processor upgrade, from 4 cores to 6 cores - will it matter?

[morerecords]

What are your thoughts? Same processor speed, but from the 4 cores I currently have to 6 core i7 980 processor....

Win 7 and Ableton 8.21

I don't know how Ableton handles the extra cores, or we talking a big difference here?

Thanks for your expertise//

-MR

[McQ714]

if you can afford it, go for it! and why the hell not? even if Live itself doesn't utilize the extra cores, most everything else can and will. FYI, you can actually assign programs to certain cores.

[YILA]

bollocks..

Stick with what you have. I have an i5 an I still can't push it beyond 20%

I still have an old laptop that is a 3 year dual core that is fine

Save your money and take your girlfriend or any friend out for dinner

[smaucher]

bollocks..

Stick with what you have. I have an i5 an I still can't push it beyond 20%

I still have an old laptop that is a 3 year dual core that is fine

Save your money and take your girlfriend or any friend out for dinner

this.

[#1thelark]

It depends, which 4core cpu you talking about? If you are on i5 already it ain't worth it at this time imho.

[Sibanger]

Are you having cpu issues already?

If not, don't update until you need to.

[Cej]

Are you having cpu issues already?

If not, don't update until you need to.

^^^^
good point

[morerecords]

Yes, I am always running my sessions to the maximum power available.... I just wonder if it will make a big difference or if I need to wait another year, but I don't know how Live will handle the extra core etc...

[morerecords]

FRom : Intel Core i7 960 Processor: 3.2GHz Quad Core w/HT 8meg cache

to:

Core i7 980X 3.33Ghz 6 core 12meg cache


I wonder how much CPu boost this will give me.....

[YILA]

What the hell are you doing to max out that?..

Maybe you could invest in a UAD or POWERCORE solution would be better if your an FX junky.

[morerecords]

So nobody is able to just answer my question haha

[McQ714]

So nobody is able to just answer my question haha

wow! act like a dick much? you got plenty of answers. most of which were a definite NO! going from the 960 to the 980 isn't going to benefit you much with respect to Live. it may increase your performance slightly on other apps but probably not enough to justify the costs. if you need more power and have money to blow, i'd suggest building a dual CPU beast. AMD has 12-core CPUs that can be put in dual CPU mobos.

[xzusa8ky]

Yes!

[koranek]

I think it depends to some degree on your set. From what I understand, Live divides cpu core load based on tracks. Track 1 gets core 1, track 2 gets core 2, etc. until you run out of cores and then Live adds the next track to core 1, the one after that to core 2, etc.

This is different than taking the entire set's total cpu operations and dividing it up evenly among the cores. If this were the case, I could say definitely that adding two more cores would show a improvement of about 33%, all other things being equal.

However, when you divide the cores among the tracks, it will depend on the specific load of the track. Let's say you have one track that's insane with cpu load. An instance of Uhe's ACE, convolution reverbs, tons of grainular and frequency processing, inefficient vst's might do it. In this case, this track overloads the core and causes snaps and crackles. It doesn't matter if the rest of the tracks are fine. And it doesn't matter whether you have more cores.

The other way to kill things is to have reasonable loads on each track, but a million tracks. Given a situation where each track has the same load (Like the Live 8 performance test) having more cores lets you run more tracks, but eventually each core can't keep up.

Ideally, you want the most cores with the highest speed per core. These days I would choose faster cores over number of cores because I can always freeze tracks when things get intense.

So to sum it up: on some sets you will definitely see an improvement, yet you could still have sets where it won't matter whether you have 4 cores or 6.

[Sibanger]

What the hell are you doing to max out that?..

I am also interested to how how you are maxing out such a high spec system.

Consider your work-flow, and how it can be more cpu efficient. Maybe freeze/flatten.

Overclock?? The i7s cope pretty well if you need extra speed.

What are you doing?????