config:
- i9 7980xe @2600MHz (no overclocking)
- 32gb RAM (@1333MHz, quad channel (4x8gb))
- Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 USB2 audio interface
- Windows 10 pro 64bit
time until dropouts and "Computer too slow" message:
complex:
1:16m 64 samples (dropouts starting at 0:30)
1:20m 128 samples (dropouts starting at 0:30)
1:20m 512 samples (dropouts starting at 0:35)
1:21m 1024 samples (dropouts starting at 1:20)
fxchain:
2:06m 64 samples (dropouts starting at ~0:19, lots of them at ~0:28)
1:49m 128 samples (dropouts starting at ~0:22, lots of them at ~0:35)
1:33m 256 samples (dropouts starting at 0:48, lots of them at ~1:00)
1:18m 512 samples (no dropouts)
1:18m 1024 samples (no dropouts)
notes:
- max. 181W total measured at wall socket
- max. CPU Temperate 45°C
- max. 98W for CPU (according to IA Suite 3)
- "balanced" OS power plan
- OS optimized for background services
- bios: cstates off (except for c1..)
- bios: hyperthreading off
- bios: turbomode off
- sample rate set to 44.1kHz
- Reason CPU usage limit set to 95%
I've only had this PC for a few days now and it has massive overclocking potential.
There's one user here who has an i9 OC'd to 5GHz, would be interesting to see the benchmark results on that machine (and the power consumption
).
One thing that is really astonishing about this CPU is how efficient it is.
In a regular "office"-like usage scenario, the whole system consumes ~125W (~45W for the CPU, ~36W with all cstates enabled, 7W for the whole system when it's sleeping, ~38°C CPU temperature under normal load).
When compiling large projects (I am also using this for software development), power consumption goes up to ~140W (~42°C CPU temperature), and the build times are actually 4 times shorter than on my previous machine.
When it comes to audio production, I think you're currently better off with a fast 8 (or maybe 10) core CPU, since the software (tested with Reason+Reaper) is apparently not able to fully utilize all cores properly -- also see my other comments in
my post in the Reason 8.1 benchmark thread.
Last but not least, these benchmarking "games" should always be taken with a big grain of salt:
As you can see, audio dropouts are usually starting long before the "too slow" message, and at least as far as I am concerned, I want near-realtime performance since I usually arrange+modulate things "live" (using my custom made sequencer + Reason as a soundgenerator+tape recorder).
After seeing the somewhat disappointing multi-core utilization in both Reason and Reaper, I'm very eager to see what a VST host that's been specifically optimized for many-core CPUs will be able to accomplish (currently working on it and have so far tested it with more than 400 different plugins). I _hope_ that it will be able to run 14..16 instances of Diva but we'll see
Don't get me wrong: Reason is quite capable of multi-core rendering, it only gets problematic when single tracks/combinators exceed ~4 CPU bars.
It's quite possible to run a large amount of moderately heavy synths like Respire, eXpanse, Diva, Bazille, etc on this machine (tested with up to 16 instances of Respire).
My old PC (i7 4770k) could not run more than 3..