I've been hearing a lot about how Macs are the go-to choice for music production, and I get why, but I'm curious if there's a Windows CPU that can deliver similar performance. Right now, I'm working with a 12th gen i7 and 32GB of RAM. I know jumping to an i9 might be the obvious upgrade, but I'm not sure if it's really necessary or what specific improvements I might see. My current setup struggles with long project load times and I often have to rely on CPU-saving settings in my software for more demanding tasks. On a Mac, I've noticed projects load quickly, and I'm able to record with minimal latency. If anyone has experience with this, I'd really love some insights!
3 Answers
Yeah, I run music production on Windows without any issues! I’ve got 64GB of RAM and a Ryzen 5 5500, which is slightly lower than your i7, but my projects load quickly. Just make sure you're using an SSD, as running off a hard drive can really slow things down. My DAW, REAPER, uses about 15% of my CPU under normal conditions, but it ramps up when exporting. You might want to check if your RAM is running at its rated speed and that there aren’t any corrupt files on your system. Also, which software are you using? Some DAWs are more CPU-hungry than others!
Nah, it's Reaper too!
For what it’s worth, Ableton just seems to run smoother on Mac systems. The OS plays a huge role in performance for audio work. I think you can definitely get good performance with your setup, but don’t expect a huge upgrade just from moving to an i9. A clean install might help a bit, though. I've used effects for real-time mixing on Mac with minimal latency, and it still feels like Windows struggles to keep up.
Which version of the M2 do you have—Standard, Pro, Max, or Ultra? If you’re on the M2 Ultra, both the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X3D and Intel Core i9-14900K have comparable benchmarks, so they're worth looking into!
I’m pretty sure it's the Standard.
I was surprised by how well my setup handled everything, honestly. I use an Ableton template with a lot of plugins loaded and thought that would slow me down, but it holds up pretty well. I can't even record at less than 256 samples without hitting some serious CPU usage. Just trying to see if there's a clean install route without messing up my workflow too much.