Is the I9 9900K overkill for music production?

[Kalamata Kid]

I may finally assemble my PC this coming Sunday.
I am concerned about the BIOS settings on the
Gigabyte - Z390 AORUS MASTER with i9-9900k.

[benjamind]

i just upgraded from my 10 years old phenom II x4 955 to intell i9 9900k/64gb 3200 and to be honest i should rather go with 16core threadripper...it is not very quick i would say as i thought todays cpu will be,,,,not sure why people are so impressed,,,the only advantage is i do not need graphics card in my pc as i am not a gamer....

What are you settings? It should easily blow away your previous machine in terms of performance. Have you looked at your motherboard/BIOS settings?

You have 8 cores at your disposal at 4GHz each core. It should definitely be faster along with the 3200MHz RAM.

Something doesn't seem right here. What OS are you using? Windows 10 is recommended for these processors. But Windows 7 should suffice.

[EnochLight]

i just upgraded from my 10 years old phenom II x4 955 to intell i9 9900k/64gb 3200 and to be honest i should rather go with 16core threadripper...it is not very quick i would say as i thought todays cpu will be,,,,not sure why people are so impressed,,,the only advantage is i do not need graphics card in my pc as i am not a gamer....

Why would you rather have gone with the 16 core Threadripper when the 9900K is noticeably faster in single thread performance, for far less money? If you're not impressed with your current build, you would be even less impressed with a 16 core Threadripper IMHO...

[HM]

Threadripper is for video ,.. not audio

[benjamind]

Threadripper is for video ,.. not audio

And until that changes, no one would advise using one for realtime audio.

The new upcoming Ryzen (8, 12 and 16 cores) might be worth considering but until they've been vetted by the experts a la Scanproaudio et al I would hold off. Hopefully something good is in the works.

[lwj]

I may finally assemble my PC this coming Sunday.
I am concerned about the BIOS settings on the
Gigabyte - Z390 AORUS MASTER with i9-9900k.

What do you need to know? As it happens I just built a new system with the same CPU and MB. It worked fine right away actually, but there a few tweaks you can do in the BIOS. You have to select your XMP profile for the RAM and switch on 'multi core optimization' (or some wording like it), if it works like my system that gets you to about 4,7 to 4,8ghz on all cores. Unless you seriously want to overclock it it's fairly plug and play

[Kalamata Kid]

I may finally assemble my PC this coming Sunday.
I am concerned about the BIOS settings on the
Gigabyte - Z390 AORUS MASTER with i9-9900k.

What do you need to know? As it happens I just built a new system with the same CPU and MB. It worked fine right away actually, but there a few tweaks you can do in the BIOS. You have to select your XMP profile for the RAM and switch on 'multi core optimization' (or some wording like it), if it works like my system that gets you to about 4,7 to 4,8ghz on all cores. Unless you seriously want to overclock it it's fairly plug and play

Ok, finally assembled!
Turned it on and it worked!!!

Thanks for the advice.
I will at first go with the recommended or default settings
and if all ok then attempt some tweaking.

I am now at Gigabyte Express Install DVD disk, for Drivers and Utilities.
Progressing slowly to see what to install and what to avoid for the
music PC. Any advice here will be appreciated.

[lwj]

Right on!
The tweaks I mentioned are pretty much default. You're not using the higher ram frequency without XMP, and the multi-core optimization just give the whole CPU a very nice boost. Intel clocks them rather conservatively so they'll work with any crappy board, but the Aorus Master is far from crappy It's not really an overclock, I think... it just optimizes things so it can stay at it's turbo speeds longer.

Instead of the install disc, just install that App Center. That can download and update all the other software. None of it is truly required, just the drivers for like the chipset, audio and all that. My wifi was terrible until I installed the proprietary driver for instance.

[Kalamata Kid]

Many distractions in the new year and thus making very little progress.

So install everything on the APP center except two?
Install "DirectX End User Runtime" first?
then also install 3D OSD and Smart HUD?

In the the Gigabyte Express install - Drivers and Software I should install the
Realtek HD Audio and Intel Network Connection Software I assume.

How about the Google Chrome. I will likely install this.

No to Google drive and Norton.

[Pictus]

Many distractions in the new year and thus making very little progress.

So install everything on the APP center except two?
Install "DirectX End User Runtime" first?
then also install 3D OSD and Smart HUD?

In the the Gigabyte Express install - Drivers and Software I should install the
Realtek HD Audio and Intel Network Connection Software I assume.

How about the Google Chrome. I will likely install this.

No to Google drive and Norton.

The less you install, the better it is...
Do not use the CD, but check the Gigabyte site for updated versions.
https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/Z3 ... -dl-driver

The "DirectX End User Runtime" is OK to install, can be the first.

Try to only install the drivers:
-Intel LAN driver http://download.gigabyte.us/FileList/Dr ... _v23.2.zip
-Audio http://download.gigabyte.us/FileList/Dr ... 75_dch.zip
Realtek Audio latest version "non official" https://github.com/alanfox2000/realtek- ... ses/latest

If you install the APP Center: http://download.gigabyte.us/FileList/Ut ... 0809.1.zip
-System Information Viewer/Smart Fan 5 http://download.gigabyte.us/FileList/Ut ... 0918.1.zip
-USB DAC UP 2 http://download.gigabyte.us/FileList/Ut ... 0808.1.zip
-USB TurboCharger gigabyte http://download.gigabyte.us/FileList/Ut ... 1120.1.zip

The latest BIOS is F8b from 2018/12/18.
http://download.gigabyte.us/FileList/BI ... er_f8b.zip

https://youtu.be/ze4Dg11W3hU

I prefer Firefox https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... speeddial/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... /noscript/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... ck-origin/
http://mozbackup.jasnapaka.com/ (For backup)

For the GPU, look at this viewtopic.php?p=7067247#p7067247

[Kalamata Kid]

^

That's a lot of info. You anticipated a few of my questions.
Really appreciate the attention to the details and the links.
Making slow progress as life is getting in the way of the art.

[BananaJoe]

i just upgraded from my 10 years old phenom II x4 955 to intell i9 9900k/64gb 3200 and to be honest i should rather go with 16core threadripper...it is not very quick i would say as i thought todays cpu will be,,,,not sure why people are so impressed,,,the only advantage is i do not need graphics card in my pc as i am not a gamer....

There is not that much difference really. Its been several years computer CPUs are not advancing significantly and the difference between the range of processors is not big, an i3-8100 can be as good of a choice as an i9 9000k depending on what you do. If you upgrade from a current generation i3 to an i9 the CPU headroom gain won't be big, migrating from i3-8350k to an i9-9900k will only give about 30% more.

In your case, phenom II x4 955, it is a considerable gain upgrading to the 9900k, maybe you just do not need the 9900k processing power.

[EnochLight]

an i3-8100 can be as good of a choice as an i9 9000k depending on what you do.

Exactly - like surfing the web and checking email, both are great at.

[BananaJoe]

an i3-8100 can be as good of a choice as an i9 9000k depending on what you do.

Exactly - like surfing the web and checking email, both are great at.

I don't get the "lol.jpg"? Your screenshot only reinforces my statement. The single thread performance that matters is not much lower on the i3 8100, actually it is almost the same! The multi thread performance is not relevant for audio in almost all cases, single core/thread performance been stuck at ~5ghz and advanced very slowly over the years. People using second generation i7 still have a fully capable audio PC only lacking usb 3.0 and 3.1.

If multi core performance was a thing everyone should be using dual or quad Xeon setups that always existed.

https://techreport.com/r.x/2018_02_12_A ... vi4864.png

Are you running 300 notes of polyphony? Most people are not.

https://techreport.com/r.x/2018_02_12_A ... sp4864.png

Are you running more than 50 VST instances? Most people are not.

This is just a synthetic benchmark, real world usage typically brings much better results(for all compared processors).

[EnochLight]

an i3-8100 can be as good of a choice as an i9 9000k depending on what you do.

Exactly - like surfing the web and checking email, both are great at.

I don't get the "lol.jpg"? Your screenshot only reinforces my statement. The single thread performance that matters is not much lower on the i3 8100, actually it is almost the same! The multi thread performance is not relevant for audio in almost all cases, single core/thread performance been stuck at ~5ghz and advanced very slowly over the years. People using second generation i7 still have a fully capable audio PC only lacking usb 3.0 and 3.1.

If multi core performance was a thing everyone should be using dual or quad Xeon setups that always existed.

I’d wager that 18% is far different than “almost the same”. To be frank, it’s disingenious to suggest 2515 is “almost the same” as 2101. That’s a noticeable difference in single-core. That’s not to say a score of 2101 is poor by any stretch - it’s almost the same as my almost 7 year old 3770K for sure (which comes in at 2083).

And yeah, multi-thread isn’t that important for DAW and audio production. We’ve established that much a dozen times over in this thread and elsewhere. But it’s useful to point out that the CPU’s you used in your example still have quite a performance disparity in both single and especially multi-thread.