Interesting topic, especially as there are some good laptop offers out right now that have the Ryzen 7 3700. I've read that there were some drawbacks when it came to games, but I'm not sure if that's still the case ? Anyway I'd be very interested in reading some opinions about it ... Best, n Will Godfrey wrote on 16.04.2020 16:47 (GMT +02:00):

ׁHi Will, thanks for chiming in. That sounds awesome! Exactly the performance I'm after. Also cheaper than building with Intel. Just one question, what brings you to use 3 buffers? Is it card related? Best Moshe On Thu, Apr 16, 2020 at 5:48 PM Will Godfrey <willgodfrey(a)musically.me.uk> wrote:

I've always used 3 buffers for my Behringer UCA202. That was the advice for using any USB audio device. Something due to USB, not a specific device. On April 16, 2020 8:02:01 AM HST, Will Godfrey <willgodfrey(a)musically.me.uk> wrote: --- David W. Jones gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com authenticity, honesty, community http://dancingtreefrog.com Sent from my Android device with F/LOSS K-9 Mail.

Interesting! On my Motu it's 2*128, but I did not really check 3. Also 2*64 can work but that depends on load. Best Moshe On Thu, Apr 16, 2020 at 10:11 PM Len Ovens <len(a)ovenwerks.net> wrote:

I think there are a few things to look at regurding this, Intel has been recomended for a lot of people because graphics (at least the built in ones) are a non-issue (except the Atom ones which otherwise are quite nice Audio CPUs). The second thing is that people have been tweaking Intel machines for a long time. So the tweaks are well known. AMD has had a history of using tricks and hacks to at least look like they are out performing an Intel equivelent. Different speeds from core to core etc. And while none of these things should be a problem so long as they are easy to control, maybe not that many people know how. People have just used what is known and easy to use. Intel has tended to contribute to the linux kernel to make sure everything works. I am not so sure about AMD. So I don't think the AMD CPUs are bad, there is just less info on tweaking. Another thing to remember is that modern Intel mother boards are not as easy to get good performance on either. All the "affordable" Audio units are now USB which was never really designed to be low latency in the first place. So low latency has gone from being able to get solid sub ms latency to good 5ms latency so far as I can tell (one way jack latency only). Either the world has found out that 5ms is "good enough" or those who want more will have to spend more. Another thing that has changed is how USB is implemented. On a lot of mother boards it is impossible to get one's mouse and keyboard on a different USB bus from the audio interface. It seems to only sure way is to add a PCIe USB card for the audio box. It used to be that one side of the computer was one bus and the other side was another... not any more. The computer does internal routing to put all of them on one bus except may be USB3 stuff (which I have none of). -- Len Ovens www.ovenwerks.net

On Fri, Apr 17, 2020 at 12:47 AM Len Ovens <len(a)ovenwerks.net> wrote: What is being said a lot on the web is, that AMD CPUs have a slower memory controller. I don't really know how to check that but that should be relevant for low latency work. On the other hand, it could be Intel spreading misinformation, I mean they have done that before. In the gaming world it seems that indeed AMD processors are about 10% slower when compared against same spec Intel machines. There the single core performance is said to be the most important factor. I don't know if that is true also for the audio world. Another thing that has changed is how USB is implemented. On a lot of Until now I have worked on a Lenovo laptop from 2014, and the all USB sits on only one bus. Best regards Moshe

On Mon, 20 Apr 2020, Ede Wolf wrote: I would choose i5, four cores and four threads. The i3 is two cores four threads leaving the user needing to change bios to switch threads off. (well this was true when I bought my i5, the new i3 - i9 has changed) If you check your interupts, most likely you will find that your audio device has all the interupts on one core. Properly designed audio software can use more than one processor just fine. When I was actually testing if hyperthreads affected latency, I found turning HT off alowed less than 64/2 (jack setting) with no xruns (assuming proper system tweaking) but with HT on there were at least the odd xrun even at 64/2. CPU speed is even more important it seems. there seems to be no problem with the cpu going up in speed, but if the cpu desides to lower the speed with the cpu governor, I often see xruns at that point. Both intel and amd play with core speeds to get best performance within cpu temperature limits. I have found a more stable operation even with cpu speed forced to it's lowest speed (.8Ghz) I have seen no xruns even with jack set less than 64/2 over a 24hour period... though of course the amount of dsp time available suffers. So setting the governor to performance is a good start. However, both intel and amd also have what intel calls "boost" where if the cpu load is high and the temperature allows, the cpu will take one of more core above rated speed... this is true even in performance mode. So turn off boost or it's amd equiv. From reading amd literature, they do more playing around with cpu speed than intel so I don't know easy it is to get their cores to run at one speed only. But turning Boost off on my i5 does makes a difference at low latency settings. It may also be possible to set performance mode at higher than rated speed all the time if you have the right cooling... but some way of monitoring cpu temp would be advised. [edit] I now remember what I was reading about amd cpu from their documentation. Their claimed CPU speed is based on allowing cores to run at various speeds. So the top documented speed means one core going all out and the rest idling rather than the speed with all cores the same speed with 100% cpu load. So yes, amd cpu speed may be over rated. I did read this two or three years ago, so check the documentation for the actual CPU you wish to buy/use. see this site if you would like to compare some of the cpus out there for realtime schedualing latency with different setups: https://www.osadl.org/Hardware-overview.qa-farm-hardware.0.html It would be a great idea to compare how intrusive cpu SMIs are from intel to amd. Intel does allow turning some SMIs off... which does kill your waranty :) I don't know how controlable the SMIs are on amd cpus. I also don't know if motherboard manufactures taylor the BIOS towards AMD as much. (have I said I don't know enough times?) -- Len Ovens www.ovenwerks.net