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Ryzen 5000 series - Unfreaken Believable in CbB

Bill Ruys

By Bill Ruys
in Cakewalk by BandLab

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Bill Ruys

Bill Ruys

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I just replaced my Ryzen 3900X (12 core) with the new 5900X (12 core) and I simply can't believe the results in CbB.

I have a Motu 896 Mk3 and I always thought that this audio interface was the weak link in my chain when it came to running at ultra low latency.  Having swapped in the 5900X, I am running at 64 samples in the ASIO panel and I have a test project with about 28 tracks.  I have loaded up hundreds (not kidding) of heavy plugins including a truck load of reverbs, and I just can't get a single crackle or glitch.  I never realised just how key the CPU was with regard to low latency performance.  My 3900X would be cracking and/or the audio engine would have stalled out long ago, but this 5900X just wont quit.  I finally had to give up adding plug-ins as my mouse finger was literally cramping up.  Content creators may be getting 20% more out of the 5000 series compared to the 3000 series, but I am getting way, way more than that.  Audio would break up on the 3000 series well before the load on the CPU was very high.  The latency changes they made which have apparently improved game performance (I wouldn't know, I'm not a gamer), seem to have really paid off for low latency audio too.

Jim Roseberry mentioned that AMD had finally solved the ultra-low latency issue.  I would take it a step further and say that they have smashed the problem out the ball park and this current generation of 5000 series chips is now outperforming comparable Intel chips for DAW use.

I read the thread "Potential CPU otimisation for Ryzen CPUs", but what I'm seeing is just so solid and the performance is so good, it's like, what's left to optimise?  This is the best DAW upgrade I have made in years.  I am so thrilled!

If you have a previous generation Ryzen set-up and a motherboard that will support the 5000 series, do yourself a favour and upgrade - the difference is just incredible.

Bill.

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MediaGary

MediaGary

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9 hours ago, Bill Ruys said:

I just replaced my Ryzen 3900X (12 core) with the new 5900X (12 core) and I simply can't believe the results in CbB.

Please tell me a little more:

  • What RAM speed and latency and motherboard (e.g. 3200-C16, X570) ?
  • Are you using the Firewire or the USB of the MOTU 896 Mk3 ?
  • Which release of Win10 are you using?
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Bill Ruys

Bill Ruys

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On 12/8/2020 at 9:27 AM, MediaGary said:

Please tell me a little more:

  • What RAM speed and latency and motherboard (e.g. 3200-C16, X570) ?
  • Are you using the Firewire or the USB of the MOTU 896 Mk3 ?
  • Which release of Win10 are you using?
  • RAM is 3200, CL16
  • Motherboard is MSI MAG X570 Tomahawk WiFi
  • I have the MOTU 896 Mk3 hybrid, so I can use either USB or Firewire - currently using Firewire via a Texas Instruments based PCIe card
  • Windows 10 release 20H2
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MediaGary

MediaGary

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On 12/10/2020 at 4:28 AM, Bill Ruys said:
  • RAM is 3200, CL16
  • Motherboard is MSI MAG X570 Tomahawk WiFi
  • I have the MOTU 896 Mk3 hybrid, so I can use either USB or Firewire - currently using Firewire via a Texas Instruments based PCIe card
  • Windows 10 release 20H2

I'm back with two  questions:

  • Did you happen to run the LatencyMon tool by Resplendence on your former 3900X?
  • Can you run LatencyMon for 7 or 10 minutes on this new 5900X?

https://www.resplendence.com/downloads

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Bill Ruys

Bill Ruys

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3 hours ago, MediaGary said:

I'm back with two  questions:

  • Did you happen to run the LatencyMon tool by Resplendence on your former 3900X?
  • Can you run LatencyMon for 7 or 10 minutes on this new 5900X?

https://www.resplendence.com/downloads

Yes, I had run the LatencyMon tool on the 3900X.  I never saw any issues with high DPC latency.  I will run it on my 5900X, but to be honest, I don't expect to see much of a difference.  I don't think the issue with the 3900X was due to deferred procedure calls, it was internal CPU latency which doesn't necessarily show up as DPC latency.

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Bill Ruys

Bill Ruys

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I don't think there are many X570/B550 boards out there with thunderbolt built in.  My MSI motherboard has the thunderbolt header, which is even named in the manual.  I erroneously assumed that this meant it would support the MSI thunderbolt add-on card, which includes the cable that connects to this header.  Unfortunately it doesn't work, as it's not supported in BIOS.

I can't remember the models, but when I first looked, only a couple of the top-end AMD boards supported thunderbolt.  That said, there is so little thunderbolt in the AMD ecosystem, good luck getting support if something doesn't work.  If I was really after a thunderbolt solution, I would still go Intel at this stage.

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anon16384

anon16384

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I can say that I didn't have latency problems or any problems for that matter using  Cakewalk with 3900X (Asus Prime X570-P, 64Gb 3666-16-16-16 ), everything worked just fine. Ryzen systems may need some fine tuning, thats all. Now I got 5950X, which maxes at 5075 GHz and have even less problems  ;-) 

Anyway, the difference in performance between Zen2 and Zen3 is really mindblowing, that's for sure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Tobias

Tobias

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On 12/7/2020 at 11:57 AM, Bill Ruys said:

If you have a previous generation Ryzen set-up and a motherboard that will support the 5000 series, do yourself a favour and upgrade - the difference is just incredible.

 

I would say don't upgrade unless you are having any issues :) 

I love the fact you are having such a great result from your upgrade and its comforting to know that tech is improving so if/when there is a need for an upgrade there are actually good ones out there and that are worth while. That said, I think the vast majority of users do very well with Cakewalk ( and other DAW's I am sure ) on very modest setups. Most computers these days are very powerful, even the "weaker" and older ones.   In the words of Spiderman ""With great power comes great responsibility",  given too much power there is the risk that developers get sloppy/lazy and write code that is not optimized or efficient requiring ever more resources.

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Kevin Walsh

Kevin Walsh

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On 12/17/2020 at 4:37 AM, Tobias said:

I would say don't upgrade unless you are having any issues :) 

I love the fact you are having such a great result from your upgrade and its comforting to know that tech is improving so if/when there is a need for an upgrade there are actually good ones out there and that are worth while. That said, I think the vast majority of users do very well with Cakewalk ( and other DAW's I am sure ) on very modest setups. Most computers these days are very powerful, even the "weaker" and older ones.   In the words of Spiderman ""With great power comes great responsibility",  given too much power there is the risk that developers get sloppy/lazy and write code that is not optimized or efficient requiring ever more resources.

?

No way!

I am in the Always Upgrade Always camp, which is imho vastly superior to the "Always use obsolete hardware in a futile attempt to get developers to write more efficient code" camp.  Faster is always better. Always. 

I will certainly update my 3950X to a 5950X after the holidays. The IPC and clock improvements are simply to great to ignore.

Edited by Kevin Walsh
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Bill Ruys

Bill Ruys

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On 12/17/2020 at 11:37 PM, Tobias said:

I would say don't upgrade unless you are having any issues :) 

I love the fact you are having such a great result from your upgrade and its comforting to know that tech is improving so if/when there is a need for an upgrade there are actually good ones out there and that are worth while. That said, I think the vast majority of users do very well with Cakewalk ( and other DAW's I am sure ) on very modest setups. Most computers these days are very powerful, even the "weaker" and older ones.   In the words of Spiderman ""With great power comes great responsibility",  given too much power there is the risk that developers get sloppy/lazy and write code that is not optimized or efficient requiring ever more resources.

I guess my answer to this is that AMD always had a disadvantage at low latency, meaning that against an intel chip of otherwise much lower specification, the AMD would not perform as well.  That's why I say if you have the motherboard that will support it, the 5000 serious is a seriously good upgrade.

On the other hand, if you don't care about low latency performance, and for sure, not everyone does, then I agree, you can probably stick with what you have.  For me, I can now monitor at extremely low latency without ever having to bump up the latency with any project I am ever likely to create, regardless of track count or plug-in count - this is a huge advantage over my last AMD CPU and actually makes this a fantastic value proposition for me.   I don't need outboard gear or the likes of a UAD accelerator card to get near-zero latency performance with all the FX on all the time, as I can now do it 100% native with no down-side at all.  It really is a giant leap in performance over my last CPU.  It's the best bang for buck I have had in many years.

Anyone, like me, that already had a supporting motherboard, RAM, etc. only has to upgrade one component to get a serious uplift in DAW performance.  That's why I added that qualifier.  If you already have a good intel-based system, there's not as big a driver to change anything.

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Bill Ruys

Bill Ruys

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On 12/16/2020 at 7:27 AM, anon16384 said:

I can say that I didn't have latency problems or any problems for that matter using  Cakewalk with 3900X (Asus Prime X570-P, 64Gb 3666-16-16-16 ), everything worked just fine. Ryzen systems may need some fine tuning, thats all. Now I got 5950X, which maxes at 5075 GHz and have even less problems  ;-) 

Anyway, the difference in performance between Zen2 and Zen3 is really mindblowing, that's for sure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My 3900X would start to choke if I set my MOTU 896 Mk3 Hybrid to 64 samples and loaded up a large number of FX and virtual instruments.  I had two choices - bump up the buffers and deal with higher latency, or disable of freeze a bunch of FX/instruments.  Making absolutely no other changes and dropping in the 5900X, this issue was completely resolved and I can push the same system much, much harder than I ever could with the 3900X with absolutely zero problems.  The 3900X would always start crackling and popping well before the CPU was really loaded very much.  With the 5900X I can literally load up hundreds of FX, get the CPU utilisation high, and get not even a hint of a crackle or pop, all at the lowest latency supported by the interface.  It's night and day.  I finally have the performance I have always hoped for.

EDIT:
Let me make it clear - I wasn't ever running into issues with not enough CPU horse power, it's that my audio would start to crackle long before I got to the upper limits of CPU utilisation.  The difference now is that I can keep on adding FX, pushing the CPU utilisation higher and higher, and I don't get the crackle at very low latency anymore.  It always seemed weird to me that I was getting crackle with the CPU at only 20%.  Now I'm actually getting all the performance I paid for - Same motherboard, same RAM, same graphics card, same Windows installation - I only swapped out the CPU.

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Tobias

Tobias

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On 12/18/2020 at 7:08 PM, Kevin Walsh said:

?

No way!

I am in the Always Upgrade Always camp, which is imho vastly superior to the "Always use obsolete hardware in a futile attempt to get developers to write more efficient code" camp.  Faster is always better. Always. 

I will certainly update my 3950X to a 5950X after the holidays. The IPC and clock improvements are simply to great to ignore.

That is fair, but I find that for some reason increases in clock speed of my CPU does not hold a linear relationship to the quality of the music I am able to write :) Faster is good, but faster is often not needed.  There is a happy medium between totally obsolete  and brand spanking new hot off the presses at AMD and Intel. 

 

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Tobias

Tobias

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On 12/19/2020 at 10:05 AM, Bill Ruys said:

I guess my answer to this is that AMD always had a disadvantage at low latency, meaning that against an intel chip of otherwise much lower specification, the AMD would not perform as well.  That's why I say if you have the motherboard that will support it, the 5000 serious is a seriously good upgrade.

On the other hand, if you don't care about low latency performance, and for sure, not everyone does, then I agree, you can probably stick with what you have.  For me, I can now monitor at extremely low latency without ever having to bump up the latency with any project I am ever likely to create, regardless of track count or plug-in count - this is a huge advantage over my last AMD CPU and actually makes this a fantastic value proposition for me.   I don't need outboard gear or the likes of a UAD accelerator card to get near-zero latency performance with all the FX on all the time, as I can now do it 100% native with no down-side at all.  It really is a giant leap in performance over my last CPU.  It's the best bang for buck I have had in many years.

Anyone, like me, that already had a supporting motherboard, RAM, etc. only has to upgrade one component to get a serious uplift in DAW performance.  That's why I added that qualifier.  If you already have a good intel-based system, there's not as big a driver to change anything.

You make valid points, I was only half serious with my post. Of course, if the setup used is causing any kinds of latency issues an upgrade is most definitely warranted. I never used AMD but it is a good thing they apparently are catching up, more competition is usually a good thing for us end users. ?

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Mark Nicholson

Mark Nicholson

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22 hours ago, Tobias said:

That is fair, but I find that for some reason increases in clock speed of my CPU does not hold a linear relationship to the quality of the music I am able to write :)

True dat. Money spent on equipment rarely has a correlation to the quality of the music produced. But it is fun, in and of itself.

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