AM5, my bad this whole time that should have been X670E, and the other two rigs are b550.

It's been a while now, but I'm almost positive that I started it out at home running through a TB2 hub with HDMI out (because that's my normal at home rig that I use with the M1 MBA).

I'll report back asap...I'm almost positive it works with the apple adaptor, but I don't want to tell you the wrong thing...

My interface is actually an Antelope Discrete 4 Synergy Core (legacy version, not the new Pro version)

So not the most reliable drivers in the world. From what I've heard, RME are much better in that regard. Not sure how well the RME test will translate to Antelope-ville?

I've read somewhere that Antelope recommends using the Startech adapter. But when I contacted support yesterday asking about using my device on the x670e ProArt, the guy suggested 1 solution: to use Mac instead , so I guess they let go of the Startech recommendation due to customer issues.
Or maybe the Startech one works with TB3 conversion only.

Overall the support guy didn't seem very knowledgeable, so I'm taking everything he said with a grain of salt. In fact, initially when I asked him if the ProArt x670e Creator motherboard would be compatible with my device, his response was to take a screenshot of the motherboard's I/O spec list and tell me that it doesn't have any Thunderbolt ports. (He doesn't know that AMD don't call them "thunderbolt" directly).
Then when I told him that the usb4 ports are thunderbolt4 ports he told me "TB2 devices don't work with TB4 ports unfortunately, have a nice day" and that was that. No recommendation of adapters or anything.

I guess their support staff don't want any of that smoke. Too many variables

Anyway I digress. Looking forward to hearing how the test goes

They already were announced a while ago. They seem to be a reaction to the Xeon W series. Most likely with similar pricing.

The thing is the difference in price with the regular consumer CPU market is quite significant. Just look at the setup of a mobo, cpu, mem and cooler and you're looking at a $1500 vs $5000. When you look at the difference of performance the pro version isn't 3,33 times faster. If you're looking at the top model the pricing goes way over $10.000.
Those numbers are serious investments. Where the biggest question is: Do you really need that much performance?

Somebody may. I know people who usually do. Me, I just want to share news. Sometime information is not always to be followed, just by aware of it, especially in (this very) relevant thread, I think it's good. For me, I like it to be well informed, I believe many does too.

I don't think so. It was said new versions would come, but not announced, iirc.

Pricing is known now.

Paying extra for the pro versions isn't about direct per-core performance, it's about more cores at the very high end plus more memory channels and more PCIe lanes throughout the pro lineup. For some those are going to be big factors when getting a workstation.

For us in audio I think it's debatable whether we need the pro version and only in edge-cases is the other line beneficial I'm guessing... But I could actually see how a massive film mix for example might benefit from a ton of fast cores, 4 memory channels and a lot of PCIe for storage, video playback and more. Possibly a very wide music session might as well, assuming latency is under control of course.

It not just (multithreaded) CPU performance:

• More RAM, both via taking registered RAM and via more slots
• More PCIe lanes. Can be important if you want many NVMe drives or 10+ Gb/s Ethernet while having a graphics card
• More memory bandwidth via more channels
• More cores - if you want. Threadripper goes down to 16, which is also max for AM5
• Even cores - all cores are full speed with same cache and same turbo
• In the future, maybe the large cache from EPYC X
• Full-featured ECC RAM support

Let's face it, the desktop platforms are becoming more and more restricted in the RAM and PCIe lanes department.

https://www.scanproaudio.info/2023/1...or-the-studio/

Apologies, busy work week...

So I tried the ProArt x670e with a TB2 optical cable, and apple TB3-> adaptors on both ends, and it didn't work. Which is interesting because that does work on ProArt b550.

Both the adaptors are good (in use every day) and the cable is good.

IIRC when I tested it at home it would have been through the OWC TB hub, which then was fed into a TB2 dock, which is a pretty stupid arrangement but all stuff I already had and the OWC hub thing also charges my MBA...

I don't think this is conclusive, and I actually have another OWC hub so I could test that as an intermediary if you want, but it's not something I could get to right away.

My experience has been that if TB2 to 4 to 3 to USB 4 works, then it comes down to drivers (RME here is great, UA probably not so much- couldn't get it to work on win x299 some years back).

I'm definitely down to play around with stuff, but am pretty busy....

LMK if you need more explanation there- I have used a lot of TB stuff on both mac and win.

Looks good.

The 14700K vs 12700K looks to be about a 40-50% performance increase in these tests. And should still work with my 280 aio without crazy heat.

I'm hoping similar improvements seen with DDR4 (although I suspect not as much).

The cost differential between used value of12700 and buying a new 14700 is about $200. I would be foolish not to get one.

The 14900 is another $200 and would really test the limits of my cooling.

Who said SATA SSD is fast enough and m.2 nvme is overkill? I changed the c drive from SATA to 990 pro today, and the difference is definitely noticeable. PC becomes so much snappier.

Hmm. Really?

Based on UserBenchmark which has been pretty accurate for predicting real world DAW performance in my experience, I think the real world difference between them is less than 15%, and 14700 would produce too much heat (noise)...

Would you like to buy a gently used 12700k?

20t vs 28t is going to be at least 30%.

Because they want to cram as much m.2 slots in there?

The market doesn't ask for HEDT platforms with plenty of PCI-e slots afik. Only us DAW users do. So you either have to find the white elephant consumer motherboard with plenty of PCI-e slots and the rest of bells and whistles you need or go HEDT/Pro and spend piles of money.

I'm kinda hoping that after 14th gen Intel they will resurrect their HEDT line and create products that fill in the gap between 14th gen and Xeon W with a platform that can handle enough memory and lanes for us DAW users. But in the end the bean counters have to approve this. I'm not too sure about that.

Well, that would be a good beginning - if they had the PCIe lanes to actually back that up. They don't. Unless you don't use a video card the desktop platforms screw you over performance wise no matter how many NVMe slots they have.

If the single core performance is 30% better, I would get 14700, but it's not.

Open your typical session, and check the thread usage. I don't think your bottleneck is the thread count...

I think for most of us though the lane count is actually fine if the m.2 NVME slots are running at a generation of PCIe lower than the 'highest' one on the motherboard. In other words a motherboard with PCIe gen 5 could have more m.2 NVME slots but make them gen 4 instead. Gen 4 should be plenty for the vast majority of DAW users, so it's a tradeoff that is reasonable.

There's also the argument that people are maybe more inclined to use external devices to be more mobile in general, meaning not only NAS but Thunderbolt/USB solutions are more common than in the past... including hubs. So it's another tradeoff in practice that I think is more common - rather than a PCIe interface people use TB, and rather than SATA or m.2 people use TB/USB.

But anyway, perhaps this is a conversation that should be put in a separate thread as we're discussing setups most people here don't use...

My i9-14900K seems to have a better IMC than the i9-13900K yes also for DDR4.

I initially ran my i9-13900K with the 3200CL16 memory I had when I built my system during 12th gen launch. I recently upgraded it to a 4000CL18 set, but didn't get it stable initially in Gear1 (or possibly it was my CPU OC), but it ran fine at 3800CL17.

Now with the i9-14900K, the 4000CL18 XMP runs fine in Gear1.

Regarding the DAWBench report, I'm seeing slightly larger gains, although I agree it's a very small nearly meh update. FWIW the i9-14 runs cooler than the i9-13 with the same power use reported - my NH-D15 managed 220-240W on the i9-13, but now I've seen 270W and even more on some tests.

I did a very quck initial OC to mimic my i9-13 setup and was dissapointed at first (only 100MHz up accross all cores), but now with a little use I think my upgrade was worth it, and anyway as a plus the i9-13 can replace the i9-12900K in my home/gaming/spare system.

But also interesting findings related to RAM speed and/or timings effect on DSP results on lower buffers, and definitely an increase in the "snappyness" of huge Pro Tools sessions (even with no plugins and very low CPU load). Keep in mind that my upgrade also results in a latency reduction for every memory operation, from 10ns to around 9ns (google for the infos and calculations)

Keep in mind these are cooled with the Noctua NH-D15 which surely limits the multicore especially on the i9-14. I'm currently starting a very large high pressure mix (Atmos film score in 96kHz) and needed the new chip to be "good enough", will tinker more later.

These are my own "Pro Tools DAWBench Beta" sessions originally built while I helped Vin on the PT sessions (I prefer testing changes with these, as PT is my DAW and it's actually faster to test with the test either passing or PT reporting a CPU error, no audible glitches ever) with TDR Kotelnikovs. HDX as the playback engine, PT Ultimate "Hybrid" (Native) mixer.

Results, the i9-14 ones are preliminary and quickly done so not "squeezed", will need to work now.

i9-13900K 3200MHz CL16 DDR4 (Gear1) RAM

64 buffer - 920 TDR (fixed)
1024 buffer - 1042 TDR (possibly on a older PT version so could be very slightly too small)

i9-13900K 3800MHz CL17 (17-21-21-21) DDR4 (Gear1)

64 buffer - 946 TDR

i9-14900K 4000MHz CL18 (18-22-22-22) DDR4 (Gear1)

64 buffer - 1010 TDR
512 buffer - 1060 TDR
1024 buffer - 1080 TDR

Would be interesting to swap my mobo and upgrade to very low CL DDR5 RAM and see how the results would compare, but I think I'll stay on plan and build a new system for 15th gen.

Edit:
The i9-13900K OC was x58 on 2 P-cores, x56 on the rest, and x45 on the E-cores.

The i9-14900K OC I now have is x59 on 2 P's, x57 on the rest and x46 on the E's (I didn't get the 2 P-cores to x60 with this all core OC yet, but will investigate after this mix...)

Edit2: Found an updated result for the original i9-13 result with the slower RAM, from 916 to 920 at 64 on PT 2023, seems that PT updates have changed these a bit as well. the 2 later result sets are the same PT version, 2023.9 (but I didn't find the i9-13 with faster RAM and larger buffer result, I just remember that it was nearly zero gains, so the RAM effect on DSP seems to be mostly on small buffers).

Your test results are almost as expected, but I was a little surprised by the change in speed with memory. I'll also wait until the 15th.

Yes! I have also tested the i9-13900K with a larger buffer with the faster memory, but could not find the result now, probably because there was a very small change, but the result at 64 did impress me. There is definitely something into tuning the memory specs for pure DSP/mixing (and even high-end recording and editing) perfomance as well.

It seems my Crucial 3200 DDR4 can be overclocked to 3600, and I'll try it later.

Thanks for taking the time to test that man, much appreciated.

To be honest i'm starting to lean towards avoiding thunderbolt. It seems like it's gonna be a bit of a headache and i don't trust Antelope's drivers enough to take the gamble. I would be disappointed if i spent an extra $200-300 on a motherboard that has thunderbolt only to discover that i can't use it.

I don't know how much i "need" thunderbolt. I've never used it before. It would be a "nice to have" but i do mostly mixing and mastering but hardly any recording, so maybe a bit of extra latency over USB is a non-issue.

The biggest pain point with my current system is the snap-crackle-pop dropouts that i experience when i get deep into a project, it's frustrating, and affects workflow negatively. I'm not sure how much of that is due to my USB interface or my i7-8700?

I figure i would knock off both birds with 1 stone in my new build, but maybe just the new CPU will be enough. I could save $200 on buying a TB-less motherboard and use that money to buy better quality PSU/RAM/fans/etc

I'm not familiar with OWC.

Is there an other use-case for thunderbolt that i should consider? (other than for connecting an interface)

Hi,

Avid support want me to:

"May I ask if you can send a recording of the exact issue? This will help us to reproduce the issue and create a ticket bug."

How do I record the screen in Windows 11? Is there a Windows program or app that can do this?

Thanks!

IIRC you can use the preinstalled XBOX Game Bar. But I would rather record a quick phone video, that is good enough for them.

If you gonna buy Antelope almost all their interfaces have both USB and thunderbolt connection. As long as you buy a thunderbolt 3 audio interface I can see no disadvantages since you have the possibility to use USB if there are issues. If you buy trusted Intel creator motherboard with native thunderbolt support the risk is minimum. Also on the Antelope devices you have some more connections when using thunderbolt compared to USB.

As to "snap-crackle-pop dropouts" that is caused by mainly two things:
- Audio interface drivers (I usually recommend tried and tested thunderbolt drivers on windows)
- CPU and mainly single core performance.
- Also your Windows system should have High Performance in power plan and Prefer Maximum Performance if you use Nvidia GPU

As to other thunderbolt usage:
- docks
- external hard drives
- external GPUs
- also it can be used as a regular USB-C port. Usually creator motherboards have two native thunderbolt ports.

Yeah you can do that with a Windows 11 app. I think I used this one once and it's already installed:

I already own the Antelope interface. I've had it for 2-3 yrs. My current PC build doesn't have thunderbolt (regrettably) and i've always just used it on USB. That's why i'm asking about TB2, cos that's what my device is but i've never used it via thunderbolt before.

I'm aware of what causes dropouts, i just don't know what ratio of it is the CPU's responsibility vs the interface's responsibility

I honestly believe you would have seen a bigger improvement by upgrading your 13900 cooler to a large aio.

My 12700K is on a 280mm aio and its super cool. I was going to get the 14700K because I didn't want any cooling limitations with the i9, but here you are running the 14900K with air cooling!

Maybe I should get the 14900? Or find a used 13900K?

Intuition is telling me that 14700K is the sweet spot.

Okay then you already knows the issue and workarounds for thunderbolt 2 devices on modern systems (thunderbolt 4).
As to what you call "ratio" of responsibility. I had ultra low RTL latency on my old i7-6700K cpu with the same Presonus Quantum that I have now.
So basically it's the same RTL but the CPU I have today (10900K) can handle more both on single core and multi core. That means basically more stuff on lower buffer size (and high buffer size). So it is basically impossible to rate the importance between interface drivers and CPU. Both are essential.

You could be right, but I'm not sure if I'm willing to rebuild the case at this stage etc. And I *still* have that inherent dislike / unsureness about WC.

FWIW I still stand by my earlier comments in that I never see true all core turbo loads outside of benchmarking, so the Noctua is adequate 99,9% of the time.

I'm also thinking of the end life of this system. More than likely it will be retired to a secondary / spare machine in about one year, and could stay that way for several years. Having it on air would give me some peace of mind in that role. (And I can ease on the OC / apply some basic undervolts at that stage.)

I would definitely say that the 14th gen is still a minor improvement, the i7 could definitely be your sensible sweet spot.

My PC build has been running smooth for a few weeks now with the exception that every now and then Studio One will report a "graphics hardware acceleration issue". Studio One will basically look like it's lost image. Much of the DAW area will look blank or grey. Anyone have any experience with such a thing? I can post my specs if that'd help. Thanks.