After having the 5820k for two years I finally decided to look into upgrades properly yesterday. I considered Ryzen, and put a bundle together on Amazon. The only small problem with Ryzen is you really need fast ram which I did not already have. And with ram prices as they are it ended up making the bundle expensive. The total price for a Ryzen 1700, B350 Strix and 16gb Corsair Vengeance 3000 (just using that as an example, Gskill is more) was £517 and some change. So I started looking around for other options. 5960x is making over £500, so that really wasn't an option. Knowing my luck I would get an early one that could not run above stock on my cooler (120mm aio). Then I found a ten core Xeon that really got me thinking. It was only £230, but the clock speed was awful. Something stupid like 2.2ghz. I looked an Cinebench scores and it was worse than the Ryzen 1700. Back to the drawing board. So then I found an 18 core E7 Xeon for around £400 or so. Awesome I thought. Then I realised it did not work in any desktop boards. So I looked for a workstation board, but the only boards that were coming up were 4 sockets and cost more than my house. I went to bed frustrated. I had spent about six hours researching. Then in bed I realised that the newer Broadwell EP chips that released in Jan 2016 may work in my existing board. So I got out of bed around 10pm and came back to the PC so I could check compatibility. I found a Xeon E5 2680 V4 (Broadwell EP) with 14 cores and 28 threads for £369.£30 or so less than a 1800x. I then went and checked out a few motherboards, starting with the X99 SOC champion from Gigabyte for £160. It worked.. However, the board is black and orange and orange and blue makes me think of mould. Eventually I found an MSI X99 Plus that again supported the CPU, but this time I found it cheap. £117 "like new" on Amazon Warehouse. So I pulled the trigger on both. Here is the Cinebench 11.5 score for a 5960x @ 5.1ghz And the CPU I bought, which is 120w I ran it on my stock 5820k and scored 12 lol. From what I can work out in Cinebench it scores over 2000 points. * what's weird is that I already have a E5 2680 ! but mine is a V2. But yeah, thought that was kinda freaky.
Yup, it's fast. Faster than an overclocked 7820x. The swap out was really hard. I forgot about the sensors that needed to be removed, and it turns out they were wired into the case. So I had to remove everything. Every fan, the rad, the box at the bottom. I had to unmod all of my mods, then mod them all back again. Got there in the end though. Board looks so much better (apols for ropy pic weather is crap today) I'm absolutely knackered now. Been going since 7am.
I don't think "faster" is the most accurate word to use - it has almost half the number of cores, so of course it's going to lose out in the multi-threaded Cinebench test. Be interesting to see you do some gaming tests though. I've never had a chance to play with a Xeon, but I assume the only overclocking you're going to be doing it is via BCLK (Or the Xeon equivalent to)? And I do know from trying to get a few extra MHz out of my 6700 that BCLK overclocking is like trying to do you're own dental work...
You can't overclock a Xeon at all. They have multiple QPI and as soon as you touch the bus they lock. Tried 103 last night, froze. Then refused to post. When I say faster I mean just that. Cinebench is all about time. Faster your CPU faster you finish higher your score. I take CPUs as a whole, I don't split them up. Well, until I run VMs. Gaming is fine. I get 3.1ghz on up to four cores. So gaming IPC is around the same as my stock 5820k which was more than acceptable I've gambled a wee bit. I am relying on threading. However, I think that's basically a given with 18 core CPUs on the way, and more importantly 18 core Intel CPUs. AMD were completely ignored with BD and PD. It took them ages to get Microsoft to support them at an OS level and 8 core support never came. It's always Intel that have dictated how many cores we can have, and how many cores devs choose to support tbh. And now we are finally moving forward I think my bet was a wise one. I gave up overclocking after putting up with the hellish temps and heat output of my 8320, and when my original X79 board died (and MSI couldn't replace it) I was put off for life. I only consider stock performance now and don't budget on risks. I like my hardware to have an easy life and last. Had a 8 core Xeon plodding along in my X79 UD3 for over two years. Most people that overclock hard buy new hardware all of the time, so don't suffer from the long term effects and damage of overclocking.
My xeon is OC'ed And you can still overclock and have a long lifespan, my system has been OC'ed all its life from 2009 and still no signs of failing. And my motherboard was on of the budget x58's Just gotta OC to within spec
All of my rigs since 2004 have been overclocked. I've not run into an issue once, aside from pushing an MSI P35 Neo2-FR a little too hard. I popped something in the GPU VRM area, but it was replaced with no problem. That's a nice amount of GPU grunt you've got for the money, VT. You can run it at 102.9 but 103 will lock you out. It's not really worth it.
Dunno man that's nearly 100mhz on all 14 cores. Will give that a try cheers. Linus got 105, but only on a top end Asus board. Yeah, I've not been lucky with overclocked rigs at all. My Core 2 was OK at 3.2ghz from 2.2, and my P2 940 was OK too. But my I7 950 was a dog (92c @ 4ghz NHD-14) my X79 MSI BBXPII literally blew up (the phases went, clocking the CPU @ 1.1ghz) and when I realised that board manus do not keep replacement stock as soon as it stops selling yeah, not worth it really. Otis - anything after X58 Xeon wise was locked down like a chastity belt. If you use RAM that will XMP with a 125 strap they just don't post. GTI - Area 51 R2 AKA the Triad. The copies are not rotated inside, so are MATX only and pretty tiny.
Not quite right, sir. E1*** models only have one QPI, which is indicative of the first number after the E. So E4*** chips have 4 QPI links. They're the really expensive babies. E1*** chips can often manage the 125 strap along with a slight boost to around 128 or so (103 on the 100 stap). I would imagine that the high-end boards like that are on low stock levels, even when they are on sale.
You specifically need many-core for VM or other applications? I've seen those Xeons on ebay, they're the best $ for core value, until AMD TR I guess.
hah, then I've not been lucky with Xeons either Bindi - yeah, gonna put every OS known to man on the rig now but using VMs as opposed to multi boot. Even if TR is cheap I still don't think you will get this sort of bang for the buck. I saw that there was a 8 core pro version or something for $399, so that means £399. I think for anything more you will have to spend quite a bit more. Hoping I can get that extra 100mhz, as that will put me level pegging with the new Intel 12 core's base clock. Edit. Just seen TR's price. Wow, more than I thought. $799 for the 12 core and $999 for the 16. These do clock to 4ghz though, but I doubt on all cores. Sure I read there was a "cheap" 16 core coming but the clocks were int he 2ghz range. So yeah, still looking like I made the right decision. Plus I doubt you would get a TR board for £117, and I bet they need fast ram also.
I doubt any cooling can do 4ghz on 32threads that is available in the consumer space. It does not sound realistic that's for sure. Custom water cooling with 360 rad and high powered pump might get close. Honestly if you need the threads then Xeons are pretty awesome deal. Most of the expensive Intel chips are just Epeen tools. People doing actual multi threaded work would be better off with more cores and threads than more ghz.
I think that is where we are going to start seeing brick walls. When all of those cores start clocking high. My CPU does 2.8ghz on all 14 cores, which is very generous and high end tbh. Some of them only do like 2ghz over all cores. I think there is only one quicker, and you can't get an ES of it so you are looking at three grand. Mental ! Der8auer has already red flagged the 7900x with high clocks. The VRM temps were just insane. I know AMD are touting the 16c 32t Threadripper as 4ghz, but honestly I can't see all of it clocking that high without a serious heat penalty. It's only going to get worse. TBH? I think motherboard form factor needs to be seriously looked at, and we may end up seeing blower coolers and so on as we get higher.
The VRM was only an issue under one specific workload, and will not happen under 99.9% of circumstances. I do not discredit what he found, but it is still a nonissue for 99.99% of users.
I've not tried it yet, but there was a level in Crysis 3 that was harder on my PC than both Prime 95 and Realbench. Maybe because it was super hard on both my CPU and GPU. It was the swamp level. Thing is B, once we start seeing apps and games that really load up the CPU like that we are going to start seeing thermal limits far more quickly, and let's face it VRM cooling for such complex CPUs is passive and inadequate. Look at the cooling we dedicate to GPUs and CPUs. Nuts tbh.
That is good! AMD's 14 core TRs might clock similarly, but they'll also be hot (and respectively expensive for now).
Yeah quite disappointed at TR prices. $799 or £799 doesn't sound so good for a 12 core and a grand for a 16 doesn't exactly sound great value either. I was kinda hoping for a 16 core at around double the price of the 1700, considering that's all it really is. Guess not, and I bet the boards won't be cheap either. 7900x is awesome because providing you have a solid board and good cooling you can easily pass the 4ghz wall AMD have and push on for mental performance. Mind you, that costs a grand as well lol.
