Would upgrading a I7-930 to a Xeon X5680 be worth it?

[cytg111]

He's already got a SB-E system with a 670 in it that would be a much better gaming rig, so baring him saying this upgrade is for gaming purposes I'm not sure it's safe to discount it just because it won't net a massive FPS increase. There's a lot other things that would see a big benefit from 50% more cores, especially if they're clocked higher.

I did not catch that! .. Then what the * is the 'second' machine doing? sounds like he has the 'old' gaming rig on backup... and has it running for friends coming over? Whatver, without a purpose for the build its sort of meaningless anyway (but yes, if all it does is encode video all day all week, hell yes do the upgrade...)

 

[mysticjbyrd]

What games would those be exactly? I think finding examples will prove pretty difficult for ya.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/46?vs=142

About 2 fps difference...

Sorry, but this isn't worth throwing away $100. Especially with the uncertainty that comes with ebay.

You do know that some of us do more than just play games on our computers.

Jesus you kids!

I assumed based on his current setup.

 

[cytg111]

..But I disagree with saying the dropin replacement will cause stability issues ...

Its a used part. Off ebay. But yea, it will problary be fine... (yet give it 5% that it will not plus the grief that follows..)

 

[mysticjbyrd]

Its a used part. Off ebay. But yea, it will problary be fine... (yet give it 5% that it will not plus the grief that follows..)

Yup, and for a performance upgrade that's so small that it's basically nonexistent!

 

[Burpo]

You guys keep looking at stock clocks, but when these hexcore Xeons are cranked up? They're eating 4790K's for lunch..

Have never got a bad one off ebay.. Waiting on a $65 X5660 now.. Should be testing by Wednesday..

 

[Makaveli]

Yup, and for a performance upgrade that's so small that it's basically nonexistent!

You mean the two extra cores do nothing?

 

[ClockHound]

Yup, and for a performance upgrade that's so small that it's basically nonexistent!

You mean the two extra cores do nothing?

No. It's worse. Those two extra cores undo half the work of the other four. That old 32nm tech was just so backwards. However, when you overclock them to 4.2-4.5 they undo more work much, much faster.

The current mainstream quad core tech is so much more awesome because at 14nm over half the die is dedicated to an iGPU that you will never use. That's the kind of performance upgrade that makes progress possible!

 

[readers]

Ok but let's say he sells his existing 930 and gets a $100 stop-gap Xeon? That will allow him to coast until Broadwell-E or maybe until Skylake-E. If he has a limited budget between his CPU/GPU upgrade choices, it makes way more sense to get the Xeon for $100 while selling the 930 and investing the rest into a GPU upgrade. If his existing GPU is becoming outdated (let's say GTX680/770/780/7970Ghz), then blowing $500-700 on a Skylake/X99 platform will do almost nothing for his gaming experience vs. a 4.5Ghz 6-core Xeon from that era.

USB 3.1 -- nice marketing gimmick of 2015. Until there are many USB 3.1 flash drives at good prices or way faster mechanical HDDs that can actually tap into USB 3.1 speeds, it's a marketing gimmick.

SATA 3 -- yes, this is good but only for sequential reads and writes but for every day operations, random access is king and in this area SATA 2 is enough for him to feel the difference.

PCIe 3.0 -- 6% difference at 1080P on a 980. Unless the OP has a 980, this isn't even a factor. Besides, 1-2 settings in any game or cranking AA and that 6% advantage will get wiped out into GPU-limited land in modern titles.

You are also low-balling the performance of a 32nm 6-core Xeon OC. It performs extremely well for its age.

Other than memory intensive task where tri channel helps, all I see is 2600k just walks over the 990x, and 2600k is nether high end nor new.

 

[Makaveli]

OP if I were you I would look at all the post some of the posters have done this upgrade already and speaking from personal experience.

I honestly don't know why certain other people are even posting in this thread because none of it is helpful at all.

Thanks for the additional info RS can always follow the logic in your post.

At the end of the day you have to decide whats best I think enough information has been posted to make a decision.

 

[Burpo]

Other than memory intensive task where tri channel helps, all I see is 2600k just walks over the 990x, and 2600k is nether high end nor new.

What you don't see in any of these graphs is a Hexcore Xeon at 200Bclk & 4.6Ghz.. A WORLD of difference then..

 

[readers]

What you don't see in any of these graphs is a Hexcore Xeon at 200Bclk & 4.6Ghz.. A WORLD of difference then..

2600k going from 3.4 to 4.7 would be a world of difference too, overall quad core do tend OC higher as well... so your point again?

 

[Burpo]

My point? My point is the OP already has an Asus X58 SaberTooth, and dropping in a hexcore is guaranteed to suprise & amaze him with the difference in performance.. 40 PCI-E lanes vs 16 is a BIG difference too.. X58 is still a solid performer when overclocked.. Here's my point (in case you missed it on page 1).. Careful selection & resale of his i7 930 means he can have a nice upgrade for <$50 that will carry him to the next significant platform change.

$80 Xeon X5670

 

[readers]

My point? My point is the OP already has an Asus X58 SaberTooth, and dropping in a hexcore is guaranteed to suprise & amaze him with the difference in performance.. 40 PCI-E lanes vs 16 is a BIG difference too.. X58 is still a solid performer when overclocked.. Here's my point (in case you missed it on page 1).. Careful selection & resale of his i7 930 means he can have a nice upgrade for <$50 that will carry him to the next significant platform change.

Stop avoid the point by reposting. I am not here to respond to you, you responded to my comment to the benchmark posted by RS, and seems your response doesn't have a point at all.

 

[Burpo]

Avoiding the point? I don't have to stop doing anything.. You're hilarious! lololol

 

[readers]

Ok, so this is pointless
Quote:
Originally Posted by Burpo
What you don't see in any of these graphs is a Hexcore Xeon at 200Bclk & 4.6Ghz.. A WORLD of difference then..

 

[jihe]

So much like you I was on a i7 930 (Intel Gen -3 Represent!!), and then I went down this same path and found out nearly years ago that I could get a die-shrink and 2 more cores and efficiency by staying on the same X58 chipset and blowing like ~90-130 bucks on ebay.

So yeah, I went with the Xeon 5670 over any of the higher stock clocked versions for the exact reasons Burpo iterated earlier on. I'm not crunching any kind workload, so I run a really low-level 4 Ghz overclock just to keep it peppy for modern games and not too hot for normal use. It idles pretty well at 26-32c with a Megahelams tower cooler.

And well, I haven't been convinced that for my uses (basically just gaming and a tiny little bit of content creation), that any of the mainstream chips (with only 4 cores) can really provide any kind of real-world end user benefit over what I run, at least within the usage cases that I have.

It seems to me that the trend in gaming is going towards more thread utilization, in the near future so I'm wondering if it might be a bit embarrassing in the near future when DX12 games seem to do pretty well on 12 Threaded x58 Xeons to the point of slightly embarrassing these new-fangled 8 threaded or 4 threaded (i5) Skylakes.

I mean sure on a benchmarks I am not going to put up the ultra high numbers, but okay, I don't live to bench.

Frankly the decision to upgrade is easy. Even if you want to build a brand new PC -- which would make sense for anyone with any kind of multi-thread workload and who wants to get in on those 7 generations of incremental IPC improvements. --why not spend the minor $ to keep a relevant second machine that could simply be used for casual use and gaming.

Should've bought the $60 5650, they all do 4G anyway, no point shelling out more for 5670. I am in the same boat. Can't really justify upgrading. I don't work on medical images and push gigabytes of data around, so sata2/3 makes no difference. Plus my UD5 lets me use ECC ram, which is a lot cheaper so I'm sitting on 24G for peanuts.

 

[mysticjbyrd]

You mean the two extra cores do nothing?

For gaming, yah pretty much.

 

[cytg111]

How the hell can a thread on upgrade advice spiral into ½ a flamefest? Anyways, have fun, im out.

 

[MongGrel]

OP if I were you I would look at all the post some of the posters have done this upgrade already and speaking from personal experience.

I honestly don't know why certain other people are even posting in this thread because none of it is helpful at all.

Thanks for the additional info RS can always follow the logic in your post.

At the end of the day you have to decide whats best I think enough information has been posted to make a decision.

:thumbsup::thumbsup:

Avoiding the point? I don't have to stop doing anything.. You're hilarious! lololol

:biggrin:

Ok, so this is pointless
Quote:
Originally Posted by Burpo
What you don't see in any of these graphs is a Hexcore Xeon at 200Bclk & 4.6Ghz.. A WORLD of difference then..

Some people just want to argue for no reason, it appears.

 

[pooptastic]

How the hell can a thread on upgrade advice spiral into ½ a flamefest? Anyways, have fun, im out.

I have no idea but i find it hilarious. A lot of really good points were brought up too if you read through the fire.

I think i'll be happy with this upgrade, more cores and more cache mean my older machine should work closer to my more modern one. I'm just waiting on the Xeon to show up in the mail at this point.

I rarely think of upgrading a processor because it seems every single refresh there's yet another new socket too. This 930 -> Xeon appears to be a significant enough upgrade to warrant the cost, for me anyway.

Thanks for everyone's input here, this forum kicks ass.

 

[MongGrel]

this forum kicks ass.

Yes, it does.

 

[mysticjbyrd]

You guys keep looking at stock clocks, but when these hexcore Xeons are cranked up? They're eating 4790K's for lunch..

Have never got a bad one off ebay.. Waiting on a $65 X5660 now.. Should be testing by Wednesday..

Nearly every ebay deal I have had has went south. A lot of people are on there offloading the trash they fucked up. Perhaps my inexperience at ebay is at fault though.

I couldn't find an OC comparison, but I highly doubt it would be that much different. There is more than clock speed that is relevant, especially if the game isn't even CPU bound, which it often isn't.

EDIT: Nvm he already got it. Value differs for everyone, and it's hard to ever come to a consensus, but either way it's a solid purchase.

 

[ClockHound]

Got both my 56xx Xeons off eBay - both were flawless. Did purchase from reputable recycle shops tho. Both overclock very well and blow away the previous 4790 for the heavy lifting stuff I need - 3D Renders, audio and video production.

 

[Burpo]

Yeah, if you buy from a good reseller, no worries.. I'm pushing this $15 quad core Xeon @ 4200Mhz and that's all it wants for full time render speed. Upgrading it this week with a $65 X5660 Hex core to save me over 1/2 hr on these renders..

 

[jihe]

Nearly every ebay deal I have had has went south. A lot of people are on there offloading the trash they fucked up. Perhaps my inexperience at ebay is at fault though.

I couldn't find an OC comparison, but I highly doubt it would be that much different. There is more than clock speed that is relevant, especially if the game isn't even CPU bound, which it often isn't.

EDIT: Nvm he already got it. Value differs for everyone, and it's hard to ever come to a consensus, but either way it's a solid purchase.

Don't know what you mean by deals, if that's something ridiculously below market value then sure it's probably cheap for a reason. But I've bought my fair share of stuff from ebay and haven't had any problem.