Audio PC: worth the upgrade?

[krass76]

Hello,

I am currently looking into upgrading my 2600k based system or whether it would even be worth it.

I run it at 4.5GHz, which seems to be my chip's brick wall of efficient overclocking. Can't remember the voltage but it was sub 1.4V so that's fine. No turboboost, no speedstep, no HyperThreading, nothing. They only cause problems.

The rest of the system are: GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3, 16GB 1.6GHz Corsair Vengeance LP, a Crucial MX200 256GB, one old WD Black 1TB, a new 4TB HGST coolspin drive, a LSI FW634 Firewire 800 card (for my RME Fireface800), a SuperFlower Leadex 550W and an Antec One Hundred, deck'd with sound absorption foam. The only fans used are an NF-A14 and one NF-F12. CPU barely touches 70°C in LinPack.

I produce music on the machine (Bitwig+ tons of VST instruments and even more tons of VST effects, everything at 88200/24), in stereo so a quadcore is currently all that's needed. Also, I run XUbuntu in a non-oracle *wink* *wink* VM for internet stuff, my Windows has to stay clean and I can simply pause the VM whenever I open Bitwig. The heaviest gaming I do on here is TF2@720p lol. Monitor is 1920x1200, plan on buying a second soon.

 

If I were to upgrade to a 6700K with decent ram (3.2GHz, CL14), would there be significantly more performance for my audio stuff? Because as it is, no matter the buffer size on the FireFace, my CPU touches only 60% in TSKMGR when I max out the DSP-load inside Bitwig. Seems real time single threaded performance is of upmost importance. And from what I can tell from the Geekbench3 results, the 6700k at 5GHz really does shine here.

[Moonzy]

if you're fine with what you have, keep using it

save some $$ lol

 

unless time is important for you then maybe its worth the upgrade

[tt2468]

5 minutes ago, krass76 said:

Hello,

I am currently looking into upgrading my 2600k based system or whether it would even be worth it.

I run it at 4.5GHz, which seems to be my chip's brick wall of efficient overclocking. Can't remember the voltage but it was sub 1.4V so that's fine. No turboboost, no speedstep, no HyperThreading, nothing. They only cause problems.

The rest of the system are: GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3, 16GB 1.6GHz Corsair Vengeance LP, a Crucial MX200 256GB, one old WD Black 1TB, a new 4TB HGST coolspin drive, a LSI FW634 Firewire 800 card (for my RME Fireface800), a SuperFlower Leadex 550W and an Antec One Hundred, deck'd with sound absorption foam. The only fans used are an NF-A14 and one NF-F12. CPU barely touches 70°C in LinPack.

I produce music on the machine (Bitwig+ tons of VST instruments and even more tons of VST effects, everything at 88200/24), in stereo so a quadcore is currently all that's needed. Also, I run XUbuntu in a non-oracle *wink* *wink* VM for internet stuff, my Windows has to stay clean and I can simply pause the VM whenever I open Bitwig. The heaviest gaming I do on here is TF2@720p lol. Monitor is 1920x1200, plan on buying a second soon.

 

If I were to upgrade to a 6700K with decent ram (3.2GHz, CL14), would there be significantly more performance for my audio stuff? Because as it is, no matter the buffer size on the FireFace, my CPU touches only 60% in TSKMGR when I max out the DSP-load inside Bitwig. Seems real time single threaded performance is of upmost importance. And from what I can tell from the Geekbench3 results, the 6700k at 5GHz really does shine here.

You would probably be better off with a xeon. Instead of a 6700k, get a xeon e3-1230v5. It has hyperthreading, so you will get probably the same performance as your 2600k. 

[krass76]

well it's not so much about time but about how many VST-instruments and effects I can use simultaneously. I don't bounce often because I always keep reusing the same instrument later on with minor to major (ba-dum-tss, not really) changes to the melody and I often use reverbs that take a heavy performance hit and, if bounced and looped, produce clicks and stuff.

[krass76]

as for the Xeon: I did consider getting a Xeon but I need a high clock speed so the single-threaded performance is good. If the Xeon doesn't deliver more performance at the same clock speed in a single-threaded workload then there is no benefit to it if I can overclock the i7.

Also, hyperthreading is bad for real-time audio as it creates inconsistent latencies.
And I am not worried about energy efficiency either. My rent basically includes all-you-can-eat-electrical power.
My Mugen II being able to cool it silently is more important but I guess that should be similar to my 2600k anyways.