Same with my 950. I could have swapped it out for a Xeon a couple of years ago and still be quids in today !
If you don't mind looking at used gear, a Z97 + i5 4690k combo seems doable for under £200; another £30-50 nets you a i7 4770k. 3 microarchitectures newer, includes m.2 support and PCIe 3. If your existing ddr3 is 1.65v, you'd need get new stuff though.
I just went from an i7 2600 to an i7 4790k and didn’t change my graphics. I wish I’d changed the graphics instead.
This is a timely thread! Just replaced my 930 for an x5660 for a whopping £26 delivered from the bay, took about a week from China. Works like a charm in a p6x58d-e. I’d say it’s worth a punt, 2 extra cores + 4 threads. The main benefit is 32nm as opposed to 45nm means it runs a helluva lot cooler. Currently only running mine at 4.2ghz but that’s at 1.275v stable compared to the 1.375v in your screenshots. People seem to comfortably get them to 4.4+ on a decent air cooler.
Thanks for all the advice everyone... looks like ill be getting me a Xeon and dropping some cash on a decent GFX card. Poss a 1070? Is it me though or do the green camp seem to be really, really expensive at the moment?
All the camps, anything that has been hit by mining and/or memory chip shortage, are really really expensive.
Indeed. The 580 8gb was at £250 the other day but that was the first time in absolutely ages. Don't buy a 1070 now, save the extra £40 and get a 1070Ti when it comes out. Much faster card more similar to the 1080.
It's only very slightly behind the 1080, in fact. I'd definitely go for that when it is not a whole heap of cash more to get the next level upgrade. Mining shortages are finally slowing down, and used GPUs are down to where they used to be, around £200. Although it's still higher, it's far better than £350.
I'd be very wary of recommending the 1070 Ti until we know for sure whether or not the clocks are locked down - I would wager an OC'd, custom cooled 1070 (which can be had for £350-70) will be close enough to stock 1070 Ti and be a solid £50 cheaper. If they are locked, better to go full fat 1080 imo, considering cheapest pre-order price I've seen is £420 and plenty of places are doing 1080's for under £450...
From what I can garner so far Nvidia have just told OEMs not to clock them. No word on whether they will be actually locked down yet.
They're said to overclock like mad according to nVIDIA themselves. The lockdown was a rumour and is untrue. As said above, it was only so that vendors couldn't increase stock clocks past what they sell them at.
I would imagine because they are trying desperately to beat the '56 without usurping the 1080's place in the market.
I'm still on x58 /x5850 and till i see a considerable jump in gaming performance i will not upgrade as i have no reason too, SATA2 with a SATA3 SSD is still loading me into games super fast and i have a USB3 expansion card that works well. Having a system that i dont upgrade with every new release of new tech for almost no benefit to me has enabled me to be able to save for things like the new Alienware AW3418DW 34" Curved Ultrawide which i should be picking up in the new year and a GTX 1080 i picked up for £400 in last spring. My advice is get a dirt cheap xeon, clock it, and make sure your PSU isnt super old. then spend the remaining cash on a GPU/monitor But if your still on 6GB id adivse getting another set off ebay. Some games wont load without at least 8GB anymore.
Im running a 12 GB kit that I picked up this year off Amazon. PSU is about the same age as the computer but is a Be Quiet 750w I think. x5660 vs x5850? Do i need ECC Ram? Rocking my P6TD Deluxe still. /
No you don't need ECC ram. It's highly unlikely the board would support it any way. Westmere is bascially Gulftown, only on Gulftown they disabled the ECC controller and the QDI? or whatever it is called that links the CPUs together. So the Xeon has both of those enabled, but regular memory does work as it has both sets of pads on the CPU (I got really bored one day and compared the two from the schematics lol. I think I was trying to find out what the snapped pin that I had did, turns out it was important )
Just get the cheapest one out of the list I made a bit back. They all clock about the same. Obviously the higher the multiplier the more chance of a good overclock. I’ve had a few x5660 that do 4.6ghz at 200 bclk at about 1.4v on the 23 multi Be careful with qpi voltage on the xeons they don’t like over 1.25v (few people have had them die) also on the xeons there is no need to run the uncore at 2x the ram speed , they are happy to run at 1.5x which is good when you’re trying to get a good clock Another good cpu is the w3680 it’s another hex core but has an unlocked multi. A bit more expensive tho
Another thing. probably obvious, but make sure you have the latest bios installed then clear the cmos before you put in the xeon or it likely won’t work.
Alf thanks for that advice. So I understand why, what's the importance of clearing the CMOS? So the board doesn't remember that it had a different processor in before, which would cause problems?