Best CPU for hqplayer

[StreamFidelity]

Intel Alder Lake with E-Cores and P-Cores should provide good performance with the Intel Thread Director. Intel names Windows 11 as the first optimized operating system.

 

Source: https://www.computerbase.de/2021-08/hot-chips-33-intel-alder-lake-steht-und-faellt-mit-dem-thread-director/

 

@MiskaIs there a customized HQPlayer for this, e.g. for multicore DSP?

[StreamFidelity]

1 hour ago, Miska said:

And I may skip over it and go directly to 12th gen which seems to have bigger architectural changes.

 

I do it like this, too. The next audio PC has i9-12900K on board. I am particularly interested in the Intel Thread Director Windows 11. But AVX512 is not included. 

[StreamFidelity]

Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX)

 

Also interesting that the Alder Lake processors do support AVX512. However, all efficiency cores must be switched off for this. The acceleration of around 30% is remarkable.

Source: https://www.hardwareluxx.de/index.ph....html?start=16

[StreamFidelity]

32 minutes ago, Miska said:

I did testing on the new i9-12900K with DDR4-3600 CL17 RAM (G.Skill). With DDR5 I would expect notably better performance

 

Why I never considered AMD processors were the worse latencies. Now the 12 Intel CPUs are even worse, at least with DDR5 memory. But not with DDR4, see table below i9-12900K DDR 4 (the less the better). 👍

 

In the load tests, DDR5 did not do so badly because of the higher bandwidth. But why spend a lot of money if it isn't significantly better?

 

Source: https://www.hardwareluxx.de/index.php/artikel/hardware/prozessoren/57430-core-i9-12900k-und-core-i5-12600k-hybrid-desktop-cpus-alder-lake-im-test.html?start=3

[StreamFidelity]

Examples of latencies:

 

G.Skill Ripjaws S5 black DIMM Kit 32GB, DDR5-5200, CL40-40-40-76, on-die ECC 
= CAS Latency CL 15.38ns

 

G.Skill RipJaws V black DIMM Kit 32GB, DDR4-4000, CL14-15-15-35
= CAS Latency CL 7.00ns!

[StreamFidelity]

16 minutes ago, Miska said:

I have not tested yet... I will try some time later when I find time.

 

If you are already testing: completely switch off the E-Cores in BIOS. That should activate the P-Cores AVX512. 🤗

[StreamFidelity]

8 hours ago, Miska said:

My 12900K system uses DDR4 RAM and works nice. But likely you can squeeze some extra performance out of the 12900K + HQPlayer by using DDR5.

 

I currently recommend DDR4 RAM for several reasons:

 

1. DDR5 are poorly available, expensive and
2. have too high latencies. One of the fastest is for e.g .: G.Skill Trident Z5 RGB DDR5-6000MHz CL36-36-36-76 1.30V 32GB (2x16GB) - CAS Latency CL: 12.00ns.
3. DDR4 are mature and have very low latencies, e.G .: G.Skill Ripjaws V DDR4-4000MHz CL14-15-15-35 1.55V 16GB (2x8GB) - CAS Latency CL: 7.00ns and
4. DDR4 still benefits from 2 IMC (Integrated Memory Controller):

 

Source: https://www.igorslab.de/ddr5-deep-dive-kingston-im-interview-zum-neuen-arbeitsspeicher-standard-und-beispiele-aus-der-praxis/2/

[StreamFidelity]

I've finished my i9-12900K Audio PC. Take a look here:

 

 

 

Well at least the hardware. The BIOS is still waiting for some adjustments. With activated e-cores, there are some strange things. The HQPlayer spits out an error message: syntax error 😲

 

 

 

But there is hope in sight.

 

On 11/23/2021 at 2:05 PM, Miska said:

I've spent a week now working on adding specific support for Intel's 12th Gen CPUs.

I already figured out one important thing: how to activate the AVX512. To do this, all e-cores must be switched off. What nonsense some will think. Someone buys a CPU with 8 P cores and 8 E cores and deactivates half of them. 😂

 

Interesting test results can be found on igor's LAB (German):

Efficiency insider tip AVX-512 on Alder Lake

 

To make it short, the test result (translated):

Quote

But originally the trigger for today's article was the literally unbelievably low power consumption of the P-cores with AVX-512 and the question of whether the efficiency is actually higher. And indeed, with the feature activated, the efficiency of the P-cores is significantly higher in all benchmarks than without it. The results are so clear that the command set can and should always be activated - if possible, of course.

 

The BIOS setup looks like this on my msi board:

 

 

And the performance is already impressive.

 

44.1kHz to DSD256x48 / ASDM7ECv2

 

 

96kHz to DSD256x48 / ASDM7ECv2

 

 

I will continue to report in the first thread quoted above. I can already say one thing. SQ has increased! 👍

 

I notice a more precise, punchy bass and "springy" transients in percussion and guitar sounds.

 

 

[StreamFidelity]

6 hours ago, luisma said:

Beautiful and thank you for reporting back, the only conflict I have is why and how could you made it passive?

 

In cause off topic I wrote my answer here:

 

[StreamFidelity]

1 hour ago, ArcticSapien said:

Last month, Intel declared that they "permanently deactivated" AVX512. Now, MSI re-enables it.

 

Intel seems confused about how it handles AVX512. In the process, Intel developed it itself and was never able to roll it out properly. 

On the msi board, AVX512 can be enabled without disabling the E-Cores. I haven't tried if it actually works though. 

 

[StreamFidelity]

1 hour ago, ArcticSapien said:

Does the HQPlayer require low latency?

Lowest latencies are always good. DDR5 makes up for the high latencies with higher clock rates and more bandwidth. But it costs more power consumption.

 

1 hour ago, ArcticSapien said:

I'm encouraged by @StreamFidelity's success to get DSD512 using i9-12900. Is a GPU needed?

A GPU is not necessary. The performance of Intel's i9-12900K CPU is amazing. The efficiency and quality of HQPlayer are as well. 

A fairly heavy filter and modulator with DSD512x48 pose no problems and sounds great.

 

 

[StreamFidelity]

12 minutes ago, oneguy said:

Was this the run with CPU temps in the 90-95C range? How long did you let it run for temps to stabilize?

 

In the BIOS I changed the CPU clock from static to dynamic. This flexibly adjusts the clock frequency, which lowers the temperature for the individual cores. It is the screenshot above. The CPU temperature is 76/77°C.

 

 

23 minutes ago, oneguy said:

I had to take a break from tweaking due to some family stuff

 

I hope nothing serious. Family always comes first. 👍

 

[StreamFidelity]

11 hours ago, Miska said:

I think the thermal limit is something like 95C? My i5-11600 system says critical limit is 100C.

The TJUNCTION of the i9-12900K CPU is 100°C. In the BIOS, I have set the limit at 95°C. It's a precaution.

 

11 hours ago, Miska said:

So as long as core temps don't hit 95C you should be fine

Materials suffer and age faster when the temperature is too high. The SQ goes down for me when the temperature gets too high. I therefore prefer a temperature that should not exceed 80°C if possible. With your powerful algorithms, this can sometimes not be realized. 😉

[StreamFidelity]

36 minutes ago, Miska said:

If CPU gets burned, then I'll just replace it with a new one.

Greta won't like that. 😂

 

37 minutes ago, Miska said:

then you should use a NAA

I did - in the T+A SDV 3100 HV. 👍

[StreamFidelity]

24 minutes ago, louisxiawei said:

Am I using the wrong filter on the track inappropriately? I was using poly-sinc-xtr-lp with AMSDM7EC 512+fs, upsampling 44.1/16 to DSD 44.1x512.

Use an apodizing filter. See HQPlayer manual for descriptions.

[StreamFidelity]

17 hours ago, Miska said:

Most most content, keeping HQPlayer volume set to -3 dBFS is enough to avoid limiting. But there are some albums where you may need something like -6 or -9.

Yes true. Sometimes -4 dBFS was not enough. I have now solved this differently and start the quiet listening with -30 dBFS. The volume of the preamplifier is adjusted accordingly. Thanks to the very good volume control in the HQPlayer (I assume with 64Bit resolution) no losses occur. 

 

This has also made it more convenient by eliminating the need for a separate remote control. 👍

[StreamFidelity]

26 minutes ago, ENSen said:

Is HQplayer embedded or HQPlayerOS my best choice then?

I recommend HQPlayer OS. It is a realtime Linux kernel reduced to the necessary. Download to USB stick, boot, configure in web GUI and you're done. 

 

29 minutes ago, ENSen said:

Is going for DDR5 worth it? Or should I add more DDR4 RAM instead?

I have written my thoughts here: Why DDR4 RAM is better than DDR5 for an Audio PC

[StreamFidelity]

3 hours ago, ENSen said:

Does that mean I do not need a harddrive at all? 

Loading HQPlayer OS from the USB stick is a simple matter. However, there are disadvantages associated with it. USB sticks are mass-produced and are subject to high wear and tear due to cheap components. 

 

I have wondered from time to time why an operating system could not be installed. The exchange of the USB stick solved the problem. 

 

I use an Intel M10 SSD for the HQPlayer OS. The low latencies allow fast and especially robust access.

[StreamFidelity]

1 hour ago, Mops911 said:

The challenge is only that Jussi favors bandwidth over latency....;-)

Do you think the DDR5 bandwidth is relevant for audio?

 

DDR4-2400 300 MHz × 8 × 8 bytes 19.2 GByte/s
DDR5-8000 500 MHz × 16 × 8 bytes 64.0 GByte/s

 

Example upsampling 
705,600 x 32 bits x 2 (stereo) = 45,158,400 bits = 45.16 Mbit/s = 0.0056 GByte/s 😉

[StreamFidelity]

12 hours ago, Miska said:

Or we can put it in another way:  45158400 x 262144 MACs (multiply-accumulates) = 10.7 TMAC/s.

All right, I didn't take the filters into account. 

Am I calculating correctly: 45158400 x 262144 = 11838003609600 bit/s = 14.798 GByte/s?

 

Isn't it so that the filters have to be loaded only once into the RAM and are then available until the PC is switched off? This is my observation.

 

G.Skill RipJaws V DIMM Kit 16GB, DDR4-4000, CL14-15-15-35 runs with DSD1024x48 awarded. RAM is only utilized very slightly.

 

 

[StreamFidelity]

7 hours ago, Miska said:

That would be one-bit samples and just one channel. Calculate that for 64-bit samples and number of channels you have. So multiply by 64 x 2 = 128x.

Thank you very much. That makes some things clearer. My understanding so far is that when converting from PCM to DSD, the convolution filters and 64bit are applied to PCM. The conversion to DSD is then done at 1bit, correct?

 

7 hours ago, Miska said:

But now you also see why amount of CPU cache and it's speed matters too.

I agree, the 12th generation has almost double:

i9-9900K
L3 cache 16 MB 

i9-12900K
L3 cache 30 MB 

 

7 hours ago, Miska said:

That figure is just the amount of RAM used, but not about it's access utilization. For example 256k tap filter takes just 2 megabytes of RAM. But when processed at high sampling rate it is accessed very frequently at high speeds.

Something is happening with DDR5 in terms of latencies: G.Skill Trident Z5 & Z5 RGB: Low-Latency-Kit 64 GB DDR5-5600 CL28

With a CS latency of 10ns and a power consumption of a low 1.4 volts, it sounds promising. However, it will probably be very expensive.

[StreamFidelity]

8 hours ago, oneguy said:

but I did find a Ripjaw 6000 CL30 ($380) and Trident 6000 CL30 ($390). Those spec will give you a CS latency of 10ns.

Thank you very much. The market is getting interesting. This search algorithm can be used to filter the latest offers on Geizhals.de:

 

Memory with types: DDR5/on-die ECC, kit size: from 16GB, CL operation time up to 10.1ns, casing: heatspreader, lighting: none

[StreamFidelity]

5 hours ago, MJ1409 said:

For some weird reason a random e-core is being straddled with a high % of the load???

 

The same with me (HQPlayer 4 Embedded 4.32.5, i9-13900KF without CUDA). 

 

I have only activated two E-cores (17,18) and the problem is solved for now.

[StreamFidelity]

19 hours ago, Miska said:

How does output of "ls /sys/devices" look like for the 13900K?

This is wat I got:

 

root@hqplayer:~# ls /sys/devices
LNXSYSTM:00  cpu          intel_pt     msr          platform     software     tracepoint   virtual
breakpoint   intel_bts    kprobe       pci0000:00   pnp0         system       uprobe

 

[StreamFidelity]

13 hours ago, Miska said:

root@silent:~# sensors

 

This command is not in HQPlayer OS or am I doing something wrong? 

root@hqplayer:~# sensors
-sh: sensors: command not found