Is there anybody having experience with a PC with more than 64GB RAM? Since I am working with bigger orchestral templates (Cubase 9 and VE PRO6) and I constantly have to watch RAM, I am thinking about changing the CPU. A slave PC would be another solution, but I usually prefer to put my money into one system, so that other software can profit from the upgrade, too. At the moment I am looking at a 6800k plus X99 motherboard. Only thing is that my current system, with the 6700k, beats the 6800k in some benchmarks (single core). Just in a Cubase benchmark the 6800k seems to be clearly superior:
I own a 6800K. You are right that the 6700K beats it in single core, but multicore wise, the 6800k is better. I’d recommend that you go for it because making music depends more on having more threads instead of having a better single core score (at least it is what I read in some forums, you should check it out yourself just in case). I leave you here my build.
I have a 24gb i7-960 system that is about 1/2 the speed and 1/4 the power of your 6700 setup. I run orchestral samples from RAM for heavily used instruments, and from Sata SSD for lightly used instruments. It’s a workable strategy, although I’m not into 100 tracks on any project yet. I’m getting ready to build a new system and I’m tempted to go the M2 route rather than piling on the RAM sticks. What is it…3 gigabytes a second or something off of M2? And M2 is cheaper than RAM. And think about it…no load times, and very low crash-to-recovery times.
Your m.2 throughput is going to depend on the platform though. The standard says that the socket / drive will output at most PCI-e 3.0 x4 lanes. That should be just below 4GB/second.
However, I think most Intel motherboards still run m.2 drives through their chipsets and not straight into the CPU. So this means that the m.2 drive will share a total of x4 lanes with everything else that’s connected to the chipset. Might be an issue, probably not. But still worth remembering.
(AMD’s AM4/TR4 sockets have m.2 drives connect x4 straight into the CPU, with free raid available on TR giving you completely insane bandwidth).
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