What’s more it seems that I can’t get any more instances in DAW bench by raising the buffer size. Even at 2048 buffer it’s still under 130 instances in DAW bench, which is strange though. (My soundcard is a firewire, Focusrite Liquid Saffire 56).
You could potentially get more out of your system, replacing your soundcard with a PCIe RME card.
I would not go the AMD route, the poor low latency performance makes it not attractive for vsti use.
If you mostly mix, or don’t need good low latency performance in general the AMD cpus are fine.
The 8700k looks like the sweet spot, for me.
Btw the newer architecture of the 8700 makes it take less of a performance hit, regarding the Intel security patch, MS has implemented recently.
Yes I agree wholeheartedly, however, I’m reluctant to move to an internal card or even spend much money for a different card, as I’ve pretty much built my studio around the 56 with its mixer and plentitude of connections.
That’s why I’m keen to stick with Thunderbolt/FireWire for the time being, although it IS obviously not the best way to connect these days. I have always had big issues hooking it up either via Thunderbolt or FW, weird glitches and DPC latency issues aplenty. Even though I have the Focusrite-recommended Unibrain FW controller I have to run it with generic TexasInstrument compliant drivers. Even using the native Asus Thunderbolt connector which worked fine for graphics etc.I was experiencing all kinds of weirdness with the soundcard.
I think that’s a nonsensical description. AMD’s CPU’s low latency performance is neither poor nor not even good. They perform very well. The fact that Intel CPUs perform better doesn’t make AMD CPUs perform poorly.
If the performance was objectively poor, then the i7 7700 should always have been described as having “poor low latency performance”. I’ve never ever seen that though.
Now, even if “everything is relative”, you again have to consider just how big the difference is. But you can do that between any two CPUs, not only between Intel and AMD. So if relative performance tells us if a CPU performs poorly, then the i7 8700 performs poorly at low latencies (because it has about the same performance relative to the 7960 as the 1700x has to the 8700).
And that all means that it is indeed just a matter of if you need the voices when using VSTis at a very low performance.
I agree. If one spends exactly that amount of money it has no competition.
A reason I would not consider supporting Intel now is because of their CEO’s behavior, their past business practices, and also because I don’t want a CPU with this architectural ‘hole’, patched or not. But that’s purely personal of course.
I usually use a minimum of 512 buffer, quite often up to 2048K as the project gets bigger and bigger…and 6 second preload. Can’t record much anything otherwise without getting CPU dropouts, unless it’s an almost empty project with just a handful of tracks and effects at that point.
Yes poor is the wrong word, I was so hyped finally to go back and use AMD again that the disappointment of them not being what I had hoped for is clouding my judgement somewhat.
I’m toying with the idea getting one (AMD based computer) just to use as a mixing and recording rig.
Anyhow we are getting of topic, sorry for that.
Here the results for a really old machine - Q8400 @ 2,66 GHz - 8 gig - but with an ultramodern 128 gig ssd from the first generation.
result= 44,7 seconds to reach the 100%
In a moment, or i could maybe say within some more moments, i will bring in the results from the same machine on a 5200 RPM drive.
Then i will try it on a I7 4790s desktop replacer with some more juice.
I guess the resulst will be predictable, but it’s fun to do it so why not. 
that being said: i’m still uncertain about spectre and meltdown’s influence. It could be the reason that this rig is not on top of the list.
It’s insane how relatively good results even older machines can get. I actually have two E8400 machines in use every day as well as an about equal Xeon quad…and in a lot of tasks they work just as well as my newer machines. All have SSD drives though.
While it’s clear each new gen gives some 20 to 30% increase in speed overall the development over the last decade when it comes to CPU power is not really hugely impressive.
ok, result number 2, and this was an unexpected result…
System - same Q8400 - but on a standard harddrive - and ok, it was a cubase 5 without any updates on the OS.
Result: 43,5 sec 
Ok it is possible that this is a 7200 rpm. I just don’t remember, and yes it didn’t load the distortion plugin since it wasn’t installed on it.
and result number 3:
a clevo laptop i7 4790s with 16 gig and a bunch of ssd’s.
result: 18,2 sec
So i guess i’m slowly drifting out of the ranking just left behind with a rig that isn’t as flashy anymore as it once was… 
Hard drive doesn’t seem to affect export speed at all, at least on my system hard drive usage during playback and export is damn near zero at all times. It only matters when loading samples etc.and if the project is large enough to require swapping to HD.
that seems a correct statement, under the precondition that it uses the maximum offline processing power availeable without errors
but i’m fine with the system like it is. I really don’t notice those differences.
i know the market is harsh and they have to resell the product every time over and over again, but this kind of performance is too close to make any sensible difference to put a buy or sell decision on it.
In fact, i have spent a lot of money and time on learning about systems and for me the overall performance is the thing why i did pay more on those, not a benchmarking of one or more of the tasks. You do want to have a system that doesn’t give you headaches, red buttons flashing, stuttering, or anything else. So realtime performance is for me the most important thing. What does it do when i play with it.
Just wander the forum and see how many of those high end systems end up with… oooh it outperforms and i payed so much on it.
What you want is not the Ferrari that goes the fastest toward 100 mph but the Mercedes that brings your ideas to the top of the charts without having to deal with technical issues who just hinder your path towards it.
that being said… i find lighting on top or under the keys very important, certainly on a stage
Ryzen? Core i9? The UR22 MKII has drop-outs with my Phenom 4 core cpu, 12 GB RAM, SSD, Asus motherboard. And it shouldn’t. The thing is to make a driver that acually works, without any noise or drop-outs.
I had the Demo project for C9.5 open and did a few mixdowns @ 44.1kHz
Buffer set @ 256 samples 1m 08sec
Buffer set @ 4096 samples 0m 43sec
Not much difference but still a factor.
What? That’s a huge difference!
It took 37% less time to do the mixdown.
Yep that’d be very significant in any bigger project, could shave off minutes from the work.
Extremely interesting how badly a dual-xeon 12 core monster fares, which well goes to show how modern instruction sets and such are a much bigger improvement than is apparent in general use. Still would appear that a 8700K should be best bang for buck for Cubase use at the moment. Especially overclocked some.
Phenom 4 isn’t exactly a fast CPU.
I don’t entirely disagree, but “it depends”… In audio-post I have always used pretty generous buffer settings, 512 samples minimum. Why? Because I didn’t need any less. With my Lynx TWO-B I had no issues with drop-outs. But I also adapted my workflow to the capacity of the CPU, which used to be a Phenom Quad Core!
So, I think it’s fair to say that a good interface with a good driver should run fine on an older CPU - but - there are still limitations that you can’t get around. So without stating what your buffers are and what your project load is like saying that you have drop-outs doesn’t really tell us much at all.
Amen. My friend runs Cubase on an aeons old AMD dual-core Turion laptop which is slow as syrup just running windows. Nevertheless he manages to make 6-8 track mixes using GTR3 for guitar and bass and GrooveAgent for drums.
Of course he always needs to have most of the channels frozen and exports take a while but somehow he still manages. I would never have the patience, but it can be done.
Patience? Have you every tried splicing tapes to make edits or running through mixes with six people crammed round the console trying to “automate” the mix! People have forgotten how good they’ve got it these days!
Ahahah, yeah that all hands on console I do remember well and umphteen retries until even the drummer got his faders moved in time and sync 