i7 4930 K on ASUS P9X79 LE LGA 2011 race horse, recommendations please for over clocking and memory

[EuroDriver]

The experimental goal is to have a PC with minimal latency through a combination of higher CPU clock speed, fast memory and higher mobo clock speed.

 

Just by chance I had a hex core 4930 K and I just ordered last week an ASUS P9X79 LE LGA 2011 for a desktop gaming machine, which is now going to be pressed into service as a HQ Player desktop machine which will be talking to a HQ NAA

 

OS is going to be WS2012 + AO

 

The 4930 K has a TDP of 130 watt, and I am think of using a large Noctura cooler, hopefully with no fan in a tower case. If I have to use a fan, not a big deal as there will be fibre optic Ethernet between the HQ Desktop and the NAA.

 

So I am looking for suggestions / recommendations for 8GB fast memory, how to select a faster mobo speed, and how to overclock the 4930

 

I am a complete newbie in this field of fast PC's

[Audioseduction]

I think you're way overkill with the processor and overclocking. It's not a game machine. I use a 2ghz 4 core Celeron only topping at 3% while playing back DSD or high res PCM. I think it's better to build a lean cool running machine for music playback.

 

I did build a dedicated game/work PC and overclocking the CPU by 10% and the video card by 10%.

[EuroDriver]

No question it's absolutely spec overkill, but the experimental goal is to reduce latency to see if it has a beneficial effect.

 

It might make no difference to SQ, but the only way to find out is to try ;-)

 

I was very surprised to find Ramdisk making a SQ difference for PCM to DSD 256 conversion, so just experimenting

[bibo01]

You do not reduce latency by building a more powerful system

(I believe you are talking about IRQ latency)

[EuroDriver]

would not a faster mobo clock reduce IRQ latency ?

 

Clearly the most important driver of reducing latency is tuning of the OS and the priorities it sets for the various processes, but once that is done, a bit more oompf from the hardware ?

[bibo01]

would not a faster mobo clock reduce IRQ latency ?

 

Clearly the most important driver of reducing latency is tuning of the OS and the priorities it sets for the various processes, but once that is done, a bit more oompf from the hardware ?

More oompf from the hardware is mostly used for calculation.

On an RTOS the latency of a task only depends on the tasks running at equal or higher priorities, all other tasks can be ignored. On a normal OS (such as Windows or OSx) the latencies depend on everything running on the system, which of course makes it much harder to be convinced that the deadlines will be met every time on a reasonably complicated system. This is because preemption can be switched off for an unknown amount of time. The high priority task wanting to run can thus be delayed for an unknown amount of time by low priority tasks running with preemption switched off.

[EuroDriver]

I think it's better to build a lean cool running machine for music playback.

 

Agree, absolutely, the HQ Player NAA will be running on lean and cool ;-)

[edbk]

Anandtec.com runs dpc latency tests in their reviews. Maybe the lowest latency motherboard is the best choice?

[Skeptic]

The 4930 K has a TDP of 130 watt, and I am think of using a large Noctura cooler, hopefully with no fan in a tower case. If I have to use a fan, not a big deal as there will be fibre optic Ethernet between the HQ Desktop and the NAA.

If you're actually going to be pushing that CPU at all - especially if you plan on overclocking it - you will need active cooling. The NH-D14 or 15 are a good choice.

 

would not a faster mobo clock reduce IRQ latency ?

Clearly the most important driver of reducing latency is tuning of the OS and the priorities it sets for the various processes, but once that is done, a bit more oompf from the hardware ?

The platform and the amount of devices enabled/connected to the motherboard are the main things which will affect that.

 

Anandtec.com runs dpc latency tests in their reviews. Maybe the lowest latency motherboard is the best choice?

[ATTACH]17603[/ATTACH]

You beat me to it - X79 boards were not known for low DPC latency, and it is a problem that largely seems to have been solved with the X99 platform.

 

But even X99 is an order of magnitude higher than some older boards when optimized. (which means disabling most on-board hardware)

I've seen people with single-digit DPC latency in certain configurations.

 

But DPC latency is not really relevant in Windows 8/10 since they use activity alignment and a dynamic tickrate rather than a fixed tickrate.

And a low DPC latency is not that important at all unless you're working in a studio and need the absolute lowest latency possible for realtime playback. But you're generally better off simply avoiding going through the PC at all and using analog gear that bypasses the PC for monitoring systems where latency is a concern.

 

Where DPC latency is an issue is when you run into a bad device driver.

My system typically has DPC latency in the range of 50-100µs, but if I update to the latest Intel LAN drivers, this happens every two seconds and that does cause problems. But the solution for that is just to roll back to the driver that shipped with Windows 8.1

[EuroDriver]

How relevant is DPC latency for Windows Server 2012 ? Is activity alignment and dynamic tick rate being used in WS2012 ?

 

Is WS 2012 ever used as a base for a Realtime OS application ? Or is Linux heavily favored for those instrumentation applications ?

 

Thanks guys, I am learning a lot !

[Audioseduction]

How relevant is DPC latency for Windows Server 2012 ? Is activity alignment and dynamic tick rate being used in WS2012 ?

 

Is WS 2012 ever used as a base for a Realtime OS application ? Or is Linux heavily favored for those instrumentation applications ?

 

Thanks guys, I am learning a lot !

 

Are you experiencing latency issues?

[EuroDriver]

Not experiencing any overt latency issues :-)

 

What is driving all of this is the tests we did last week with HQ Player Desktop running on a MacPro Zeon with Win 8.1, connected to a GB switch, the HQ player NAA on WS 2012 + AO connected optically to the GB switch. HQ Player was doing 16/44 to DSD 256 conversion and sounding very good. We then ran Primo Ramdisk on the Win 8.1 on the Mac Pro, and it made a very noticeable increase to the sound quality. So the thinking is the Primo Ramdisk is reducing latency, so maybe taking steps to reduce hardware latency will have a beneficial effect.

 

As I have the CPU and the mother board already, I thought I would give it a try

[Audioseduction]

Not experiencing any overt latency issues :-)

 

What is driving all of this is the tests we did last week with HQ Player Desktop running on a MacPro Zeon with Win 8.1, connected to a GB switch, the HQ player NAA on WS 2012 + AO connected optically to the GB switch. HQ Player was doing 16/44 to DSD 256 conversion and sounding very good. We then ran Primo Ramdisk on the Win 8.1 on the Mac Pro, and it made a very noticeable increase to the sound quality. So the thinking is the Primo Ramdisk is reducing latency, so maybe taking steps to reduce hardware latency will have a beneficial effect.

 

As I have the CPU and the mother board already, I thought I would give it a try

 

Was the first test with a spinning HD or a SSD? I have my server process the entire track before it plays the track so latency would not be an issue if I had any.

[EuroDriver]

Was the first test with a spinning HD or a SSD? I have my server process the entire track before it plays the track so latency would not be an issue if I had any.

 

Both tests were with PCM music files on Mac Pro built in Flash drive. Only the HQ Player .exe and dlls were put on to the Ramdisk. Putting the music file in the Ramdisk seemed to have no detectable SQ effect. This is contrary to what the NextHardware forum members are reporting. They say putting the music files in Ramdisk improves SQ too. May be the MacPro has a fast Flash storage system and the NextHarware testers were using Windows SSD's ?

 

We are really impressed with HQ Player PCM to DSD on the fly conversion. Certainly offline conversion would eliminate any heavy computation induced latency issue, but it's not an option in HQ Player

 

With CPU power dropping in price all the time, I think the on the fly strategy is the right one for now and the future

[dean70]

Why hold back. try one of these ARK | Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2697 v3 (35M Cache, 2.60 GHz)

 

14 cores HT (28 threads) 145w tdp

[Audioseduction]

why hold back. Try one of these ark | intel® xeon® processor e5-2697 v3 (35m cache, 2.60 ghz)

 

14 cores ht (28 threads) 145w tdp

 

lol!

[Miska]

Why hold back. try one of these ARK | Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2697 v3 (35M Cache, 2.60 GHz)

 

14 cores HT (28 threads) 145w tdp

 

There's also Xeon E5-2699-v3...

 

Those may be useful for multichannel/multi-way use cases, especially with upcoming versions of HQPlayer. But for current stereo use cases it is best to pick 4 - 8 cores with higher clock speeds and four-channel DDR4-2133 memory controller. For example such as Xeon E5-2643v3 or Core i7 4960X (although it has only DDR3-1866 controller).

[Audioseduction]

You may need a CRAY super computer next year to process those music files.

 

[EuroDriver]

I guess I should also be trying some flavor of Linux and see how that compares to WS2012 + AO

 

turns out the mobo has a quad channel memory controller with speed support up to 2133 Mhz, so have ordered 4 x 4 gb from Corsair to match :-)

[Miska]

You may need a CRAY super computer next year to process those music files.

 

Current PCs are already past the speed of the old super computers. Comparing to other audio stuff, this is still relatively light weight compared for example to high-end passive sonar signal processing.

 

A high-end PC is in the end fairly inexpensive compared to high-end audio equipment, cheaper than lot of speaker cables for example. Many MC pick-up cartridges are more expensive than Mac Pro with all options. Or if you have a $20k DAC, spending a $5k on music PC at least buys you over 1000x more transistors for less money... So it's all relative.

 

Calculate how much for the PC you should pay, based on it's relative technical complexity compared to your DAC...

[Pepsican]

I guess I should also be trying some flavor of Linux and see how that compares to WS2012 + AO

 

turns out the mobo has a quad channel memory controller with speed support up to 2133 Mhz, so have ordered 4 x 4 gb from Corsair to match :-)

 

You certainly should. First, Linux has special low-latency kernels. Secondly, with Debian linux you can easily install only a core system without graphic front-end or any of the other burdens that are not required for audio play back. If you run the Music Player Demon with a client app on a tablet, you get the craved client/server model that JPLAY proposes but then for free.

[Miska]

If you run the Music Player Demon with a client app on a tablet, you get the craved client/server model that JPLAY proposes but then for free.

 

I think the client-server model of MPD is pretty different from what JPlay or HQPlayer (with NAA) do. It is closer to what HQPlayer Embedded does (which still leaves possibility for using NAA).

[edbk]

Hey Eurodriver, any progress on this experiment?

I was looking at the xeon e5-2603 v3 ([email protected]) or 2609 ([email protected]) on a supermicro serverboard.

There's also the xeon d-1540 (octacore@2ghz) with a low tdp coming out sometime soon.

[EuroDriver]

The machine is up and running since last week, tomorrow I hope to do a comparison with my quadcore 3770

 

I am surprised there are so few octacore i7 choices, none so far with TDP less than 100W.

 

I am a bit of a worry wart about CPU clock speed less than 3 GHz. I had trouble with HQP Polysinc filter when my old 3430 was running at 2.4 GHz, but this problem went away when the clock speed was increased to 3.4 Ghz

[edbk]

Im upsampling to dsd128, polysinc on an i7-3770t downclocked to 2ghz, turbo disabled, memory at 1.4ghz, no problem..