Funkybot's Evil Twin wrote: ↑Tue May 28, 2019 6:50 am
Preface: I haven't been keeping tabs on the CPU wars, but a few things that stick out to me with the Ryzen's as audio PCs, are 1) the reports of worse low latency performance, 2) the lower clock speeds and, 3) the missing Thunderbolt support. What's the general consensus on this with the new AMD's?
Can't truely know all these until they land in a few months, but vaguely speaking...
Funkybot's Evil Twin wrote: ↑Tue May 28, 2019 6:50 am
So if #1 is likely being addressed, how do the lower clock speeds apply?
Do the extra threads more than makeup for it?
Ok, so you have IPC which is instruction per clock (cycle).
Then you have speed which is GHz and 1 GHz is a Billion cycles per second.
So if your IPC is 10% on one chip then a 3.0Ghz chip on that platform is likely to beat the 3.2GHz offering on the other platform with an equal number of cores.
So performance per cycle on the clocking is rarely, if ever even at even clocks.
Then you have to allow for performance overhead that tends to be lost when you add each core. The more you add, the more work the system has to do in order to manage and optimize the data handling.
So the answer to your question? Errm... depends. Throw enough threads at a problem and you'll probably speed up finding a solution.
Is it the cost-effective answer? Probably not.
This is why most firms still say clocks over cores to some degree. Most audio chains have to action the whole chain on a single given core. So if your channel one has a synth and 10 plugs, they are all getting actioned on a single core. If it's a nice fast core, your probably fine, but the slower the core overall the more likely it is to drop out sooner. If you have one super complex effects chain and one weak core, then no matter how great the overhead, the audio will collapse.
This is why I tend to optimize by matching all cores to the same speed and it's also why I tend to be a bit dismissive of those low power "U" series laptops, where the base clock is 1.* and the turbo is 4.*. I don't care if one core is running at 4.2GHz if another core is stuck at 1.6GHz, as that slow-core will prove to be a liability eventually.
Funkybot's Evil Twin wrote: ↑Tue May 28, 2019 6:50 am
What about Thunderbolt on Ryzen? Is that finally addressed?
Intel made the standard open to all (at least on paper), but then we've heard little to nothing since. Your guess is as good as ours right now.
Apratim wrote: ↑Tue May 28, 2019 7:05 am
as far as i know cubase,digital performer and reaper are the only daws which can take easily utilize all the cores of your cpu rest of the daws are still a single core performance hog
All DAW's I've used in the last few years (which is pretty much all of them) have a minimum of 16 thread support with most being 24 thread capable. Cubase will do 32 without stressing these days as will Reaper. Reaper has the distinction of being the one package that doesn't completely brick it when you go over 32 threads in fact. I think that they would probably advise against it as there is some incremental performance loss as you go above that figure, but out of all them, they are probably the most solid on a 40 thread if that's what you have to hand.
Apratim wrote: ↑Tue May 28, 2019 7:05 am
thunderbolt ...... i think thats a intel owed stuff .... you will need a separate pcie card for that
And a board that supports it, normally via a dedicated physical header.
Linus seems to be excited:
