Machine For Renoise (amd Vs Intel)

Dear All,

Are there any benchmarks/tests concerning Renoise efficiency vs various CPUs? I believe it is very important subject for everyone who want to upgrade or buy a new PC.

I want to assembly a machine for Renoise / music production purposes myself. What should I choose? I’m looking for best price/performance ratio.

Maybe GA-MA770T-UD3P + 4GB DDR3-1333 CL9 + AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (Overclocked)? What do you think?

P.S. I use XP (yep, i know, limited to 3,x GB)

Thanks!

IMO… Amd means more trouble, compatibility issues with audio interfaces etc. I have not, for over 4 years, managed to get my stupid Amd-computer to work at 100% with any audio gear. I have had 2 audio interfaces (both usb and firewire) and none has worked as intended. I was about to buy a third one but the guy in the music store told me that it would be a waste because of the Amd-processor, so that saved me some bucks. The weirdest thing is my new intel-laptop works far better even though it is slower in all aspects.

Since P90 I use AMD confs for audio (Duron, then Athlon). Everything works fine. It’s slightly OT, anyway.

I’ve read this topic but it’s ~2 year old and results are incomparable because differences in motherboards/OS/RAM. It’s a pity there is no good Renoise performance test (e.g. same configurations but CPUs).

I’m, once again, glad to hear that I am wrong.

I can tell you an advice: avoid the ABIT brand: they have gone out of business, but there are still lot of motherboards around. they usually work well, but you won’t get any BIOS/drivers update.

Great advice, thanks.
However, probably I’ll choose Gigabyte MoBo (e.g. UDxP) because great OC possibilities / affordable price.

Ok, let’s change the question:
Is there any risk of running Renoise on Phenom II (x2/x3)? Lower performance? Crashes?

I found some complaints on the forum, but it seems that all of these problems were solved? Is here anyone with Phenom II?

FAFAIK the only serious problem discussed were the power-saving options being enabled on the CPU but this also counts for Intel. (Intel has Speedstep, AMD calls it PowerNow). The solution for that is simply turn that feature off in the Bios of OS.
Also don’t use CPU’s based on HT technology, it’s a waste of money regarding A/V-applications.

i had tested renoise some songs on new different amd and intel systems
and results was best for intel,
i dont know, but amd is pease of shit in float calculation apps,
all amd systems appears slover what intel

I work on software that encodes huge amounts of movie files, and our testing indicates that, at least as far as encoding is concerned, intel is way, way faster than amd. I don’t know how much that translates to real-time playback of audio… but without having tested it I would guess that intel would perform better.

So you speak of equally priced or equally clocked processors when doing the comparing? Or how have you normalized the results?

I don’t have the exact specs on me, but it’s normalized based on cores/speed, not on price.

I’m using an AMD quadcore (Phenom X4 810) on a MSI brand mainboard.
All I do is turn off the Cool’n’Quiet function when using Renoise (causes crackles when using plugin delay compensation), but that is just two clicks on Windows XP.
Everything works like charm.

Got me an Intel i7 920 and an Asus mobo when i upgraded last, works like a charm (running on XP SP3 with 3gb ram). Nothing I’ve thrown at it, music wise, has caused it to break a sweat… yet.

I’ve got it up to 40% proc usage on one tune, but usually it’s chilling at around 20%, that’s with ~30 chans running multiple fx, automation, ~5 buses with multiple fx, a mix of vsti’s and samples and sometimes in rewire mode with cubase.
And… that’s when running everything else at the same time as well (no I don’t have a dedicated music box), i.e. skype, msn, irc, rss app, farr, ahk scripts, twitter app and so on.

Haven’t used an AMD proc in a long time tho so I don’t know how they compare, all I can say is that the i7 exceeded my expectations.