I bought a new computer specifically to run Rack. Currently have Core i7-10700 & GeForce(R) GT 1030 graphics.
There’s a generation beyond that - 11th generation Cypress Cove, and graphics cards keep getting faster.
My intuition though, is that particularly for Rack, there isn’t a significant performance improvement in the newer generatoin.
Anyone try Rack on Intel I9 CPUs?
Fun, and not entirely useless idea: Someone make a benchmark Rack patch and record performance on our machines with specs.
That’s an interesting idea.
AFAIK, once you have a “decent” GPU you are set in terms of video, and won’t get anything by upgrading to a “good” or even “great” one.
But Rack (and most audio applications) can always do more with more cores and faster cores. That said, that last bit of CPU performance always comes at a (to high) price.
in the apple m1 thread I posted something like a “benchmark patch”
and don’t forget, the more cores you use the more overhead you need
~ 65% on a Intel(R) Core™ i7-10750H CPU @ 2.60GHz laptop at 5 cores (of 6) sufficient to get quite a few glitches.
The overall task manager CPU % is not really a good indicator of what is going on. Your CPU has 6 cores, but 12 threads because of hyperthreading (HT). So 65% is (theroetically) already all physical cores at maximum and will use HT for some things. I have a 6 core / 12 threads CPU as well and I rarely go above 4 threads in VCV. With an overall CPU-Usage of 50% I get no glitches. A good indicator is to set the task manager to show logical cores and watch the graphs for the individual cores. Then set VCV to one core to see which core is used and increase the load of your patch. When the core used by VCV hits maximum you will most likely get glitches, add another core and slowly build up until you can’t add more cores without getting glitches.
I don’t think an update would give you a performance upgrade. I would always skip at least one generation of CPUs when upgrading. The next generation of CPUs will be a platform-change with DDR5 as memory and a lot of changes (different cores for different tasks and so on). I strongly recommend waiting for that release. Since graphic card prices are through the roof at the moment and the 1030 should be ok for VCV I would not recommend upgrading that either.
I’d say you’re covered for now in both the CPU and GPU departments. Are you getting problems with your system? For VCV Rack, single-core/single-thread performace is king. Check out this chart:
I sort of did that here:
The problem is, that there’s no easy and intuitive way, across OS’s, with the tools people already have, to measure the performance of Rack, and Rack only, on the machine. You could write a little dedicated program, one for each OS, that does that, but… it’s a mess.
