hi guys, I currently have a gaming pc that for sentimental reasons there are bits i don't wanna get rid of the key being the motherboard which is a EVGA classified X58, i'm currently running a 950, would i notice a performance difference if i was to stick a X5660 into this system or am i wasting my time ? ive found them on ebay for around £50 ish, then thinking i could sell my 950 if it be worth selling.. I would be gaming and i'm not sure about these things at all on another forum a few people suggested i get this processor any help would be appreciated
Comparing the two, it looks like the Xeon has better memory access, but is clocked a little bit slower. If you can clock it up to the same speed, I think it'll be faster. I'm not sure how much of difference you'd notice day to day though.
Yes, definately worth the upgrade if your motherboard supports it. The xeon is 32nm so should use less power, runs a bit cooler and might OC a bit better. It also has 2 more cores and even if it is clocked a bit lower I'm sure you would be able to overclock it to at least match the 950's clock, since they are Nehalem and not BCLK locked.
I don't think it's worth bothering for a gaming PC. It would likely benefit if you did a lot of video editing/rendering but not enough to justify even £50 unless you got a decent overclock from it.
I'm not sure how good the EVGA will support a Xeon in OC and at 2.8GHz you'll need some OC to benefit gaming. I doubt you'd be able to sell the 950 easily without the board/RAM.
Gaming wise, an OC'd i7 9xx series still performs well. If you want to keep the system and do a lot of serious CPU stuff (video processing etc), maybe try to get a 980X or 990X - they're still surprisingly powerful even after all these years.
i jumped from a I7 920, to a X5650 hex core, clocked to 3.85Ghz running cool on air and on good volts. In benchmarks im beating 4770K's that are clocked around 4.4ghz by about 20%. Cost me £55 delivered from here and so glad i did it. Love hex core with HT, looking at task manager with 12 cores Most boards will support Xeons on there latest BIOS. Mine was a budget x58 back in the day, and with a update iv had zero problems. I could go higher with clocking but theres no point as im at 1.2v and dont wont to go higher as im already maxing everything with more frames than i can use with my 120hz monitor and beating recent gen chips in bench's
Id not bother, as they still go for a lot more money than Xeons. Around £160-200 still second hand. Where a x5650 and X5660 are £50-60 there essentially the same chip as well but the Xeon has a much lower Max TDP, 95w vs 130w! Makes no sense getting a i7 9x0X.
The Xeons are just multiplyer locked 980X/990X with a slightly lower clock, a better RAM controller and 2 QPI links for multi-CPU, but since you'll be using it on a X58, it'll just be exactly the same as the 980X/990X if you clock them up a little, no point paying more for the same thing.
No, you wouldn't. And if you did, performance would actually be worse because the X5660 has a lower clock speed than the 950...but like I said, you wouldn't notice it. I agree with Big Elf that you would definitely see performance improvements in rendering and video editing (which I do regularly), but not at all in gaming. If you want to make a noticeable difference to the performance of your rig, spend £50 on an SSD.
I recently got a 2nd ssd, so 1 for os 1 for games, I decided after reading the comments id up my ram, got another 6 to add to the rig and it was cheap enough that i can get a few other bits n bobs. I got to just now make my mind up about my GPU! Thanks so much guys really appreciated it
No and neither do I have his house or his car, but the classified is one of the best x58 boards, you get 4ghz with a basecloxk of 170 with the x5670's, it should be no problem for such a board.
I don't have fond memories of EVGA boards tbh, but I can't remember if I reviewed the X58 Classy. Fairdos you can get 4Gs on it though.
The other benefit of the Xeon is the lower power consumption over the older i7 chips. I used to run an i7 920 (at stock) and the X5650 (at the same clock speed) runs considerably cooler. Great little chip - and a good way to extend the lifespan of your platform. The only annoying thing is now my motherboard takes twice as long to post (10 seconds)!
OP could test a 170 BCLK with his current CPU, if that is stable he can be pretty sure of a 4ghz OC on an X5670 unless he is really unlucky and gets a terrible clocker. That surprises me, what did you not like about the EVGA boards? I knowbthe SR-2 had its fair share of issues but I was undear the impression that was because it was pushing so many boundaries for the time.
Doesn't really work like that unfortunately - 45nm vs 32nm CPU, different microcode, different core count/L3 cache and associated voltages etc. The 32nm's did go further than the older 45s though iirc. EVGA never did have many working on their BIOS support though, is what I feared, but if you say they're solid then for 50 quid go for it. Shits n giggles if anything.
