speeds.

Trust me, I want more computing power as much as you do! I'm just trying to explain to you that parallel processing has it's limits. I have an overclocked i7 and I'll bet that it'd crush this 32 core chip in a number of scenarios.

 

Last edited: Feb 24, 2016

I wonder how much this 32 core CPU will cost.... $2500 a piece?
12 core AMD CPU already costs $1200...

 

Your arguments are well explained.
I do agree with you to an extent.Your calculations are based on present,known algorithms,coding and calculations,things are changing and evolving fast,technology is better and better at using all the resources available.
I think DAWS of the near future will utilize maximum cores to its fullest potential.
Though your point of view is also rational in my eyes.

 

what about heat ?

 

There are some things that work really well in parallel, such as reverbs. A reverb is basically tons and tons of delays, so this can really benefit from parallel processing. This is why there are some CUDA reverbs out now, such as LiquidSonics Reverberate.

GPUs are basically 100s of computing cores running in parallel. So if there was a huge untapped potential for parallel tasks, we'd have seen an explosion in the CUDA VST market. But we haven't, and from speaking to programmers over the past few years, it's because many audio tasks just don't scale across cores.

Imagine that you have a horse and cart, which allows you to travel at 20mph. Then add in another 3 horses - it might take you up to 25-30mph, but won't quadruple the speed to 80mph. Adding in another 4 horses wouldn't do anything noticeable and would be a waste of resources. I'd argue that a 32 core CPU would be like this, and most of those cores would be sat idle for most of the time.

Unfortunately, the situation is that Moore's law has pretty much come to an end. There will only be incremental improvements to computing power in the next few years, and the focus is currently on power saving. The era of doubling up on computing power every few months is long gone, which is a damn shame. I was hoping for a 20Ghz processor by now, but that's not going to happen until an alternative to silicon is found.

I've seen an estimate that today's Skylake CPUs are 50x faster per core than the original 8086 on architecture alone, and that would be running at the same 4Mhz speed. But they run about 1000 times faster than that, so the majority of performance improvements came from the clock speed increases.

As for algorithms, something similar is going on with graphics at the moment. Stuff like AMDs Mantle API and DirectX 12 is allowing programmers to code "closer to the metal", as it reduces some of the overhead. But the gains are generally tiny and limited to certain scenarios, there just isn't a huge untapped resource there.

With all that being said, I'll wait until these chips are released, and would love to see a comprehensive DAW benchmark run on them. I'd imagine that they may well excel at some tasks, but will probably suck at others. My guess is that single tracks with lots of effects will slow the system to a crawl.

 

We shall wait,see and test ZEN with our DAWs.
Again,agree with a lot you have written,thats why i liked your post.
Id rather go with more cores vs less and faster cores.
My experiences have proven that.
Results are quite dramatic,theres a reason pro producers and composers use individually built workstations with special emphasis on cpu`s that can handle the task.
Dual cpu`s with lots of cores are very common in pro environment.

 

As a system builder myself, i stand by the fact that we NEED AMD to succeed in this at last. Atm Intel is running the show and has taken their prices right where they feel comfortable with, not to mention they hold back on technologies and when they introduce them to the mass market they charge nonsensical premiums (Thunderbolt anyone?). From my pov it's clearly a matter of healthy competition to turn the market towards the benefit of the end user.
@SineWave Now, while i agree that current AMD cpus can make affordable daws, my tests show quite a bigger gap than 10-20%. On a strictly audio project with just Waves plugs the FX-8350 ran about 30-33% less plugs than the i7 4790k before starting throttling. SSD,HD and Ram were identical in both systems,and Os was Win7 x64. The tests were ran on Cubase8.x - Ableton Live 9.x - Sonar X3 -Studio One 3 - Samplitude 12. On a Kontakt "shootout" with the same configs the gap was slightly less in favor of the FX-8350 but still it was a hefty 25-27%. The i7 6700k on the same Kontakt comparison did slightly better (2-3% more), most likely because of the drr4 implementation. This is just for the numbers sake though. The i7 6700k is about DOUBLE the price of the FX-8350, but the overall performance of the FX-8350 is slightly better than the i5 6600k, also the 6600k is consuming significantly less power while its still slightly more expensive, while it is a ddr4 platform. The gap was even bigger when comparing the FX-8350 against the 6 core i7 5820k which goes for about the same money as the 6700k (keep in mind the socket 2011-3 boards are more expensive than the other platforms). About 40-42% in favor of the 5820k for the audio plugs and about 33-35% for the Kontakt shootout. I found it really hard to sell systems configured with the Fx series even the top of the line 8350. While it is a slightly "smarter" choice in terms of price vs performance, even when there was no ddr4 platform in the market, the hype around the i5s and i7s was always winning the buyers' preference. I do hope this will change soon or else we 're looking at a non-official monopoly where only Intel will benefit from.
Thanks to the thread starter and everyone who shares their thoughts and professional opinions
Cheers

 

Well, I don't quote all the posts. @VirtualMark, you elaborate well your opinion, but nowadays an skilled programmer can make a simple for loop multicore. Not to talk about a DAW track processing. Difficult, but since the DAW manages all plugins, it can be done. Of course this make multicore programming a whole science. But properly applied scales well, with an inevitable overhead of managing multiple threads.

Pure speed is always better, but CPU speed doesn't scale since several years ago. Even improved technology with smaller transistors speed can't scale at the moment. Cores still scale well.

Another thing which greatly speeds up computing at the same speed is SIMD operations (SEE, AVX), directly related to the CPU registers length. At the same speed and with a single core you can greatly improve speed.

Congratulations, very informative post. I'm outdated with the AMD vs Intel value for the money battle.

 

Instead of just stating an opinion, perhaps you can explain exactly how it doesn't work as I described? Yes, there are lots of programs that can max out all cores. But a DAW isn't one of them. We're not talking about 3D renderers here, we're talking about music programs.

And perhaps you can tell me how to process something in parallel when one plugin is waiting for the output of another? If it's processing the output, it has to wait for the output. No ifs, buts or maybes.

I have done my own experimenting over the years, and I can tell you that one long FX chain will make your audio drop out. The CPU may only read about 30% on a quad core, but if one core is maxed out it's game over. You either need to bounce or remove a plugin.

 

That is not how it works. You're reaching by assuming one would always want identical compression and eq settings on each track. Even if you want identical settings the compressor and eq will not effect the group as a whole the same as they will independently. And if you're using sends to route the tracks as opposed to switching the outputs to Group 1 that's parallel processing. This is basic editing knowledge most producers/engineers already have.

 

Last edited: Feb 24, 2016

Sorry, but what on earth are you talking about? Why would the settings need to be the same? I never even mentioned settings, you're talking about a completely different thing!

 

I hope AMD will be able to improve. If not they´ll die!

And then we´ll only have Intel ...... and that means buying a CPU will ruin you!

 

Man, if you have a compressor and eq on Group 1 which has tracks 1,2, and 3 routed to it.. you can not configure the compressor and eq on Group 1 to have a different settings for each of the 3 tracks.. this is common sense. And I like how you weeded out what I said about parallel processing when you quoted me. You're whole spill in this thread with the little charts you drew up has been to demonstrate that parallel processing isn't possible under those circumstances because you clearly don't know what parallel processing is.

"You" said this.

 

Last edited: Feb 24, 2016

Their AMD64 was the best had Intel playing catch up. Now Intel rules but who knows the future.

 

Last edited: Feb 24, 2016

Intel does rule my Intel L775 8*core 2.8 Smoked my Amd 4.2 12 core Cpu by a mile Amd does a lot of falsifying and cheating, in 5 yrs that 32 core cpu will b around 2-3oo bucks and as cpus grow so will the software so it will be a constant catchup market

 

I was a Tech Level 2 at AMD and left last December.

Sadly for the AMD enthusiast, ZEN real life performance will just be too little to late. (Comparable to a 4790K released 2 years ago and that will be half the price of a ZEN cpu )
Dont be fooled by numbers, the archetecture is not the same and so datas are not threated the same way....not to mention open sources framework computing languages that totaly dropped AMDproduct for their lack of stability or ressources at bridge.
Overheating problem was the main problem with the FX line ( and god knows we got ear rapped by customer on a hourly basis) and their performance was comparable to a 2 years old Intel product at about the same price.

ZEN tech is mainly a reduction of the heat transmitted to its capacitor ....so less bug and problems.
When Jim Keller left AMD 2 years ago, and joined APPLE, it was very clear for all of our futur that AMD was never going to recover from that.
Not only did he had no confidence in the futur of AMD product but he was part of the team who did choose to implement Intel product in MAC related product.

ZEN is AGAIN, too little to late. ( about 3 years too late on hte competition )
AMD as always been trailing behind for the last 10 years and they are still trailing.....their arcetecture is different from Intel and they completely lost the market when they started unlocking their chips for the sack of ''on-paper'' performance.

Again, im very sorry to tell you that AMD will never compete with Intel again.
AMD is in a never ending deficit for more then 5 years and ZEN wont buy the market back ( 90% to 10% of cpu market share and keep droping)

My condolences fans


Edit: special mention to DDR4 technology that bring about 15% speed boost over DDR3 and are barely suported on any board .

 

Last edited: Feb 24, 2016