Upgrade i5 to i7 and motherboard

Tony · 25-09-2016 1:10pm #1

Hi guys, I currently have an i5 3450 Ivy Bridge 1155 socket with an Asrock B75 pro 3 board , 16gb ddr 3 memory . I do a lot of digital audio work and have some real time audio latency issues as reported by Latency monitor program . What value would the old board, processor and memory have and what would board, memory and processor would you recommend with a 500euro budget ?

Thanks in advance

Digital Solitude · 25-09-2016 1:25pm

Why not just hop the 3470 to an i7 and keep the rest?

TerrorFirmer · 25-09-2016 1:25pm

Your best option is probably to get something like an i7-3770 for your current machine for €120-150. I wouldn't go to the bother of switching out everything and spending €500 on a Skylake i7 setup. What speed is the ram?

Tony · 25-09-2016 1:28pm

My concern would be the motherboard might be part of the issue perhaps ?

Digital Solitude wrote: »

Why not just hop the 3470 to an i7 and keep the rest?

Tony · 25-09-2016 1:31pm

Thanks, ram is 1600 mhz

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

Your best option is probably to get something like an i7-3770 for your current machine for €120-150. I wouldn't go to the bother of switching out everything and spending €500 on a Skylake i7 setup. What speed is the ram?

Digital Solitude · 25-09-2016 1:36pm

Motherboard doesn't affect the speed of your cpu

Tony · 25-09-2016 1:48pm

Sure but I'm wondering if the motherboard maybe part of the problem, i'd hate to get an I7 1155 and then find the problem is still there . Are there any good 1155 boards still around ? I see some online but they look expensive in comparison to the latest models.

Digital Solitude wrote: »

Motherboard doesn't affect the speed of your cpu

TerrorFirmer · 25-09-2016 2:51pm

The motherboard is fine presumably, I'm just not familiar with audio work of that nature so you need someone who is ideally to be able to go through the particular issue....but I'd be surprised if an i5-3570 was having issues of any kind that infer a substandard CPU.

I assume that's the issue - something is happening that either should not be happening or is affecting your work? As opposed to something like say video editing, where an i7 is faster, but an i5 will get the job done just fine.

Is it possible this issue is nothing to do with the CPU at all? Realistically, an i5-3570 is still a very powerful processor. An i7 would be faster for many types of work that can effectively use more threads, other applications and virtually all games see no benefit at all. But if you're having an issue whereas you literally cannot work at the moment, I would say there's something else at play.

TerrorFirmer · 25-09-2016 3:01pm

What sound card are you using?

Eoinmc97 · 25-09-2016 3:26pm

Your AsRock B75 Pro 3 is what would handle the audio side of things, although latency might be due to the motherboards' audio codec. If you have a PCI/PCIE slot free, you could buy a Sound Card for around €70-€80, which would offer more features than the motherboard's audio.

That should handle the latency, but if not...I can only think of getting a new motherboard for your CPU.

Tony · 25-09-2016 3:58pm

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

What sound card are you using?

Thanks for your input , soundcard is Sound blaster Z series . I've attached a screenshot of the info from latency monitor program. I've already tried various settings on updated BIOS

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rcvunkqgk923uyg/latency%20mon.png?dl=0

Tony · 25-09-2016 4:01pm

Thanks I have a separate creative labs card

Eoinmc97 wrote: »

Your AsRock B75 Pro 3 is what would handle the audio side of things, although latency might be due to the motherboards' audio codec. If you have a PCI/PCIE slot free, you could buy a Sound Card for around €70-€80, which would offer more features than the motherboard's audio.

That should handle the latency, but if not...I can only think of getting a new motherboard for your CPU.

magentis · 25-09-2016 8:34pm

Have you ruled out other components?
Do you have any other cards installed?
I would check your bios settings,cpu temps and run memtest on the ram to rule everything else out.The specs of that system sound very capable.

Tony · 25-09-2016 11:15pm

Thanks. Yes I have tested and changed every other component that I can think off including BIOS settings and all the drivers are up to date . I'll run memtest tomorrow as you suggest.

magentis wrote: »

Have you ruled out other components?
Do you have any other cards installed?
I would check your bios settings,cpu temps and run memtest on the ram to rule everything else out.The specs of that system sound very capable.

Tony · 26-09-2016 9:45am

Memtest runs ok and CPU temp runs at 46 degrees. Any ideas on specific BIOS settings I should have checked or unchecked ?

Thanks for all the help so far

Upgrade i5 to i7 and motherboard

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