My current PC runs an i5-6600 and I use Cubase Elements 10.5. I’ve never had problems, however the current project I’m working on has a ton of high CPU vsts and it’s struggling to playback.
I’m not willing to do a full PC upgrade of motherboard etc, but have found some second hand CPUs which have the same socket as my current CPU, so upgrade would be fairly quick and painless.
So my question is, would Cubase benefit from upgrading to an i7-6700K from an i5-6600? The main advantage of this CPU would be hyper-threading, however I am not sure if Cubase utilises this. In fact, I believe it uses to run slower with hyper-threading, so just wondering if this would bring a performance boost.
According to Intel’s data pages the i7-6700K runs faster than the i5-6600. It’s a 7-8% difference in speed. It also has more cache memory.
Cubase uses hyper threading. There’s some restriction but I’m not sure it exists on quad cores. I think it’s only on CPUs with more cores.
Not sure how much such a CPU would cost you though, and given that it’s about half a decade old I have to wonder if buying one is a good use of money. Maybe it is.
All depends on how cheap you can get one for. My pc was older than yours. In fact I only bought another one recently as I was doing more video but it was fine with Cubase. I had a 920 i7 and bought a 960 for around £40. It made quite a difference as did the extra memory I got for a similar price. So I went from a 920 overclocked to 3.2gig to a 960 overclocked to 4gig. Both were safe over locks. Memory went from 6gig to 18gig. So for me the spend of about £80 gave me a couple more years. It would have been even longer if it wasn’t for working with video more.