Before I start, this is not a cpu war this is a genuine question. I have used AMD for many many years and both are good for general use and gaming. My question is… What do you use and does AMD hyperthreading cause audio glitches? I was transfering some data a few week ago whilst playing my guitar through Scuffham and the audio was cutting out but still registered on the volume display of Scuffham. I have 16gb ram and the hdd is brand new and my cpu is AMD FX 8350. The audio processor is the Eleven Rack. Now is my cpu limiting me? Am I trying to find an excuse to upgrade? Or should I bite the bullet and go Intel or Mac? I am at the stage where pc gaming is not important since I’m really happy with console gaming.
Hi,
I’m not a Windows (PC) expert. But from the companies they built a computers for a studios I know, they are strictly using Intel.
Myself I would recommend a Mac.
Well, if you have an FX 8350 there isn’t really a worthwhile upgrade path for you on that platform. You’ll be better off buying a new system at that point. I’d say though that realtime low latency processing and dumping a bunch of data doesn’t sound like a great combination. If you’re willing to troubleshoot you could look into how data is routed on the motherboard. It’s sometimes possible to run a bunch of data through the same paths and that may saturate some buses. If for example your input is USB, and your drives are accessing the same path on the motherboard, the same controller or whatever, you might be out of luck. But simply moving things around sometimes help.
As for Intel or AMD I’d say just look at what the performance data shows on Scan’s website (Scan Audio, benchmarks “DAWbench”) for respective chips. My hunch is that the overall best value is the intel 8700K, whereas below that you’ll find better value AMD chips. At the top Intel is king, but you’re also talking like $1,500 bucks for a chip, or whatever it is. Once you drop to around $800 down to slightly above the 8700K I’m guessing that AMD again is the better choice.
AMD will have new chips in about a month, on the Threadripper platform, and that may push some of their pricing down which would make for better values.
I’m personally running a Ryzen 7 1700 overclocked to 3.7GHz on all cores, memory at 3200MHz, and it’s running very well with Nuendo. Mind you: I have not pushed that system to the limit yet, so it’s possible I run into an issue if I load up some very large sessions. But so far it’s been great.
There’s a thread on Gearslutz.com in the “computer” section, a thread about building a PC. Check that thread for recommendations (start at the end and read ‘backwards’).
After a long debate with myself I had to bite the bullet and go with Intel. New motherboard is ordered along with 16gb ddr4. Cpu will be bought later on but I will be going with the i7 8700. Scan website gave me a great insight on what works best for a workstation. 8700 and 8700k seemed to be top overall for my price range. Since I’m not wanting to overclock I’m saving a few pound by getting the standard cpu. Maybe in the future I might upgrade the gpu and have a nice system that does everything.