Which is better for music production

[T on Y]

If ive understood the countless DAW videos I've watched on YT then More cores is better if your composing Orchestral or Hybrid orchestral music and Single core speed is much more important for  other types of music 

Am I right in assuming the I5 is the better option (I generally write songs in the 'Any other type of music' category 

i5-13500 Processor, 14 P Cores , 6 E Cores,  Pcore Base Frequency  2.5 GHz

i7-12700 Processor, 6 P Cores,  8 Ecores, PCore Base Frequency  2.1 Ghz

[Jim Roseberry]

What you ideally want is highest clock-speed *and* highest core count.

What you don't want is more cores... at the expense of significant clock-speed.

Xeon CPUs have many cores... but significantly slower clock-speed that standard CPUs.  They're terrible for DAW purposes (by comparison).

[Glenn Stanton]

another factor - amount of memory per core - my general guideline (from the enterprise application world) is 2GB per core - so 16 core -> 32GB RAM. at a bare minimum, 1GB per core. while the schedulers will still be swapping things, having a minimum amount per core (typically) means less time spent re-loading memory because its somewhat "p/reserved", rather than being pushed onto virtual memory or un/re/loaded due to memory constraints.

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

Instructions per clock are usually more important than clock speed. Also, Intel's hybrid CPU architecture can only be used efficiently if you use Windows 11.

[Jim Roseberry]

2 hours ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

Instructions per clock are usually more important than clock speed. Also, Intel's hybrid CPU architecture can only be used efficiently if you use Windows 11.

IPC is important... but you can't ignore the importance of high clock-speed.

ie:

• 7950x slightly bests the 13900k in IPC
• However, 13900k bests the 7950x in both single-core and multi-core performance (due to achieving higher clock-speed)

[Jim Roseberry]

I should also add that 12th and 13th Gen CPUs run fine under Win10.

The problem (now) with Win10 is that Microsoft has broken the ability to disable CPU core parking.

There's currently no way to disable it (if running 12th/13th Gen CPUs).

Otherwise, there's little difference in performance.  The new thread-scheduler in Win11 doesn't make a massive difference.

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

9 hours ago, Jim Roseberry said:

IPC is important... but you can't ignore the importance of high clock-speed.

ie:

• 7950x slightly bests the 13900k in IPC
• However, 13900k bests the 7950x in both single-core and multi-core performance (due to achieving higher clock-speed)

The only thing which differentiates those two in boost clock is 1 MHz assuming you have a binned SKU which boosts up to the reported frequency. Performance wise, they're equivalent. Intel usually performs  best in gaming while AMD performs best at productivity stuff and data decompression at least in 7zip, where it is 27% faster than the 13900K.

[Jim Roseberry]

17 hours ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

The only thing which differentiates those two in boost clock is 1 MHz assuming you have a binned SKU which boosts up to the reported frequency. Performance wise, they're equivalent. Intel usually performs  best in gaming while AMD performs best at productivity stuff and data decompression at least in 7zip, where it is 27% faster than the 13900K.

I've tested the 7950x and 13900k side by side (extensively).

The 7950x can't get more than one simultaneous core at Max Turbo.

That's why the 13900k bests it in nearly all scenarios. 

All you have to do is look at Cinebench R23 multi-core test results:

• 13900k is over 40k
• 7950x is 38k

 

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

2 hours ago, Jim Roseberry said:

I've tested the 7950x and 13900k side by side (extensively).

The 7950x can't get more than one simultaneous core at Max Turbo.

That's why the 13900k bests it in nearly all scenarios. 

All you have to do is look at Cinebench R23 multi-core test results:

• 13900k is over 40k
• 7950x is 38k

 

Synthetic benchmarks are not reflective of real life usage scenarios. While it is fun to look at Gamers Nexus and other guys and fetishize over charts and testing, in practice, you're not gonna even notice those performance differences. This video illustrates my point well:

 

[Jim Roseberry]

FWIW, I don't need to watch a YouTube video to tell me about DAW performance.

I've been doing this professionally for 30 years.

ie: I was professionally building DAWs when the guy in the above video was born.

 

Cinebench R23 is a quick/easy way to gauge multi-core performance.

It's based on Cinema 4D (3D modeling and animation).

That's not a synthetic benchmark in the realm of Passmark/etc.

 

Both the 7950x and 13900k can run IK's ToneX at 96k using a 16-sample ASIO buffer size.

If the audio interface can go that low, that translates to ~0.5ms total round-trip latency.

I'm in no way saying 7950x performance is bad/poor.

What I am saying is that the 7950x is slightly more expensive... for slightly lower performance (vs 13900k).

Edited June 5, 2023 by Jim Roseberry

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

3 hours ago, Jim Roseberry said:

FWIW, I don't need to watch a YouTube video to tell me about DAW performance.

I've been doing this professionally for 30 years.

ie: I was professionally building DAWs when the guy in the above video was born.

The video is not about DAW performance. You'd know it if you actually watched the video instead of massaging your own ego with all that badge flashing.

[Jim Roseberry]

6 hours ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

The video is not about DAW performance. You'd know it if you actually watched the video instead of massaging your own ego with all that badge flashing.

Uhh... I don't recall saying the video was talking about DAW specific performance.  I'm saying I don't have to watch someone else's video to extrapolate/gauge DAW performance.  I've done extensive testing with both.  I'm quite aware of his and other YouTube videos.

If you actually spent time/resources directly comparing the two CPUs (vs reading and watching YouTube), you'd be directly aware of the differences.

 

AMD has slightly better IPC.

Intel manages to achieve higher turbo frequency across multiple cores.

 

The 7950x is a great performer.

The 13900k (for most purposes - including DAW) slightly outperforms the 7950x... and costs slightly less.

Edited June 5, 2023 by Jim Roseberry