Non K BCLK on i5 6500s

[dawman]

Just finished testing 2 new PCs I designed and had built.
The purpose was to have a large Orchestral Instrument DAW for recording dense compositions.
Heres the parts lists.

#1) Coolermaster N200 w/ 650 watt PSU and 240mm Radiator
Supermicro C7H170 mATX w/ i5 6500
64GBs DDR4 2400
Samsung 950 Pro NVMe M.2 512GB
2 x MyDigitalSSD 256GB Slim 7 SSDs
Windows 10 Pro
EVGA Dual Port GFX

#2) Coolermaster N200 w/ 650 watt PSU & 240mm Radiator
ASRock Z170m Extreme 4 w/ i5 6500
64GBs DDR4 2400
Samsung 950 Pro NVMe M.2 512GB
2 x MyDigitalSSD 256GB Slim 7 SSDs
Windows 10 Pro
EVGA Dual Port GFX

Using 125MHz as a base clock the 3.2GHz CPUs run @ 4.0GHz
Both PCs work with XITE-1 and stream PLAY 4.3.2 & Kontakt 5.5.1.

Fastest DAWs I ever used.
Skip the 64GBs of RAM and build one of these for 1450.

Skip the 64GBs go with 32GBs and no NVMe M.2 for 1200.

Actually used BLCK for a 4.5GHz but 1.3volts is too much IMHO.

Anyone using Omnisphere 2.1 can load Dual Live Mode with no progress bar.
Zebra2 HZ with Dual Diva Filters usually restricted to low poly at full tilt.

I get an incredible sounding overdriven guitar with power chords/ leads and 2-3 note voicings
and Dual Diva Filter wah-wah now.
Wasn't possible on my i7 4790 @ 3.9GHz.

So anyone wanting a super fast quad core, these Dogs will hunt.

[tlaskows]

I don't know.

I did some research and it would cost me a lot of money to replace my old 4770k @ 4.6GHz with not much of a speed improvement...

BTW, those m.2 drives are not faster in any way than SATA drives. I can't find specs on any m.2 drive that is faster than an SSD sata drive. I think they are meant for laptops. No idea why they're putting these slots on desktops.

-Tom

[dawman]

No need to upgrade but at least you can buy 2 x CPUs for less than the cost of 1 if youre looking to upgrade from older Ivy Bridge or Bloomfield i7s.

NVMe blows away SATA III SSDs by a wide margin.
If you use PLAY the voice counts and amount of instruments and mic positions are easily doubled.
Check out SSD Review.
They do some video streaming and gaming tests but real world tests are streaming samples randomly.
SATA III has 80k random iops.
NVMe M.2s are 330k...4 times the amount.

But I believe ASIO deficincies are the new bottleneck.
To overcome that sloppy code in Windows audio needs its own operating system with reduced instruction sets like RISC or even DSP for that matter.

This rig was built as a Master PC DAW with 2 x PC Slaves using VEPro networking.
The Ferrofish A32 will be a big help too.
Anxious to see what the ADSP-423B9 will add.

I basically want the ability to use in real time what most composers have to bounce before rendering to do for Movie Score mock ups.

I agree that Kontakt is just fine on SATA III SSDs but VSL, PLAY and heavily scripted Native sample playback instruments need at least a pair of RAID 0 SATA III SSDs to do what I want to do.

Read up on Junkie XL.
Does a few things in the film industry but uses 6 x 128GB DAWgs that make mine look like puppies and kittens.

Trust me Id rather spend my money on discrete audio hardware.
But pretty much need this to get started.

[tlaskows]

Ahh! Cool,

I have 2 of those m.2 drives in my Asus notebooks, but I don't think they're the fancy ones you're talking about. Yes, the IOPS will make a HUGE difference. My old crucial on the desktop PC is 80,000 IOPS (I just looked it up) and that is an older, cheaper drive.

Is there a way you can run Sisoft Sandra on one of those builds (processor arithmetic). I just want to compare the flops. I believe most audio software uses floating point. The numbers will tell me if it's worth upgrading some time in the future.

Cheers!

-Tom

[tlaskows]

Actually, answered my own question. This chip is about the same speed as my overclocked 4770k...

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sky ... 252-7.html

-Tom

[Nestor]

This is wonderful Jimmy, 64GB or Ram, they must be incredible capable systems!

Tlaskows, you should watch this short and extremely well explained video, it will explain you the basics:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opwON-7J_wI

[tlaskows]

Aye Nestor. I don't need my SSDs any faster. We got my friend an all in one and replaced the hard drive with 1TB EVO 850 SSD. When he clicks 'sleep' he has to be careful not to move the mouse at all or the computer wakes up right away! Isn't that fast enough? IOPS are good for random reads and writes. If you're just working on a bunch of larger files, this 1000,000 IOPS won't make any difference. My Macbook 2012 has an SSD. Boots up in about 10 seconds and it doesn't use m.2.

What I am really curios about and I did some research today is a faster chip. But just to get double the performance of my chip that was around 400$ CAD I would need to spend 1500$. I don't see how this makes sense

Cheers,

-Tom

[Nestor]

BTW: with my GB Z97X UD5H BK, I can reach up to 10GB speed in an M.2 drive.

[tlaskows]

10 GB? that's impossible. Do you mean gigabit?

[dawman]

How's that SM951 Nestor...?

I still have a pair in my Z97 that are NVMe.
The one you have is AHCI but still 1.2GBps @ 110k IOps and great for anything audio.
Very rare since they are Lenovo OEMs RAM City had. They bought a boatload before Samsung changed course.

Again these M.2 NVMe devices are just insanely fast and basically make PLAY/VSL and highly scripted sample apps snappy as a turtle.
Not needed for basic Kontakt streaming or Gigastudio for those still in the last century.
For apps that have 24-48 voice poly per note and 7 mic positions they are a lifesaver.

If I were looking to get a fast bad ass chip, the i5s and even i3s using BCLK are a great value.

But word is that Xeons will now be able to use BLCK in certain tier 1 BIOSs coming out this spring.
So these big multiple PC VEPro rigs are going to probably start using 4.5GHz 128GB RAM DAWgs....

[tlaskows]

The question is, can your new chip beat my 3 year old 400$ CAD chip?

Mine is the red one:

This shows you how fast the chip can crunch numbers both in integer and floating point.



I did research and this was the best chip I have ever put money into...

Cheers,

-Tom

[dante]

But I believe ASIO deficincies are the new bottleneck. To overcome that sloppy code in Windows audio needs its own operating system with reduced instruction sets like RISC or even DSP for that matter.

ASIO is an old bottleneck - it has bogged our systems down for years. I use zero ASIO for mixing, only mastering and a couple of Scope synths, which brings my system ASIO count down to about 4 (stereo) channels. This allows me to run 80 channel mixes natively (mixed audio, virtual instruments, samplers & effects rack extensions) and Scope mastering @ 96KHz at 1ms latency & CPU rarely over 50%.

System could handle nothing like this when ASIO was involved in the mix stage.

Has anyone else tested mixing in native then just sending the full mix via ASIO to XITE (as compared to sending every channel via ASIO to Scope for mixing) ?

@Dawman, you running at 96Khz yeah ?

[dawman]

No 64 samples @ 48k / 1.2 msec. ASIO Duplexed.
Routing Native apps. & hardware FX Hardware synths into Scope mixing is my bag. BC Modular & SAL patches and devices handle DSP FX &MIDI.

The i5s are not the fastest chips.
Just the cheapest fastest quads @ 170 bucks for 4.5ghz......

My revenge on Intel is now complete.
My dream is to never buy another iLok or Micro$oft product again.....

[tlaskows]

Aye Dawman. That's a good bank for the buck for the chip, but my chip is old and will destroy those i5s. I know that they don't make mine anymore. I was just at the computer store and those new ones sell for a bit less than the older i7s.

Cheers,

-Tom

[yayajohn]

What about WASAPI? Has there been any significant improvement on that for Windows 10?

[Nestor]

The M.2 you gently past me over Jimmy, works really great. It does in seconds what I used to do in several minutes. All of the editing you may do in audio is done faster in a Samsung M.2 of this kind, than in a normal HDD. Now, there are operation in which this little friend exceeds, and others in which they are not as fast as you would expect, but faster than a normal HDD Sata 7200, always.

I have added the windows cache to it too, and it really helps in making your whole system faster.

Jimmy, I remember you when you just came here into the forum for the first time, and you didn’t know much about technology, I am surprised at how much you know now, you are always aware of the latest technology and the best deals, and you are able to explain it to us, when you needed before for us to explain it to you. How the hell do you do it? I don’t know, but it seems to work for you, may it be a lot of reading, the company that supplies the goodies, or a friend.

Tlaskows, I don’t know if this answers your question, but this is the info on my motherboard:

http://ar.gigabyte.com/products/product ... d=4978#ovç

[tlaskows]

That's a very nice mobo for sure! Are you from Argentina? I work with someone that's from there and few other people all over the place.

I had to click translate on Chrome to convert the page to English.

BTW, I turned Hyper Threading back on and I gained about 40% in integer and floating point performance, hmm...

Cheers,

-Tom

[dawman]

GaryB use to fly to Vegas and build DAWs for me.
I watched I learned and stopped breastfeeding about 5 years ago.
Lots of reading and lots of building.
But I only know about my apps and what works best.
What you notice most on that M.2 you have is transaction time from ultra low latency....

Glad you like it.

And tlaskows I know your chip is a bad mofo.
I had i7 3770k i7 4770k and i7 4790k.
The only reason I opted to retire them is from excessive heat in my 1U Chassis.
I had to keep TDP below 99 watts and still have the HD4000 GFX.

My latest 1U that actually outperforms the 4770/90k is the i7 5775C.
Like the old Alpha CPUs pre AMD, it has a massive L4 cache of 128MBs called Crystal Well
that can be used for non GFX chores.
I can get better polyphony and several more instances of Native FX like Satin from u-He.
It runs @ 65 watts & 3.3ghz. Beats my i7s and i5s in all native tasks.
Its rare and probably will be discontinued.
Its my main recording DAW PC.

The i5s are for live work since they use Bidule to host 4 fast cores without the excessive threads which I never use and cannot disable.
I use 2 x native synths that are not multicore and thats why the i5s are so good.
Hyperthreading and multicore, turbo boost, EIST, Speed stepping just slow me down when gigging.
Also on the NVMe device is Omnispheres Steam Folder (samples).
On regular SATA III SSDs and i7s OMNI takes a couple seconds to load dual live mode patches.
On the i5 with NVMe you dont even see the yellow progress bar.

Different strokes for different folks....

Be fruitful and multiply...
Strength & Honor....
Cheerz.....
Tippers......

[tlaskows]

Yes, for sure Dawman. I will never play live. I don't even have time for music much. But things will slow down eventually and I will lay down some tracks

Actually, wait! I used to play live --- but it was a clarinet in high school. I was very good at it until I learned how to program a synth

Cheers,

-Tom

[dawman]

Damn I just realized Ive been here 10 years.......