I am upgrading my desktop to take advantage of my 2GB internet speeds. That leaves me with my NUC 11 (which doesn’t support more than 1GB) . I am currently using a NUC10 for my ROCK. Should I bother upgrading my ROCK? As far as I can see, the NUC11 has faster memory, but fewer cores and threads.
If it works fine with the NUC10, why upgrading.
Most Users like me will have less than 1GB and it also works fine. I would not spend money only to get 2GB internet speed. I don´t think it will make a change.
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From a rate perspective, a stereo 192/24 signal requires less than 10Mbps and DSD256 less than 23Mbps. None comes close to 1Gpbs.
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Nope. /10char
[Sorry, not trying to be glib. The upside is limited.]
There’s nothing in any sensible world you can do with Roon that could stress a 1 Gbit connection.
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But since the world is not sensible, someone might want to stream 5.1 surround DSD1024 to 4 rooms when Roon supports it.
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If you’d all read carefully the OP’s opening post, you’d notice that his question has nothing whatsoever to do with Internet access speed.
He has upgraded his desktop PC to take advantage of his new Internet speed, and has now an unused NUC11 on his hand. He asks if it is worth his while to upgrade his current ROCK NUC10 with this NUC11, taking into account memory access speed and core count…
I have no opinion on the matter, but wanted to make sure the question is understood by all those who undoubtedly will have,.
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I think it’s understood. Unless I’m missing something, ROCK can only be used with Roon, so it’s only about streaming audio. The memory and core are just secondary considerations.
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I think you do. He states that his NUC11 only supports 1Gb, and so presumably does his NUC10. So his question about upgrading his ROCK machine is not about increasing network bandwidth at all, but about a general performance increase with ROON, comparing the two NUC models… So, is it worthwhile to replace his current NUC10 running ROCK with the NUC11 he now has on his hand?
This is precisely correct. There would be minimal cost to do this, but if it’s a waste of time (nothing to be gained) I’ll find another use for the old NUC11. (I don’t need another backup or endpoint.)
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Single core speed is the significant measure, so compare it. (Spoiler: the 11th gen is about 15-20% faster when the task is CPU limited. Though in most practical user applications it’s usually data I/O that’s the limitation, and I guess this is true for Roon database operations as well. For DSP the 15-20% may be significant, depending on what you want to do. Core count is not much used by Roon except when scanning files and, I believe, some DSP operations)
https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-intel_core_i7_1165g7-vs-intel_core_i7_10710u
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I think the only other factor is how many endpoints you stream to simultaneously, as each zone is allocated a core.
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Interesting. Perhaps the NUC10 is better then? (It has more cores.) I often use 4 endpoints at a time. Do I “parallelize” and assign 4 cores? Let me say this, things are working pretty well right now. Occasionally there will be times that the music will drop off, but not all that often.
I think it does that automatically. The only place I am aware of where you can choose the number of cores is the Background Audio Analysis Speed in Settings > Library
Look at the link I posted. The 10 and 11 are head to head in multi core tasks, and the 11 is ~15% faster in single core tasks if they are only CPU limited.
Whether the differences are worthwhile depends on the type of workload you throw at it and on whether your 10th gen is currently marginal. Probably not in most practical cases (except the DSD thing IF you use it and IF you are currently marginal on speed)
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I recently upgraded from a Nuc10 to a Nuc11. If you use a gen4 NVme drive and 3200Mhz memory, you’ll see a noticeable increase in UI response. Not that the Nuc10 is slow or anything.
My upgrade was done because I unexpectedly came into possession of the Nuc11, not because my Nuc10 was slow.
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Great! Sounds like it will be worth my time then.
I have a large library (289,000 tracks). Both NUCs have i7 processors and 64 GB ram.
Then I guess you have good use for 15% increase even if it only applies to some operations