Graphics cards DO matter for music production... A LOT.

Discussion in 'Computer Hardware' started by Torrao, Nov 1, 2017.

  1. equix

    equix Member

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  2. Torrao

    Torrao Platinum Record

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    If you check the top processes in the screenshots I posted, you'll see they are the network drivers. Disabling the ethernet card improves the latency even further. The effect is just not as dramatic as the GPU (which had around 4-6 times more latency).
     
  3. spacetime

    spacetime Platinum Record

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    It might simply be a problem with the gfx card pulling too much power too fast

    Giving unstable voltage to the sound components will of course result in malfunction..

    Not magic inside the box, its physics
     
  4. sisyphus

    sisyphus Rock Star

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    anyone with any information on this on OSX?
     
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  5. SineWave

    SineWave Audiosexual

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    Shame I'm just a bit advanced, but still a rookie OSX user. I find my knowledge of Linux really helpful. So far, the most important thing to do in Sierra and up is to turn off Siri. Does graphic card matter in OSX, yes, of course. Both Linux and OSX use OpenGL for GUI acceleration and plugins use it, too.

    But I still wouldn't go for a high end graphics card because they're noisy, expensive [better to buy more powerful CPU] and use more PCIe bandwidth, which could clash with our audio cards.

    GUI acceleration can be done perfectly well with any low to mid range graphics card, as it is not very demanding on the GPU, but it depends on the video memory speed a bit, so I usually pay attention to buy a VGA with GDDR5 memory which is faster than DDR3. Cards with HBM and HBM2 are faster, but too noisy, expensive and not so much faster at driving plugin GUIs to justify a purchase.

    That's my 2p. :wink:
     
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  6. magentaappearance

    magentaappearance Noisemaker

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    Interesting thread. I recently bought the GT 1030 and was wondering about the latencies. I hope the graphics card does not send frames from my screen to the observation elite, with any netframeworks drivers.
     
  7. studio5599

    studio5599 Producer

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    no no no you put a lower hungry video card in and get better latency? upgrade your power supply it does the same effect
     
  8. devilorcracker

    devilorcracker Platinum Record

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    I use the GTX 1060 6GB Extreme Overclocked and no problems on my side
     
  9. Pinkman

    Pinkman Audiosexual

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    Even if you have a dedicated GPU, it WILL draw more from your CPU. Set your resolution to 640x480 (or 1024x768 if you're balling) and the CPU draw will be neglible.

    Siri is a high maintenance bitch. This is coming from an Apple certified tech.
     
    Last edited: Feb 6, 2018
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  10. midi-man

    midi-man Audiosexual

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    Same here. I have have more issues with AMD previously. This was not with audio but in general.
     
  11. midi-man

    midi-man Audiosexual

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    Mine looks very close you yours.I have a nvida quadro card right now in my pc.

    upload_2018-1-11_21-24-40.png
     
  12. powerplay

    powerplay Ultrasonic

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    This post made Nvidia fanboys angry. Pity. As a result of that, it's becoming Nvidia vs AMD debate. Pity also.
     
  13. Torrao

    Torrao Platinum Record

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    I'm just trying to help, sharing my experiences. If people wants to call them off based on fanboyism, it's their loss!

    Perhaps the most interesting bit is that if you can track at lowest latency with an offending video card (because you have a very good audio driver, say RME) you may not notice any issue at all. However, you may be missing a lot of CPU headroom when mixing heavy projects. :winker:
     
  14. No Avenger

    No Avenger Moderator Staff Member

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    Never did that check before. ~ 400μs is bad?
     
  15. Backtired

    Backtired Audiosexual

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    Can someone clarify this a bit more?
    Are graphics card THAT important? Because when I'm on my "producing PC", well I use integrated graphics lol...
     
  16. Blorg

    Blorg Producer

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    Don't think so, as long as your audio buffer has something in it. In a buffer 6ms long, that sort of thing can happen 6000/400 number of times in a row before things getting glitchy, steady-state (in the sense that other than that DPC, the buffer's getting fed). It's random f8kups, like a driver getting stuck & causing spikes (say 4000μs, or a string of 1000μs), that's when you get dropouts/lockups & ... other bad stuff.
    I think.
     
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  17. powerplay

    powerplay Ultrasonic

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    Very nice post! By disabling Nvidia and ethernet, I got shorter latency and little performance boost!
     
  18. Infidel

    Infidel Producer

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    When I built my audio rig I checked which video card would work the best with the motherboard chipset. Nvidia had issues with the northbridge chipset and I use a lower end Radeon card. Funny thing is that using the card versus the onboard video lowered my windows performance score from 7.9 to 7.1. i thought it would make up to 8 but I'm not a gamer I just wanted a window to stretch across two screens.
     
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  19. vanhaze

    vanhaze Platinum Record

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    This is an interesting thread, so thx to OP for bringing up this topic.

    My goal this year is to build a new Hackintosh (Z370 Coffee Lake, Core I7 8700K, OSX 10.13) purely for audio/music productions.
    Wondering if any Hack Guru can provide useful info on which GPU card to use (maybe even mobo integrated GPU ?) regarding this whole topic.

    Warm Regards.
     
  20. DonCaballero

    DonCaballero Producer

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    I "upgraded" a few years ago from a desktop, to a laptop with far better specs (MSI), but it's been quite disappointing.
    The DPC latency is crap (ndis.sys is the worst), I get drop outs even with the CPU doesn't seem close to maxed, and it's always throttling when i need the resources most (even with a noisy ass fan).

    Maybe if I went through the hassle of using XperfTrace I could improve some issues, but that's beyond my knowledge.

    Gaming laptops seem to be the only ones with decent specs, and MSI was by far the best value on paper so I went with that.
    I don't know if it's optimized for games at the expense of RT audio, but my next system will definitely be a desktop.

    (Win10-64, Reaper 5.7, NVIDIA, SSD, 16GB RAM)
     
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