Holy ****. Xeon E5-2670s from decommissioned Facebook servers selling for $70 on EBay

[eton975]

Link

Title says it all. Incredible performance/dollar ratio. Pair 2 up with a dual CPU C602 board, EATX case and you've got a winner for heavily multithreaded stuff!

 

[Burpo]

Old news..
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2433821&page=7

Priced any boards for that chip?

 

[eton975]

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_sacat=0&_nkw=supermicro+dual+2011+x9&_sop=15

Dual SuperMicro 2011 board for $333. Not bad is it?

That's a pretty obscure thread from a month ago BTW.

 

[pitz]

Is the newer gear much better? Or has FB merely decided to change hardware strategy?

 

[myocardia]

Is the newer gear much better? Or has FB merely decided to change hardware strategy?

In overall performance? No, the newer stuff doesn't perform extremely differently. But, when you own and run hundreds of thousands of CPUs, overall performance isn't what you care the most about. Large companies such as Google care much more about efficiency, where both Haswell and Broadwell Xeons destroy the Sandylake Xeons, that they have replaced.

Even if the total purchase price is 30-40% higher, the TCO (total cost of ownership) becomes much, much lower if doing the same amount of work only uses let's say 60-70% as much power, since it will be multiplied by however many hundreds of thousands of CPUs you're running.

 

[Burpo]

Is the newer gear much better? Or has FB merely decided to change hardware strategy?

Yes, here you see a single 65 watt CPU w/ dual 10GbE MAC, going up against dual E5 2670's @ 230 watts.

'There is certainly more to this picture as you will see in our full benchmarks but the general theme is that if you can take advantage of the cores, you can use 1/4 the power of Sandy Bridge-EP"

http://www.servethehome.com/intel-xeon-d-12-and-16-core-parts-launched-first-benchmarks/

 

[eton975]

In overall performance? No, the newer stuff doesn't perform extremely differently. But, when you own and run hundreds of thousands of CPUs, overall performance isn't what you care the most about. Large companies such as Google care much more about efficiency, where both Haswell and Broadwell Xeons destroy the Sandylake Xeons, that they have replaced.

Even if the total purchase price is 30-40% higher, the TCO (total cost of ownership) becomes much, much lower if doing the same amount of work only uses let's say 60-70% as much power, since it will be multiplied by however many hundreds of thousands of CPUs you're running.

Luckily for us and other hardware enthusiasts, the TCO is still fine because the alternative is a $685 E5-2630v3. The 30W TDP difference isn't enough to offset that price:

(Assuming a 5 year lifespan and a $0.11 per Kwh charge for electricity):

43800*0.03*0.11=$144.54.

Running it flat out for the whole 5 years, the 30W difference isn't enough to bridge the gap. Heh.

EDIT: WOW. Intel really has an ace in the hole with the Xeon D.

 

[Burpo]

New Xeon Board.. All business.. low power.. 9" X 7.25" ..

The glut of E5 2670's, is just the tip of the iceberg..

 

[ShintaiDK]

Is the newer gear much better? Or has FB merely decided to change hardware strategy?

The TCO for newer gear is much lower.

That's why you see cheap SB and IB Xeons around. In a server world a SB Xeon is close to worthless for the same reason SB killed of Opertons.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Luckily for us and other hardware enthusiasts, the TCO is still fine because the alternative is a $685 E5-2630v3. The 30W TDP difference isn't enough to offset that price:

(Assuming a 5 year lifespan and a $0.11 per Kwh charge for electricity):

43800*0.03*0.11=$144.54.

Running it flat out for the whole 5 years, the 30W difference isn't enough to bridge the gap. Heh.

EDIT: WOW. Intel really has an ace in the hole with the Xeon D.

Remember cooling and space.

 

[NTMBK]

Yup, Xeon D provides the same performance at 1/4 the power, on a significantly less motherboard (i.e. with fewer ways to fail), at a much higher density. For the likes of Facebook it's a no-brainer.

However, for people who aren't Facebook, this is a great bargain Shame they aren't overclockable like the old Westmere chips.

 

[beginner99]

Luckily for us and other hardware enthusiasts, the TCO is still fine because the alternative is a $685 E5-2630v3. The 30W TDP difference isn't enough to offset that price:

(Assuming a 5 year lifespan and a $0.11 per Kwh charge for electricity):

43800*0.03*0.11=$144.54.

Running it flat out for the whole 5 years, the 30W difference isn't enough to bridge the gap.

You forgot the fact that if ou run a datacenter with thousands of these cpus you need to cool it. And the cost saved on cooling adds up quickly.

AFAIK there are plans (or already built by now, don't really know) for datacenters which use the generated heat for heating houses in winter.

 

[ShintaiDK]

You forgot the fact that if ou run a datacenter with thousands of these cpus you need to cool it. And the cost saved on cooling adds up quickly.

AFAIK there are plans (or already built by now, don't really know) for datacenters which use the generated heat for heating houses in winter.

That doesn't really work. The heat is too low a temperature to work without lots of costly extra measures like heatpumps. I know from the coming Apple datacenter in Viborg in Denmark. The "free heat" there is already turned into a scandal that will cost home owners lots of extra money in heating.

 

[Justinbaileyman]

Holy crap!! That is a steal!! Thats like someone giving away a lamborghini for $1000 bucks. Are these real or are these ES cpu's? I got scammed once already trying to buy a pair of e5-2650's and they turned out to be fake ES cpu's that didnt even work.Had to file a claim and everything just to get my money back . cant go wrong if these are legit and only $70.00 bucks. I dont even give a crap about overclocking I just need more cores for video editing/encoding and rendering.. What do you guys think should I grab a couple of these puppies??

 

[rchunter]

Holy crap!! That is a steal!! Thats like someone giving away a lamborghini for $1000 bucks. Are these real or are these ES cpu's? I got scammed once already trying to buy a pair of e5-2650's and they turned out to be fake ES cpu's that didnt even work.Had to file a claim and everything just to get my money back . cant go wrong if these are legit and only $70.00 bucks. I dont even give a crap about overclocking I just need more cores for video editing/encoding and rendering.. What do you guys think should I grab a couple of these puppies??

Sure go for it. There are lot's of people buying them up to run home servers/ESXi. Here is a huge thread discussing them.
https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/intel-xeon-e5-2670-deal-and-price-tracking.7133/

 

[cbn]

New 2P boards are still available:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...100007629 600288062 4814 600038392&IsNodeId=1

Some New 1P Server boards as well:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...100007629 4814 600038392 600287814&IsNodeId=1

With that mentioned, I do wish there were some new low cost X79 boards as well. (E5 2670 would make a good entry level gamer)

 

[NTMBK]

With that mentioned, I do wish there were some new low cost X79 boards as well. (E5 2670 would make a good entry level gamer)

2.6GHz Sandy Bridge? Eh, not going to be that great for gaming, especially with the price of the motherboard. Single thread performance just isn't going to be that good. Better off getting a Haswell i3.

 

[Justinbaileyman]

Cant I use a Standard X79 ASUS motherboard? If so where to get them new still?? I have been looking everywhere but they are all sold out everywhere.. Any Idea's for me guys??

 

[cbn]

2.6GHz Sandy Bridge? Eh, not going to be that great for gaming, especially with the price of the motherboard. Single thread performance just isn't going to be that good. Better off getting a Haswell i3.

Newer games are scaling better with eight cores so I would rather have one of these than Core i3.

For older games I would take i3 though.

 

[NTMBK]

Newer games are scaling better with eight cores so I would rather have one of these than Core i3.

For older games I would take i3 though.

Ah, the old Bulldozer argument I can see your point, but I suspect plenty of lower budget games will have single-thread bottlenecks. Nothing like a single high-clocked core for ploughing through lazy coding

 

[Justinbaileyman]

I cant find any new boards anywhere and all the used one are $300-$600.. should I just grab a single socket server board? Do Server boards take Standard Desktop DDR3 Memory?

 

[cbn]

Ah, the old Bulldozer argument I can see your point, but I suspect plenty of lower budget games will have single-thread bottlenecks. Nothing like a single high-clocked core for ploughing through lazy coding

In addition to the core scaling, the cache and memory is high spec at 20MB/quad channel and some games appear to respond well to this.

Also another thing to consider is DX12 and Vulkan. Being able to spread out some of the work beyond 2C/4T should help as well.

But yes.....Indie games (or low budget games) those would be examples of new games that might still prefer the Core i3,

 

[Yuriman]

There are plenty of games out today that show limitations below 60fps on high clocked (4.5ghz+) Sandy Bridge. I expect that, despite the absurd amount of threads, you'll feel the limitations in IPC pretty frequently. Note that at these clocks, the per-thread performance is lower than an overclocked Piledriver CPU.

 

[Burpo]

Even Haswell chips with more cores & higher single thread, has complaints for game load times..

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=38047754&postcount=7

 

[cbn]

There are plenty of games out today that show limitations below 60fps on high clocked (4.5ghz+) Sandy Bridge. I expect that, despite the absurd amount of threads, you'll feel the limitations in IPC pretty frequently.

With a big GPU and DX11 that might be true.

But with a more modest GPU and DX12/Vulkan things should be a lot better.

Note that at these clocks, the per-thread performance is lower than an overclocked Piledriver CPU.

According to passmark, E2670 has around the same (actually slightly higher) single thread as a FX-9370:

E5 2670: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+E5-2670+@+2.60GHz (12517 MT, 1625 ST)

FX-9370: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+FX-9370+Eight-Core (9537 MT, 1609 ST)