Originally Posted By: Planobilly
Simon, I am not sorry I built the i9 machine but it really does not buy me much of anything I don't get out of the new i5 I just finished. It's only issue if any is it is a LGA 1151.

Intel Core i9-9900K Desktop Processor 8 Cores up to 5.0GHz Unlocked LGA1151 300 Series 95W (BX806849900K) cost me $330.

...

I guess what all this means is how much money can anyone really afford or want to spend. I have a brand new car and a 2008 Nissan Titan. Guess which one I drive 99% of the time?...lol

The i9 is theoretically about 30% more powerful than that i5, however as you said, you might not notice any difference depending on what you do.

And personally, depending on which new car it is, I might also prefer the old Nissan - this is why I still have my 2005 Pontiac.


Originally Posted By: justanoldmuso
Simon.
what i'm wrestling with right now is what is the smart move regarding upgradeing to a new pc.
(your comment bout the new i3 has me pondering if refurbs are still the way to go.)
for the budget minded musician ?

just one example. lets take the scenario, for arguments sake...
the musician might run 48 traks , all with 3 plug ins per trak (i know its difficult depending on cpu useage of plug in, so lets say pg or reaps low cpu plugs), and lets assume a desktop running 2 ssd's; one for win 11 and one to record to with 16 gigs ram.

question. what processor installed in a under 500 buk pc will do the above, plus....
a. fast boot from cold in a few secs. (like my current never sees the net optimised i5 system.)
b. 3 minute song , gives me fastest possible mixdown time.
c. run biab, rband and reaps like a bunny rabbit.
ie app boots in a couple of secs.

Many of the refurbs you've suggested have a 4th gen i5 or i7 in them, and these are often adequate for basic music purposes. For a decent budget brand new CPU the lowest current i3 and the equally low priced Ryzen chips will mop the floors with most of those 4th gen chips - see this link for comparisons:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-i7-4770-vs-Intel-i3-10105-vs-AMD-Ryzen-3-3300X-vs-Intel-i7-4930K-vs-Intel-Xeon-X5570/1907vs4259vs3716vs2023vs1302

The 4770 is a very common chip for refurbs, but see the benchmark vs the 10105 and 3300X, both are around $150? No comparison. For fun I put in the benchmarks of my two home computers - you'll notice the 4930K is much faster than the 4770 as it's 6-core and runs on a Xeon motherboard, but you'll also notice the X5570 - I have a pair of those in my old Mac Pro (so double the benchmark to ~6500 or so) and it'll chew through audio like nobody's business.

The difference comes down to the other components, as the CPU only crunches the numbers. Everything else determines how quickly data gets into the CPU so that it can be processed. Billy's i9-9900K machine would feel awfully slow if it had only 2gb of ram, a 5400rpm hard drive, and an old GPU of some sort. Toss an SSD into my old X5570 Mac and load it with 48gb of ram though, and it handles everything I need.

Your A/B/C questions - most of that depends on fast data access, which means SSD. You might not see/feel much difference in CPU speed if your storage is fast and you have adequate RAM. Really only plugins will require the faster CPu.


Originally Posted By: sslechta
A phrase mentioned many times on these forums..... "Buy as much as you can comfortably afford." I lucked into a massive discount on that tank of a Dell tower I have that has tons of cores/memory. It still cost $3K from Ebay as it was a refurb. Retail pricing for all that processor and memory power that came with it was $10K. So based on that huge discount, I was willing to part with my $$$. I've had it three years now and it's still running faster than a lot of 'normal' PCs.

I fully agree with that, though I also say "buy something that can be upgraded". I paid a fair chunk for my old Mac Pro, but had I bought it brand new it would've likely been over $10k as well - list price for it new with a mere 6gb of RAM, a 640gb HDD, and the lowest end GeForce GT 120 was nearly $6k, and I've since added in a 512gb SSD, 2tb HDD, SATA 3 card, USB3, Geforce GTX 960, and 48gb of ram.


Originally Posted By: KeithS
For what its worth, I used to be a 100% Intel man. I've built a number of computers for myself and friends over the years and never even considedered puttting anything other than an Intel CPU in any of them......until my most recent build. AMD has completely eclipsed Intel in almost every way. I looked at the newest generation of Intel CPUs before doing my latest build and it was obvious to me that Intel is no longer taking the lead in invoation and have let AMD leapfrog them and start leading the way. The Ryzen family of AMD CPUs, is the way to go IMHO.

I agree - the Ryzen chips are definitely taking the lead in both processing power and in efficiency - the top end Ryzen 5950X at the time of this writing not only outperforms the top end i9 10980XE by 36%, it uses 37% less electricity in the process - meaning 37% less heat.

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