I don't need another system...I don't need another system...I don't need another system...

[Assimilator1]

Sounds like a win-win situation then!
28 threads! Crazy!

 

[Ionstream]

Wow that's plenty of space heaters you have there... That's a really good trade to be honest. But, I think I got a better deal when I paid for mine. Wanna guess how much I paid for one of my 18 core Xeons?

 

[TennesseeTony]

If you paid less....then no. lol! How much?

 

[Ionstream]

If you paid less....then no. lol! How much?

$360 USD apiece, including shipping. They're going for $500+ USD now. I should've bought more of them :/

 

[Assimilator1]

When I bought my i7 4930k they were (& still are) going for £250-300, I bid on 1 with a £215 limit (not expecting to get it), no one else bid & I won it for £200! .
The guy who sold it was rather gutted it went so cheap, lol. I think that's the 1st time I've been so lucky!
Mind you, I sold the 4820k for £78 incl postage & I was hoping for nearer £100!

 

[TennesseeTony]

So far I have only built Skeletor with the 'new' chips. Although I lost some MHz (when I finally update Bee and WUSS), these chips run with 20 less watts!

 

[Assimilator1]

How much speed did you lose?

 

[TennesseeTony]

For Devastator, it's an extra 2 cores/4 threads and an extra 200MHz....

For BumbleBee and WUSS, although core count/thread count remains the same ... I will lose 200MHz each, ...

 

[Markfw]

What motherboard did you get ? Here is what I am considering.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132835R

 

[crashtech]

What motherboard did you get ? Here is what I am considering.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132835R

That one doesn't say it has the OC socket, but this one does:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132261R

Not sure if that matters to you, but if I could do it all over again, I'd want the OC socket because it gives you more control over cache voltage.

 

[Markfw]

That one doesn't say it has the OC socket, but this one does:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132261R

Not sure if that matters to you, but if I could do it all over again, I'd want the OC socket because it gives you more control over cache voltage.

OK, cache voltage ? I will not be overclocking, as this is the CPU I am considering.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Xeon-...571694?hash=item2378dc7eee:g:gjsAAOSwFfhXjNQH

In case that doesn't work, its a 14 core 2.2 ghz ES
Intel Xeon E5-2680 v4 ES LGA2011-3 14C Compatible with X99 i7-6850K 6900K 6950X

Tony said something about the -E being better than the -A, not sure why (I can't remember)

 

[crashtech]

Oh, I should have been paying more attention! The OC socket does not matter for what you are doing.

 

[StefanR5R]

Last year shortly after release of Broadwell-E, I got an ASUS X99-A myself; the original revision with USB 3.0. This one and the X99-A/USB 3.1 were released for Haswell-E/-EP but received Broadwell-E/-EP support via BIOS update.

In contrast, the X99-A II and X99-E were released together with Broadwell-E if I am not mistaken, hence I presume these two support Broadwell-E/-EP out of the box.

So when I received my X99-A, I fully expected it to be delivered with an old BIOS without BDW-E support. Indeed that's what I got, but I had no HSW-E available for bringup. So I attempted to use ASUS' "USB BIOS Flashback" feature which in theory lets you flash the BIOS without assistance of the CPU and RAM. (CPU, RAM, graphics card etc. do not need to be physically present for this feature.) Unfortunately this feature simply malfunctioned for me; it started the process but never finished it properly. (The status LED never stopped to blink.) I resolved this by ordering an EEPROM chip flashed with the current BIOS, which I swapped in for the original chip. It's a socketed DIP chip.

--------

Incidentally, I encountered the same problem already before when I built an Ivy Bridge-E with ASUS Rampage IV Gene. This X79 board was released for Sandy Bridge-E and gained Ivy Bridge-E support via BIOS update. (If I recall correctly, there was not a single mainboard vendor who would bother to release a new X79 board model at the Ivy Bridge-E launch.) So I planned to use ASUS' USB BIOS Flashback feature, which was in fact one of the main reasons why I decided to get an ASUS board for that build. But at some step between the many BIOS revisions between the ancient BIOS which was on my board and the revision that I needed, ASUS had changed their BIOS image format in a way that necessitated a regular BIOS update from within a booted old BIOS. But since I had no Sandy Bridge-E, I ended up replacing the BIOS chip by one with the current BIOS programmed externally, exactly like later with the X99-A.

 

[Markfw]

Thanks Stefan ! I ordered the CPU even though I had not received a response as required from the seller. It went from 315 to 349 overnight, so I didn't want to take a chance of it going higher. Waiting on that confirmation of shipment before I order the motherboard, but I have decided on the X99-E. It will be cooled by an H100. I have the mobo, 16 gig of 2666 ram (4 sticks for quad channel) and an H1000 Corsair PSU in my cart at newegg waiting to pull the trigger. This box will probably have 2 x 1080TI's when its all done, and the 28 threads. Should be like Tony's devastator !!

 

[StefanR5R]

Have you contacted the CPU seller about compatibility with the X99-E? The ebay page says "Asus X99 Express Chipset motherboards [...]: some but not all stuck on Q-Code 19 after reboot". Dunno if this includes X99-E.

Here is a poster who prefers Asrock and MSI over Asus and Gigabyte for ES Xeons:
https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/what-controls-turbo-core-in-xeons.2496647/#post-38674168

 

[Markfw]

Well, I asked then to ship this instead (same price, $349)

Http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Xeon-...2011-3-Compatible-X99-i7-5960X-/232192146480?

I think its the same as Tony's

 

[TennesseeTony]

Awesome! Yeah, same chip as I posted about to start with, they ran out but now have more. My 'worst' chip of 4 uses about 96 watts and they all run at 2.5GHz (but haven't run any AVX tasks on them yet, which Stefan5R5 says will slow them down).

 

[Markfw]

So you overclock them ? unlocked ? How ?

 

[TennesseeTony]

No. No. and can't as far as I know, other than increasing the BCLK a tiny amount. They run at 2.5 because Intel told them to, on non AVX tasks.

Boost bins for this particular chip: 5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/6/7/8/10/10

So you're looking at 2.5 GHz base, provided you're not running AVX code.

So this means: 5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/6/7/8/10/10 3.0GHz with only 1 or 2 tasks, 2.8 with 3, 2.7 with 4, 2.6 with 5, and 2.5GHz with more than five tasks running (except AVX tasks).

 

[Markfw]

ahhh,

BTW, I just checked, and unrelated, I paid $370 each for my 6234 cpu's in dec 2012, and today on ebay I saw a lot of 2 6276 16 core cpu's for $43 (the pair) and free shipping. Think thats worth it to go from 24 to 32 cores for $43 ?? The disgusting part is I spent more for those 2, than these, and I would have gotten 56 cores if I got 2 !

Times sure change.

 

[Ken g6]

ahhh,

BTW, I just checked, and unrelated, I paid $370 each for my 6234 cpu's in dec 2012, and today on ebay I saw a lot of 2 6276 16 core cpu's for $43 (the pair) and free shipping. Think thats worth it to go from 24 to 32 cores for $43 ?? The disgusting part is I spent more for those 2, than these, and I would have gotten 56 cores if I got 2 !

Times sure change.

It might be worth it. What's the GHz on those CPUs?

 

[Markfw]

the 6234's are 2.4 ghz. The 6276's are 2.3 ghz

 

[StefanR5R]

In case of E5-2683 v3, AVX reduces the turbo only in lightly threaded loads:

loaded cores   1    2    3    4    5    6...14   non-turbo
----------------------------------------------------------
non-AVX load  3.0  3.0  2.8  2.7  2.6    2.5      2.0 GHz
AVX load      2.7  2.7  2.5  2.5  2.5    2.5      1.7 GHz

Source:
Intel® Xeon® Processor E5 v3 Family Specification Update

With Haswell-EP, the entire CPU switches to AVX turbo as soon as at least one core processes AVX. This was improved in Broadwell-EP, in which non-AVX turbo bins are still applied to all cores which run non-AVX load while others are doing AVX at AVX-turbo bins simultaneously.

My guess is that a mainboard with good power delivery, such as the Asus X99 boards, will maintain all-core turbo the entire time during a heavily threaded load.

On the other hand, reaching the higher turbos at lightly threaded loads is a very rare thing. They require that all idle cores really reach low-power states, but Linux and even less so Windows (7 at least) are unlikely to do so. Windows 7 in particular shifts threads from one core to the next all the time, keeping all cores in higher-power states even while there is only one or a few threads running.

In short, the all-core turbo frequency is IMO the most important frequency to look for.

--------
Turbo frequencies of the Opterons:
6234: 3.0 GHz (<= 6 cores), 2.7 GHz (> 6 cores)
6276: 3.2 GHz (<= 8 cores), 2.6 GHz (> 8 cores)
Source:
CPU-World, AMD Opteron 6234 specifications
CPU-World, AMD Opteron 6276 specifications

 

[Dufus]

They run at 2.5 because Intel told them to, on non AVX tasks.

Aint that the truth. Tried to convince my 2683v3 it could do more than 4.0 but it didn't want to listen. Had to compromise with 3.0.

AVX2 load seems to stay at 3.0 too, a least for less than half the cores loaded at the same time. Some heavy current limiting kicking in with more than that.

 

[StefanR5R]

Dufus, is this on an X99 board, or C612?