Discussion Amazed at how well Bloomfield/Gulftown i7s have held up for PC Gaming

[DAPUNISHER]

Well, I ran the 920 for quite a while in The Division 2 which is basically an MMO with AAA graphics. And I'm more interested on the effect on the average gamer; i.e. don't care about high refresh or intensive streaming applications. Origins and Odyssey are really outliers, due no doubt to the DRM+VM Protect from Ubisoft on those titles, still playable but older cpus take a heavy hit.

I take no exception to that, but your one comment read as derisive. And I have no idea how to address such sweeping statements as the average gamer. In what country? By what metrics? And let's not even get into "average gamer" overlap with overclocking. Yeah man, we get off in the weeds fast.

 

[eek2121]

My old 2600K is prime95 stable at 5Ghz, though I run it at 4.6 to keep the system running cool.

Intel left a ton of room on the table when it came to clock speed back in the day. That being said, while there is a use case for older machines, newer machines are much faster. My 3900X does circles around older chips, for example.

 

[loki1944]

Nonsense. 1000s of PC gamers stream. Oh, and 1000s of PC gamers also do not use Nvidia cards, for a variety of reasons.

I did run my 930 with an R9 Nano for the Red Team; not too shabby using various settings.

Spoiler: i7 930/R9 Nano

 

[loki1944]

I take no exception to that, but your one comment read as derisive. And I have no idea how to address such sweeping statements as the average gamer. In what country? By what metrics? And let's not even get into "average gamer" overlap with overclocking. Yeah man, we get off in the weeds fast.

Steam Hardware survey is probably the best mass gaming census overall I'd say, as far as gamer indicators.

Spoiler: Steam Hardware Survey July 2020

 

[Makaveli]

I retired my i7-970 Rig in December for whats in my sig now.

It was still usable for gaming at 1080p with a RX580 cpu was at 4Ghz.

may re purpose it for something just not sure yet.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

@loki1944

Heck, I have probably watched you before. Team Red folk were always cool, and would give invites to betas and stuff. Not to mention AMD give aways.

And I knew you would pull the Steam survey card.

 

[chrisjames61]

That is the whole point, different strokes and all that. These old platforms can be a great budget buy for folks on a really tight budget.

I agree with that.

 

[killster1]

Nonsense. 1000s of PC gamers stream. Oh, and 1000s of PC gamers also do not use Nvidia cards, for a variety of reasons.

Yes thousands out of millions sounds not normal. With that said at one time my son wanted to have a game stream etc. Also creating heat and doing other tasks besides games is a good reason to get a better pc.

 

[loki1944]

@loki1944

Heck, I have probably watched you before. Team Red folk were always cool, and would give invites to betas and stuff. Not to mention AMD give aways.

And I knew you would pull the Steam survey card.

Well I do think it is the most decent gamer hardware census we have. Anecdotally out of 13 gamers I know face to face/live within driving distance 84.6% are @1080p, 7.6% use a high refresh monitor, 15.3% are @4K, 46.15% have 3GB or less of VRAM, 46.15% have a 4C4T or less CPU, 15.3% have a 6C12T CPU, 15.3% have a 4C8T CPU, and 23% stream.

 

[Shivansps]

Nonsense. 1000s of PC gamers stream. Oh, and 1000s of PC gamers also do not use Nvidia cards, for a variety of reasons.

I think the chances of someone owning a old cpu, a AMD gpu, and wanting to stream is low. But in that case is clear that you need to get a better pc. IF the AMD encoder is not enoght for you, as AMD GPU also do that.

 

[aigomorla]

The biggest issue with bloomfield/gulftown is that the PCI-E lanes are still on the board controller, which makes them several magnitudes slower then the newer skylake stuff.

This leads to bottlenecks on a modern gpu by not a little, but sometimes even 20-30% of what the game can run.
And this bottleneck can be seen very quickly in even mid tier video cards like the 1660 and 5500XT.

This is why i stopped recommending people from even getting X58 stuff.
Also combine the fact you have no usb3.0, no nvme... again NO NVME.... and limited to ICH10R SATA 3G under most situations, and other stuff... your really better off starting to save up and getting a Ryzen or a Cofeelake system in the budget tier categories over trying to resuscitate that X58.

 

[Shmee]

Some boards had USB 3 though.

 

[aigomorla]

Some boards had USB 3 though.

Ahhh, i remember those like the MSI refreshes...
But it was done i believe though a independant ASmedia/NEC controller, and not though the PCX, which had a lesser burst speed then traditional USB3.0

 

[loki1944]

The biggest issue with bloomfield/gulftown is that the PCI-E lanes are still on the board controller, which makes them several magnitudes slower then the newer skylake stuff.

This leads to bottlenecks on a modern gpu by not a little, but sometimes even 20-30% of what the game can run.
And this bottleneck can be seen very quickly in even mid tier video cards like the 1660 and 5500XT.

This is why i stopped recommending people from even getting X58 stuff.
Also combine the fact you have no usb3.0, no nvme... again NO NVME.... and limited to ICH10R SATA 3G under most situations, and other stuff... your really better off starting to save up and getting a Ryzen or a Cofeelake system in the budget tier categories over trying to resuscitate that X58.

Up to about 1070Ti level they are fine.

 

[aigomorla]

Up to about 1070Ti level they are fine.

thats really dependant on the resolution.

You see a much greater fall off where things become more cpu dependant at 1080p vs 1440p + 2160p .
Most gamers who look at X58 recycled stuff are not going to be gaming on the latter, yet the former + even 720, where you will see large bottlenecks.

In all its a fun experiment, but its definitely something i would not suggest or recommend anyone.
Infact if that small of a budget is all your allocated to, i would honestly recommend (although taboo to mention in PC Master Race) is to get a console.

 

[loki1944]

thats really dependant on the resolution.

You see a much greater fall off where things become more cpu dependant at 1080p vs 1440p + 2160p .
Most gamers who look at X58 recycled stuff are not going to be gaming on the latter, yet the former + even 720, where you will see large bottlenecks.

In all its a fun experiment, but its definitely something i would not suggest or recommend anyone.
Infact if that small of a budget is all your allocated to, i would honestly recommend (although taboo to mention in PC Master Race) is to get a console.

Well, as I posted, with a 980Ti that really isn't tangible/noticeable @1080p vs a 2600X; saw the same thing when I ran them vs i7 6700. So they are perfectly viable gaming CPUs for 1080p paired with up to 980Ti/1070/1070Ti GPU; if you still have a bloomfield or gulftown and are @1080p there really isn't much reason to upgrade in terms of gaming if you are at or below those gpu levels. You'll still get good performance.

 

[A///]

Loki was one of the AMD sponsored gamers from back in the early 2000s? I think X58 is still viable for a lot of stuff today outside AAA gaming. Heck, I'd say the 2670 builds that were popular 4-5 years ago are still viable today. They were being paired with then modern/current video cards. I think what killed this project for most was a certain company releasing groundbreaking products, even if they weren't that great.

I'll probably consider a "cheap" build like this with current Xeons I'll get on fleabay in a few years. If you can figure out the decomissioning schedule of datacenters and companies you can get some really sweet stuff.

 

[alcoholbob]

Well especially for newer games, APIs have become much better at not bottlenecking the CPU. It's really the older generation games where you get a huge difference in performance. I remember upgrading from a i7 920 to a 4790k and literally got double the performance in Neverwinter Nights 2 which was a horribly CPU bound DX9 game. Any time the camera created a far draw distance situation there was literally no occlusion culling which resulted in insane draw call hits to the CPU. The game would basically linearly scale with CPU performance. A lot of old RPGs had this issue.

 

[loki1944]

Well especially for newer games, APIs have much better at not bottlenecking the CPU. It's really the older generation games where you get a huge difference in performance. I remember upgrading from a i7 920 to a 4790k and literally got double the performance in Neverwinter Nights 2 which was a horribly CPU bound DX9 game. Any time the camera created a far draw distance situation there was literally no occlusion culling which resulted in insane draw call hits to the CPU. The game would basically linearly scale with CPU performance. A lot of old RPGs had this issue.

What I'm seeing is DX10 is more where the gap is; DX9 my 920 and Ryzen are very close in Far Cry 2, DX10 is where Ryzen takes a commanding lead in Far Cry 2 and Just Cause 2, DX11 they are close again on average. I'll probably go back to ETQW and see what the spread is there.

 

[SPBHM]

The biggest issue with bloomfield/gulftown is that the PCI-E lanes are still on the board controller, which makes them several magnitudes slower then the newer skylake stuff.

This leads to bottlenecks on a modern gpu by not a little, but sometimes even 20-30% of what the game can run.
And this bottleneck can be seen very quickly in even mid tier video cards like the 1660 and 5500XT.

This is why i stopped recommending people from even getting X58 stuff.
Also combine the fact you have no usb3.0, no nvme... again NO NVME.... and limited to ICH10R SATA 3G under most situations, and other stuff... your really better off starting to save up and getting a Ryzen or a Cofeelake system in the budget tier categories over trying to resuscitate that X58.

well, it's PCIE 2.0 also which is not ideal, but are there any measured examples of the PCIE limitation?
I have compared my sandy bridge to LGA 775 and noticed for example on the AIDA64 GPUGPU benchmark the PCIE limitation on 775 (on memory write and read), or used CUDA bandwidth test on another card,

AFAIK the bandwidth between the northbridge and the nehalem CPU is way better (25GB/s), so I wouldn't expect it to be a big issue!? that's way above the 16x PCIE 2.0 bandwidth

I've seen USB 3.0 and NVME drives running on x58 by using the PCIE slots since it had plenty of PCIE lanes

 

[loki1944]

well, it's PCIE 2.0 also which is not ideal, but are there any measured examples of the PCIE limitation?
I have compared my sandy bridge to LGA 775 and noticed for example on the AIDA64 GPUGPU benchmark the PCIE limitation on 775 (on memory write and read), or used CUDA bandwidth test on another card,

AFAIK the bandwidth between the northbridge and the nehalem CPU is way better (25GB/s), so I wouldn't expect it to be a big issue!? that's way above the 16x PCIE 2.0 bandwidth

I've seen USB 3.0 and NVME drives running on x58 by using the PCIE slots since it had plenty of PCIE lanes

All I know is that if I put a GTX 1080 in X58 I don't see much or any improvement over a 980Ti or 1070Ti.

 

[loki1944]

Some boards had USB 3 though.

Yup, got one of those with my 980X.

 

[bigboxes]

I use my i7 920 in my HTPC. Asus P6T Deluxe v2. Paired with a Samsung 850. Boots straight into Kodi. All controlled by my phone. Thermalright low profile cooler. Lian Li component sized case. It was my first quad core CPU.

 

[bigboxes]

What I love about my P6T Deluxe v2? It's built like a tank.

 

[bigboxes]

I retired my i7-970 Rig in December for whats in my sig now.

It was still usable for gaming at 1080p with a RX580 cpu was at 4Ghz.

may re purpose it for something just not sure yet.

Yeah, I repurposed my i7 920 for my HTPC in 2015 when I went with the 4790K. I probably would have upgraded by now, but I had been working on my upgraded home server in 2017 when life changed for me.