• Registered: 2014-07-11
  • Posts: 16

Topic: Question about new AMD boards and RME USB interfaces

Anyone have any experience with new AMD boards/chips, like a Ryzen 9 7950X, paired with a RME USB interface, particularly a UCX 2? I ask because AMD hasn't always had the best USB implementation in the past. I'm getting ready to build a new PC and probably will go with Intel as I have in the past but I'm considering AMD, but only if they work well with RME interfaces and I'm not in for a bunch of troubleshooting pain because they have a shaky USB implementation.

2 Reply by ramses (edited by ramses 2023-01-13 22:02:56)

  • ramses
  • DAW Mastermind
  • Offline
  • From: UTC+1
  • Registered: 2012-10-14
  • Posts: 12,056

Re: Question about new AMD boards and RME USB interfaces

You could try to add a separate PCIe USB3 interface if needed.
The Sonnet Cards with FL1100 chipset are fine for UFX+ and ADI-2 Pro (both MADIface driver).

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub13

3 Reply by Yearofthegoat (edited by Yearofthegoat 2023-01-13 23:05:47)

  • Registered: 2022-03-22
  • Posts: 27

Re: Question about new AMD boards and RME USB interfaces

I'm still on AM4 (old AGESA, PCIe Gen3 GPU, to avoid potential USB issues), and will be for a while, so don't have a direct experience to pass on.

However, if the next AMD boards are as bad as the AM4 ones were, I would avoid AMD. Of course the sensible thing to do would be to wait for a while to see what problems surface.

If you can't or won't wait, Intel would be the safer bet.

  • Registered: 2014-07-11
  • Posts: 16

Re: Question about new AMD boards and RME USB interfaces

Yearofthegoat wrote:

If you can't or won't wait, Intel would be the safer bet.

I mean I could wait but I'm not really tempted to. The AMD offerings this generation are good, but so are the Intel offerings and they are price-competitive at the high end so it doesn't really matter which way I go all that much. I'm just weighing options. AMD has the advantage of having more performance cores, which is in theory better for DAW workloads since they can't necessarily schedule the efficiency cores effectively. However Intel has a higher total core count, better memory controllers, and generally seems to handle a higher load in DAWBench.

Neither will make me unhappy... unless there are nasty USB issues, since I'm quite happy with my Fireface and I don't wish to replace it.

Just wanted to see if anyone had any experience with them, specifically with RME products.

5 Reply by ramses (edited by ramses 2023-01-14 11:44:22)

  • ramses
  • DAW Mastermind
  • Offline
  • From: UTC+1
  • Registered: 2012-10-14
  • Posts: 12,056

Re: Question about new AMD boards and RME USB interfaces

Should it not work good, then you can simply try the sonnet card as I mentioned in my previous answer.

See also here for a link: https://forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?id=34582
The card needs at minimum a PCIe 2.0 x1-slot (with one PCIe lane).

It's anyway beneficial to isolate a recording interface behind a dedicated USB controller.

Even with my otherwise excellent Intel Xeon based server board from Supermicro, I got small instabilities after finally connecting too many things to the USB infrastructure. A dedicated card for the recording interfaces helped immediately.

At the time, I had two UFX+ and an ADI-2 Pro FS connected (additionally a RayDAT PCIe card for occasional testing purposes).

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub13
  • Registered: 2021-03-10
  • Posts: 31

Re: Question about new AMD boards and RME USB interfaces

Any news on this? Did the sonnet card solve your situation?
Thanks