Techspot: Haswell-E vs Dual Xeon (SB-EP)

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Sweepr

Diamond Member
May 12, 2006
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At present, four years later, the Xeon E5-2670 is attracting a lot of interest in the enthusiast circles. Initially priced at around $1550, the E5-2670 has 8-cores clocked at 2.6GHz with a 3.3GHz turbo frequency and a whopping 20MB L3 cache.
Using the LGA2011 socket, the E5-2670 was intended for use with the C600 workstation series chipset. However, it is also compatible with X79 desktop motherboards. As such, the E5-2670 supports the same quad-channel DDR3 memory its desktop cousins, the Core i7-3970X and 4960X processors. The 5960X, on the other hand, features support for more modern DDR4 memory, but that won’t account for any significant performance advantage in most use cases.

...Expecting this seemingly too-good-to-be-true deal to end shortly, the opposite happened. The E5-2670 continued to drop in price. Today they can be had for just $70.
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The core components of our dual Xeon E5-2670 system cost just $700, which includes two E5-2670 processors, a new dual-socket LGA2011 motherboard and 64GB of DDR3 memory. Throw in a case, power supply, graphics card and some storage and you have a seriously capable machine for the price of a Core i7-5960X.
When purchasing your Xeon E5-2670 processors online, make sure you get the C2 (SR0KX) stepping chips, especially since they don’t currently cost more than the C1 chips. Apparently, the C1 (SR0H8) doesn’t support VT-d (Intel Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O), whereas this is fixed with the C2 stepping, and this might be important for virtualization pass-through. If you ever plan to re-sell the Xeon chips down the track, the C2 models will likely fetch a better price as well.
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www.techspot.com/review/1155-affordable-dual-xeon-pc
 
Justinbaileyman

Justinbaileyman

Golden Member
Aug 17, 2013
1,980
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Yeah I'm calling BS on those benches.. First off I dont pull any where near 189w when running p95 with a single cpu on a Intel DX79SR and a Asus P9X79 Motherboard.
I barely broke 140w max and 130w-ish average on both motherboards.Dont know if its because your using a dual socket motherboard but your handbrake and cinebench scores are way lower then mine as well.. I am getting around the same 12,000 in cinebench 11.5r with both of my systems and an average of 230-300fps in handbrake encoding from VOB to 720p MKV.Only a tad slower maybe 10-15 fps slower when encoding 1080p mkv's..
 
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MrTeal

Diamond Member
Dec 7, 2003
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Justinbaileyman said:
Yeah I'm calling BS on those benches.. First off I dont pull any where near 189w when running p95 with a single cpu on a Intel DX79SR and a Asus P9X79 Motherboard.
I barely broke 140w max and 130w-ish average on both motherboards.Dont know if its because your using a dual socket motherboard but your handbrake and cinebench scores are way lower then mine as well.. I am getting around the same 12,000 in cinebench 11.5r with both of my systems and an average of 230-300fps in handbrake encoding from VOB to 720p MKV.Only a tad slower maybe 10-15 fps slower when encoding 1080p mkv's..
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So you're calling the benchmarks BS because your numbers are different when you're running a completely different version of Cinebench, and are also different when encoding different media files of different formats to other, also different formats?

Alright.
 
T

tential

Diamond Member
May 13, 2008
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Wow.... This a huge deal how much for just a mob and cpus? And these cpus still going for 70?
 
Justinbaileyman

Justinbaileyman

Golden Member
Aug 17, 2013
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MrTeal said:
So you're calling the benchmarks BS because your numbers are different when you're running a completely different version of Cinebench, and are also different when encoding different media files of different formats to other, also different formats?

Alright.
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For the most part yes.. his scores should be quite a bit higher specially if he's running dual cpu's. I bet he's running in low power mode.Something is off though.
 
VirtualLarry

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,325
10,034
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Wow, if I were serious about putting a dent in my distributed-computing scores, I really should go for one of these rigs. Too bad I don't have the money right now. I piddled it away on FM1 CPUs+boards, and some Haswell CPUs + H81 boards. Well, some DDR3 RAM too.

Then again, if I cared that much about CPU-oriented DC projects, I would just fire up my two Thuban 1045T rigs I basically mothballed.

Most good DC points are scored with GPUs these days though. I do have plenty of those too, but they heat up my apt. a bit too much, now that Spring is here.
 
CHADBOGA

CHADBOGA

Platinum Member
Mar 31, 2009
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How much do the motherboards cost if you want to run a Dual CPU setup?
 
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Nothingness

Platinum Member
Jul 3, 2013
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I have an E5-2650v2 2.6 GHz base, 3.4 turbo, Ivy Bridge, so definitely should be faster than an E5-2670.

Having these 8 cores is nice for some tasks (compilation as far as I'm concerned), but single thread performance (simulation, benchmark running) is very significantly below my 4770K (without OC). For every day work, I need both a (moderately) high number of cores and high ST performance, so I guess the best setup for me would be to pick 2 E5 with only less cores but higher single core turbo, rather than 1 E5 with more cores.
 
S

Sweepr

Diamond Member
May 12, 2006
5,148
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CHADBOGA said:
How much do the motherboards cost if you want to run a Dual CPU setup?
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$280

As the cherry on top, the Asrock Rack EP2C602 server motherboard we picked up for putting this build together costs around the same amount as a high-end X99 motherboard, $280 brand new. So the two Xeons and the dual-socket motherboard came to a total of just $420, significantly less than the asking price of a hexa-core 5930K.
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N

NAC

Golden Member
Dec 30, 2000
1,105
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Where do you get that or any dual 2011 cpu motherboard for $300? That MB is $619 on newegg.

Cheapest I see is Asus DDR3 1066 Intel-LGA 2011 on Amazon for $360
 
M

Mercennarius

Senior member
Oct 28, 2015
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NAC said:
Where do you get that or any dual 2011 cpu motherboard for $300? That MB is $619 on newegg.

Cheapest I see is Asus DDR3 1066 Intel-LGA 2011 on Amazon for $360
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Ebay...there are used desktop servers sold all the time for great prices.
 
Skurge

Skurge

Diamond Member
Aug 17, 2009
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can these CPUs run on standard X79 chipset mobos or do you need C6xx chipsets?
 
Burpo

Burpo

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Sep 10, 2013
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T

tenks

Senior member
Apr 26, 2007
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Wow...so, ignoring a dual-cpu setup...would this be a good way to go, instead of spending a lot of money on an 8core Broadwell-E this Summer? I had a budget of about $2100 for a new build, but I'd gladly spend less if an 8Core Sandy is still good for what I do. Video editing and production. Any thoughts?
 
ethebubbeth

ethebubbeth

Golden Member
May 2, 2003
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Burpo

Burpo

Diamond Member
Sep 10, 2013
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Oops, you're right. Deleted the NewEgg board..

tenks said:
Wow...so, ignoring a dual-cpu setup...would this be a good way to go, instead of spending a lot of money on an 8core Broadwell-E this Summer? I had a budget of about $2100 for a new build, but I'd gladly spend less if an 8Core Sandy is still good for what I do. Video editing and production. Any thoughts?
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For your purposes? Definitely..
 
N

NAC

Golden Member
Dec 30, 2000
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I think I'm gonna bite. I do video and photo editing, and 3d rendering. I use premiere elements, gimp and blender mostly. I don't play games, or very minimally. I know blender would benefit from a Nvidia GPU, but premiere elements, gimp as well as encoding with Lame or Handbrake would all only use CPU.

I was going to upgrade to a 6 core broadwell-e. Including MB and 32 gigs of DDR4, it would be just over $600. If I get dual 8 core chips, and 8*4 DDR3, it should be about 50% faster, but about the same price. I may need a new case. I hope I don't need a new power supply?

Plus I think that in a few years I should be able to upgrade to 12+ core chips for cheap.
 
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tenks

Senior member
Apr 26, 2007
287
0
0
NAC said:
I think I'm gonna bite. I do video and photo editing, and 3d rendering. I use premiere elements, gimp and blender mostly. I don't play games, or very minimally. I know blender would benefit from a Nvidia GPU, but premiere elements, gimp as well as encoding with Lame or Handbrake would all only use CPU.

I was going to upgrade to a 6 core broadwell-e. Including MB and 32 gigs of DDR4, it would be just over $600. If I get dual 8 core chips, and 8*4 DDR3, it should be about 50% faster, but about the same price. I may need a new case. I hope I don't need a new power supply?

Plus I think that in a few years I should be able to upgrade to 12+ core chips for cheap.
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yea Im in the same boat as you I think...My only concerns are that it's an older platform and how long this would last...And the motherboard...I'd be open to get dual cpus if I can find a decent motherboard..Don't really want a server board..Are there any x79 dual motherboards? I'm not a big 2nd hand buyer so if anyone could direct me to a reputable source, that'd be awesome.
 
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N

Net

Golden Member
Aug 30, 2003
1,592
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tenks said:
yea Im in the same boat as you I think...My only concerns are that it's an older platform and how long this would last...And the motherboard...I'd be open to get dual cpus if I can find a decent motherboard..Don't really want a server board..Are there any x79 dual motherboards? I'm not a big 2nd hand buyer so if anyone could direct me to a reputable source, that'd be awesome.
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Yeah, this is my hesitation too. Another thing I consider is my single thread performance is really good right now and if I build a new system I want that to improve a lot too. I'm going to wait to see what the new chips at the end of May perform like and how it effects the prices in the market.
 
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