hi there, been looking into upgrading my system. i currently have an i7-7700k, i can get the i7-9700k for about $250 , plus need to get a motherboard , probbaly some type of asus or msi z370 or z390.

will there be any improvements in regards to music production? latency?plugin loading times? rendering/exporting projects to wav?

i have 32 gb of ram (plenty), i use FL Studio for music production + a presonus 1824 audio interface which i have about 5 synthesizers connected into to record. i trigger them via usb to midi. not having much issues but wondering if there will be a better/ less latency response ? i master tracks within fl studio as well using ozone 9 (cpu hog at times + latency increases tremendously when running on the master bus in the project itself).

i know in the fl studio website the 9700k is listed as one of their recommended cpu's but the base clock on the 7700k is 4.2ghz (quad core - boost 4.5ghz or 4.8ghz) vs 3.6ghz from the 9700k (octa core - boost up to 4.9ghz). i dont plan on overclocking hence i like having a stable computer.

any input is greatly appreciated.

 

If you don't need to upgrade immediately, I would suggest waiting.

By September we should have better availibity & pricing for Z490 with tenth Gen CPUs. This will give you a future upgrade path.

The i5 10600 has enough performance for most users. You should also consider SATA 2.5" and/or PCIe NMVe M.2 SSDs If you don't already have these. A Good Gen 3 x4 NVME will do fine.

I installed an XPG GAMMIX S11 Pro 1TB on a PCIe card into a Lenovo S30. The improvement in read & writes was very profound.
This replaced a server level 3.5" 7200RPM drive. Still using the 2TB spinning rust for archiving & storage until prices drop again. Hope this fall.

 

oh ok, i will probably wait some time then. im in no rush but was just super intrigued to 'upgrade'. i have a 1tb ssd,plus a 128 or 118gb m.2 , with tons of extra hdd's for storage. now in regards to a minimal windows 10 setup, i have already done all the 'performance' fixes, are there any 'modded' windows 10 64bit versions that dont include innucessary services that might hog cpu or memory? again, ive done everyhting, dont have issues but i get veryu 'ocd' about things , sometimes i fix things that are not broken lol

 

I was looking into upgrading my hackintosh from an i7 6700k to 9700k and decided against it, because it has no Hyperthreading. So in the end you have 8 cores and 8 threads. And 8 threads is what I have already, so I don't see the point.

With music production threads are more important than single core clock speed. WIth a Ryzen 3700 you have 8 Cores and 16 Threads and it it's cheaper and more power efficient. For me, there's still the issue of program compatibility on macOS, but if I would built a WIndows PC right by now, I would go AMD without any doubts.

 

There are other things that improve system performance. Trial & error for same.

Some can be found here:
Windows 10 Tips, Tricks, Help, Support, Downloads, Features

One thing that may help is to turn off Windows 10 CPU limit:

from the Run command box (Windows key + R) type msconfig
click the 'Boot' tab & select 'Advanced options'. Uncheck 'Number of processors' & 'Maximum memory.

I also have 'PCI Lock' & 'Debug' for my system

Now restart your system. Programs should now be able to use core/threads & memory more freely.

 

do you think an amd ryzen 3700x or 3900x would handle better at cpu/ lower buffer size (for inputting synths via soundcard)? would the ram i have now be compatible with the ryzen stuff? just wondering if i can just swap the motherboard & cpu only and keep all components .

 

Have you thought about upgrading RAM to the highest speed your CPU and motherboard support? You'll be surprised what a difference it makes.

 

yes i've done that as well. im at 32gb ram , should be more than enough at the moment.not using too many instrument/synth plugins since im using most of my hardware synths instead .

 

have done all these as well. thanks though

 

this should be off by standard ... so i don't know who put it on on your system but i had never a system where it was on

 

I meant speed, not capacity. I'm running 32GB @ 3600 MHz (dual channel, so 2 x 16GB)

 

Not much, really, no. We're talking 5-10% raw performance in singlecore workloads, and 20%-ish in multicore. A little boost in performance, but not that much really. Have you tried overclocking your 7700K? In OC it almost matches the 9700K, except in 8-core workloads.

CPUs have already stopped being the bottleneck there, it's how fast your interface (and its drivers) and OS (and its drivers, some are causing issues - NVIDIA graphics, wireless networking, etc are common offenders)

Latency increase is due to Ozone's processing, you can throw as much performance as you want at it, but it will always run with the same additional delay. CPU usage might go down though

What's your cooling on the 7700K? Also, why did you even bother with a K chip if you don't plan on overclocking? You can safely turn on multicore enhancement in your BIOS, this will allow all your cores to run at the boost speed. As it is, your 7700K will only run at 4.5GHz if you're using a single core, in multicore workloads (like a DAW) you'll get just 4.4GHz (this is called Allcore Clock in your BIOS). MCE allows all cores to boost to 4.5 as long as temperature allows.

Overclocking is not as scary as they make it to be, it's just a matter of spending an evening testing for different settings and checking what your cooling can handle with software tools. You can't destroy anything, if you go grossly wrong it will just shut down to prevent overheating. Worst case scenario you remove the mobo battery to reset your settings. Also, your OC is as stable as you test it. Having a stability test running overnight will ensure you're good to go. Just look up a few guides and you can definitely do it. Make sure you didn't massively cheap out on your power supply. Looking at ASUS resources (https://edgeup.asus.com/2017/kaby-lake-overclocking-guide/), 80% of 7700Ks can run at 5GHz when provided with adequate cooling. You can easily go for 4.7-4.8 GHz.

You aren't running a potato, there's not much point wrecking havoc on your system installing random cleaning tools and disabling things you might need in the future. Don't bother, having a browser or Discord open in the background is infinitely more of a hog than background services.

The point is 8 threads doesn't mean the same as 8 cores. A thread is not a computational device. It's just another set of memory for the core to work on. If thread 1 has to wait for something else to be calculated, something to be loaded from RAM/disk, thread 2 can provide data to the core and prevent it from doing nothing. It doesn't equal to two cores, both capable of computing. If there's a constant stream of jobs to do, two cores are worth a lot more than two threads, since they calculate literally at double the speed. In reality, your CPU waits most of the time, so HT is a benefit. But 8 real cores is definitely not the same as 4 real cores with 4 spare buffers. With a 9700K you get 15-20% in singlecore, 30% in 4-core workloads, and 68% in 8-core workloads. This is due to fact that with 8 cores being used, the 6700K only has 4 real ones.

These are off by default. Having debug on can only decrease performance, it's doing more work by saving debugging data in the background. Maybe take some time to learn what the random advice on the internet means before you use it.

Both platforms use DDR4. For Ryzen, faster RAM is an advantage - for Intel not so much, above 3000MHz you're wasting money. Make sure you turn on XMP Memory Profile in your BIOS (do it now, it's off by default), or your RAM will run at 2133MHz instead of the speed you paid for.

Keep in mind since the CPU socket is different, you might need a new cooler because of different mounting.

You also need a graphics card as the Ryzen doesn't include integrated graphics.

It would be a sizeable upgrade, though.

Not much to be gained above 3000MHz. Most benchmarks are gaming, and those show either no improvement at all or 4-5 FPS improvements.

 

And what about I9-9900K? Will this give a huge boost compared to I7-7700K or I7-9900K?

 

I looked into it to check what I could keep and in my case I can keep the RAM (DDR4, 2400 mHz) and even the AIO water cooler (with an AM4 Socket compatible bracket for AMD). Can't say anything about buffer sizes since I haven't switched to AMD yet and maybe won't do to my mac compatibility considerations.

 

Well it's an 8 core vs a 4 core processor. 8 vs 16 Threads. I am sure there will be a improvement. Huge is relative. But for about the same amount you can get a Ryzen 3 3900 with 12 Cores/24 Threads. And that's huge ;)

 

Very informative post. Thanks for the isight!

 

thank you so much. very well explained information. my computer is basically all stock so i ant really do much in regards to bios settings . it's an acer predator g6. bios wont really let me do much lol. in order to change some of the bios settings to . now cooling is all stock as well, the computer has a button 'boost' on it which will ramp up the cpu up to like 5ghz (fans/cooling set to automatic in the predator sense 'overclock' app). would a different motherboard give me more options to change some settings ? i actually dont have a gpu at the moment as well, would that make a significant performance boost? was reading online that a gpu wont really make a difference since im doing music production/ not video editing. i make quick vieos but nothing crazy. was looking into getting a gtx 1070 (minimum) to take some load off the cpu but havent really read if it will give some improvement.

any suggestions for a motherboard that supports overclocking or doing the 'all core clock or any that'll allow me to give some type of performance boost without spending too much money' ? 7700k cpu btw.

 

There's your problem I guess, prebuilt aren't the best in terms of making the most out of your hardware.

"Stock" refers to the cooler included by Intel with non-K chips. Your Acer almost certainly has a 3rd party one.

Yes, that's the point. You can set specific clocks, voltages. Usually auto overclock sets too high of a voltage to ensure stable overclock at the expense of severely increasing power draw (and thus temperature, meaning you get less GHz before your CPU slows down due to overheating). You also get to set completely custom fan curves to have a completely silent setup that only kicks the fans up a notch while you're rendering.

Not much, unless you're using some GPU-heavy plugins (spectrum analysis, fancy 3D GUI, animated envelopes/LFOs etc). But you won't have any display output if you go with a Ryzen, so you'd need a GPU for that.

Literally every single motherboard with an unlocked chipset, for intel this is Z-series, check which chipset you need for your CPU (Z270 probably).

 

A few months ago I replaced a CPU with 4 cores and 4 threads with a CPU with 4 cores and 8 threads and the plugins' CPU consumption dropped at least by 50%, the latency not at all. The core speed was just 15% higher. But this probably also depends on the DAW's features.

 

i7-7700 is still a killer in single core performance, and that's worth a lot, too. Latency depends on many factors, and single core performance is one of them. Speed of L1/L2/L3 caches, floating point units, and the memory also counts. HT splits floating point units in half and that's bad.

It's not like I'm saying having more cores is bad, on the contrary, but single core performance is a little bit more important because plugins can run on only one core [if they haven't implemented multi-core processing like u-he plugins].

We can put it this way: having a CPU with i7-7700 single performance and 8 cores is certainly better than having a i7-7700 with 4 cores. They did improve single core performance in 8xxx, 9xxx, and 10xxx series somewhat, but not so significantly. I think it's not a very worthy upgrade to go for i7-9900, but if you're going for Ryzen 3700x with 8 cores and 16 threads that would be a worthy upgrade, and not that expensive, either.

Cheers!