Xeon 10/20 on eBay for $350

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Luka

Limp Gawd
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I noticed Xeon E5-2666 V3 started showing up on Ebay selling between $300 and $350. What is great about this CPU is that it has same stepping as production variant. All cores running at 3.2Ghz 1-2 Cores running 3.5Ghz and 3rd core running 3.3-3.4 Ghz. I tested this one against i7 [email protected], and it scored equal or better than 5930k in gaming. Benchies done with SLI 1080 in 2k and 4k resolution under Windows 7 x64. As far as pro work goes i7 5930k had no chance. This is amazing deal compared to retail i7 6950k, worth every penny in my book. It appears that once you pass 3.0Ghz clock speed with 10+ cores Xeons shit gets really serious.
 
do you have any minimum frame rate or frame time numbers? curious as to how badly frame times suffer on such a (comparatively) low-clocked processor.
I'm also not convinced it's that great of a deal, depending on how Turbo decides to treat you the 5820k/6800k should offer between 80-85% (82.5% using your clock numbers and assuming max Turbo on the Xeon) of the 2666v3's multithreaded performance, but is much more legitimate and has *much* better single threaded performance (25-30% depending on how good your overclock is). There are rarely applications where a 20% boost in multithreaded performance is a night and day difference, but the single threaded stuff often has to meet latency or frame rate goals (think trading or gaming).
 
bwang said:
do you have any minimum frame rate or frame time numbers? curious as to how badly frame times suffer on such a (comparatively) low-clocked processor.
I'm also not convinced it's that great of a deal, depending on how Turbo decides to treat you the 5820k/6800k should offer between 80-85% (82.5% using your clock numbers and assuming max Turbo on the Xeon) of the 2666v3's multithreaded performance, but is much more legitimate and has *much* better single threaded performance (25-30% depending on how good your overclock is). There are rarely applications where a 20% boost in multithreaded performance is a night and day difference, but the single threaded stuff often has to meet latency or frame rate goals (think trading or gaming).
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In synthetic benches where physics relied on CPU score was higher than on i7 5930k running at 4.4Ghz. In gaming overall, frame matched or was better in newer titles. In game like Watch Dog 2 there was literally no difference between two CPU in 2k and 4k. In older titles which heavily depend on single or dual core the slowest was no more than 6.4% which is rather unnoticable. In 4k just didn't make difference at all. Xeon 2666 turbos all cores, in fact i set it to run on all cores 3.2Ghz all the time and then it turbos 1 2 or 3 cores up to 3.5Ghz. In worst case scenario 900Mhz difference between two processors is in fact not much, none in 4k Gaming. I suspect the greatest difference would be at 1080p but 1080p is not a standard anymore. This CPU is a perfect balance between work/gaming and price point. $350 was just too tempting to switch from 5930k to Xeon 2666 v3. I am so happy that i have decided to sell i7 5930k for $450, extra $100 can go toward new keyboard.

Note: I run Windows 7 x64, it just handles all these extra cores in great way. Not sure if Windows 10 would improve anything, i doubt that it would. Also my 1080 SLI setup eliminates any possible GPU bottleneck.

Here is 3DMark 2011 which is a great bench to see where you at with CPU on low resolution.

This is Xeon score 32534
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/11966829

Here is i7 [email protected] 31572
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/11956825

As long as you get all cores on Xeon to run 3.0Ghz or more, things looks rather awesome.

I was surprised to see Xeon E5 2666, never heard of it. It is not even in the list of supported CPU for ASRock x99 series.
 
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my curent main rig has dual e5-2670's at 3.3 and honestly it does pretty decent in games better then i would have tough paired with a nice gpu. and i can blck overclock them alittle :p
 
never use a locked xeon for gaming...period. Nearly every game in existance is single thread limited and i am single thread limited in numerious games at 4.8GHz...3.3GHz hell fucking no.

dont be dumb...dont game on that crap.

i see this crap posted way too much.

Anyone who says they dont experience cpu limitations is flat out lying to you or they are stupid and don't know what they are talking about.
 
SomeGuy133 said:
never use a locked xeon for gaming...period. Nearly every game in existance is single thread limited and i am single thread limited in numerious games at 4.8GHz...3.3GHz hell fucking no.

dont be dumb...dont game on that crap.

i see this crap posted way too much.

Anyone who says they dont experience cpu limitations is flat out lying to you or they are stupid and don't know what they are talking about.
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Sorry, i play Watch Dogs 2 on 2k resolution maxed details with 1080 SLI and getting frames between 80 - 110 FPS. I would say it is pretty f. good. Clock speed on all cores on this Xeon is 3.2 and goes up to 3.5. in 4k resolution for sure there is no CPU limitation. Any game i played just don't have problems. Call of Duty Infinite Warfare for example in 2k maxed 120+ FPS. CPU runs really really cool and for $350 is such kick ass so i sold i7 5930k for $470.

I had i7 5930k running at 4.4Ghz and literally showed no performance advantage on 2k maxed details along with 1080 SLI.

With Ryzen CPU and 8 core going mainstream, it is just indication that future games will prefer core count over clock speed. For sure 10/20 cores will be handy.
 
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SomeGuy133 said:
never use a locked xeon for gaming...period. Nearly every game in existance is single thread limited and i am single thread limited in numerious games at 4.8GHz...3.3GHz hell fucking no.

dont be dumb...dont game on that crap.

i see this crap posted way too much.

Anyone who says they dont experience cpu limitations is flat out lying to you or they are stupid and don't know what they are talking about.
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if your only gaming no dont get a 10 core xeon for obvius reasons but many many games will have no issue running on and decent xeon above 3ghz. I have paired it with a 1080 and atleast on the games i play their is very little performance difference between thet and putting the 1080 in my 5ghz sandy setup or my i7 5820k setup. i dont dought your framerates will be slightly lower but for the majority of the cases (assuming your useing the xeon for workstation tasks too) it will kill a i7.
 
do you game only at 60hz? do you only play the 15 multithreaded games? If thats the case sure but 99% of all games are single threaded. If you play beyong 60hz and play more than those 15 well made games (COD BF) it will be horrible.

Every game i play is single thread limited on my rig below. I own 1300 games and of the 400 or so i have played i might have played 3 or 4 that are not single limited and those are all BF games and maybe 1 other very new well coded games. Almost all games are coded like shit. If you only play BF/COD (modern versions) sure but who only plays 15 games?

Pretty sure every RTS is single thread limited minus the newest total war games, most FPS are single and i am sure all RPGs are single thread. Never heard one that isnt

Ypu play any older games....that CPU will be shit.

single thread limitation is the only reason why i dont own an 8 core for my main rig. Also almost all programs are single thread limited too. So browsing, almost all office programs, most of windows OS is single thread, and so on.

3.3-3.5GHz CPU blows.

I also do a lot of threaded stuff where an 8 core would be really nice but a 15-20% single thread hit isn;t worth it. If these skylake plus on 14nm+ OC well i might go to an 8 core if they can hit 5GHz. I aint touching an 8 core until it can hit 5GHz and these new skylakes might with phase. 5.5GHz kaby vs 5GHz 8 core...i would make the switch but a main rig at 3-3.5GHz for gaming and regular usage?....never.
 
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SomeGuy133 said:
do you game only at 60hz? do you only play the 15 multithreaded games? If thats the case sure but 99% of all games are single threaded. If you play beyong 60hz and play more than those 15 well made games (COD BF) it will be horrible.

Every game i play is single thread limited on my rig below. I own 1300 games and of the 400 or so i have played i might have played 3 or 4 that are not single limited and those are all BF games and maybe 1 other very new well coded games. Almost all games are coded like shit. If you only play BF/COD (modern versions) sure but who only plays 15 games?

Pretty sure every RTS is single thread limited minus the newest total war games, most FPS are single and i am sure all RPGs are single thread. Never heard one that isnt

Ypu play any older games....that CPU will be shit.

single thread limitation is the only reason why i dont own an 8 core for my main rig. Also almost all programs are single thread limited too. So browsing, almost all office programs, most of windows OS is single thread, and so on.

3.3-3.5GHz CPU blows.

I also do a lot of threaded stuff where an 8 core would be really nice but a 15-20% single thread hit isn;t worth it. If these skylake plus on 14nm+ OC well i might go to an 8 core if they can hit 5GHz. I aint touching an 8 core until it can hit 5GHz and these new skylakes might with phase. 5.5GHz kaby vs 5GHz 8 core...i would make the switch but a main rig at 3-3.5GHz for gaming and regular usage?....never.
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I play on 144Hz, my monitor is 1440p gsync 144Hz refresh rate. I am not sure what do you mean by old games and all the games i played had no problem performing at all and nothing ever dropped < 60FPS. Battlefield 3, 4, Battlefield 1, COD IW, Crysis 1, 2, 3, Far Cry 3, 4, Primal, Watch Dogs 1, 2, Doom!!!, F1 2016, Tomb Raider, Rise of Tomb Raider, Deus Ex Mankind Divided (this games runs particularly well!!!), Civilization V, Rome Total War 2, Sniper Elite Series...name it. Not a single a game dropped below <60 FPS in 2k max settings. I can imagine that older games will run even f. better, why? Because they are not demanding at all....

Either way you will never get higher FPS than me with single 980 ti vs SLI 1080 ;) But, let's say we have same SLI 1080 setup and just because you have Kaby Lake running 5Ghz and pulling 200 FPS vs me who is running 10/20 [email protected] and pulling 170 FPS i could care f. less. In 4k we are going to have same frames regardless do you know why? Because we are not cpu bound anymore, fuck even AMD FX will pull same frame in 4k in most games. In newer titles 2k will give us same experience. On the other hand my Xeon will eat your Kaby Lake in about everything, encoding, decoding, virtualization and what not. I do not only game. That's why i said that this Xeon for $350 is a perfect balance between gaming, powerhouse and price. At the end of all this new Ryzen will eat both of our CPUs for its price. ;)
 
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SomeGuy133 said:
do you game only at 60hz? do you only play the 15 multithreaded games? If thats the case sure but 99% of all games are single threaded. If you play beyong 60hz and play more than those 15 well made games (COD BF) it will be horrible.

Every game i play is single thread limited on my rig below. I own 1300 games and of the 400 or so i have played i might have played 3 or 4 that are not single limited and those are all BF games and maybe 1 other very new well coded games. Almost all games are coded like shit. If you only play BF/COD (modern versions) sure but who only plays 15 games?

Pretty sure every RTS is single thread limited minus the newest total war games, most FPS are single and i am sure all RPGs are single thread. Never heard one that isnt

Ypu play any older games....that CPU will be shit.

single thread limitation is the only reason why i dont own an 8 core for my main rig. Also almost all programs are single thread limited too. So browsing, almost all office programs, most of windows OS is single thread, and so on.

3.3-3.5GHz CPU blows.

I also do a lot of threaded stuff where an 8 core would be really nice but a 15-20% single thread hit isn;t worth it. If these skylake plus on 14nm+ OC well i might go to an 8 core if they can hit 5GHz. I aint touching an 8 core until it can hit 5GHz and these new skylakes might with phase. 5.5GHz kaby vs 5GHz 8 core...i would make the switch but a main rig at 3-3.5GHz for gaming and regular usage?....never.
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Not been my experience at all. For a while I had an 8 core xeon clocked at a measly 2.2ghz that was just as capable of gaming as my 3930k (was running crossfire 290s at the time). MAYBE I saw a fps difference in one or two games, but for the vast majority I couldn't tell. Now, I've always gone for higher resolution over ultra fast refresh and I've been primarily GPU bound, so it's totally possible that at 1080p and 100+mhz refresh rates the xeons will cough up blood and your framerate will drop through the floor. It's not like anyone is suggesting these are the best thing for gaming, only that they are capable of gaming as well as serious work. You know if you need a bunch of cores, and if you don't you probably aren't looking at used xeons on ebay...

Why do you bother having 32gb of ram when 99.99% of games won't ever use more than 3gb? Why would you create a striped array for two SSDs when most games won't ever see a benefit?

Raid 0 blows.

You have a power failure...that data is shit.
;)
 
Luka said:
I play on 144Hz, my monitor is 1440p gsync 144Hz refresh rate. I am not sure what do you mean by old games and all the games i played had no problem performing at all and nothing ever dropped < 60FPS. Battlefield 3, 4, Battlefield 1, COD IW, Crysis 1, 2, 3, Far Cry 3, 4, Primal, Watch Dogs 1, 2, Doom!!!, F1 2016, Tomb Raider, Rise of Tomb Raider, Deus Ex Mankind Divided (this games runs particularly well!!!), Civilization V, Rome Total War 2, Sniper Elite Series...name it. Not a single a game dropped below <60 FPS in 2k max settings. I can imagine that older games will run even f. better, why? Because they are not demanding at all....

Either way you will never get higher FPS than me with single 980 ti vs SLI 1080 ;) But, let's say we have same SLI 1080 setup and just because you have Kaby Lake running 5Ghz and pulling 200 FPS vs me who is running 10/20 [email protected] and pulling 170 FPS i could care f. less. In 4k we are going to have same frames regardless do you know why? Because we are not cpu bound anymore, fuck even AMD FX will pull same frame in 4k in most games. In newer titles 2k will give us same experience. On the other hand my Xeon will eat your Kaby Lake in about everything, encoding, decoding, virtualization and what not. I do not only game. That's why i said that this Xeon for $350 is a perfect balance between gaming, powerhouse and price. At the end of all this new Ryzen will eat both of our CPUs for its price. ;)
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Luka done editing
Look at my rig. I run the IPS 120hz ULMB monitor and frame drop is horrible on ULMB. Also when things are CPU limited it is usually the stutter you see. Just run 2 monitors and watch GPU usage and CPU usage. If GPU usage drops and its not because of Vsync than its CPU limited.

And again you play pretty much every game that has ever been multithreaded.

you look at every other game on steam and they are not multithreaded. Any Total war game Rome 2 or earlier Empire might be single threaded but i think that was first to be threaded. Every RTS game i have ever played is single. HL/HL2, NS2, Planetside 2, WarThunder, Star Wars Empire at War, I dont recall a single RPG being threaded. The list goes on. As i said 99% of all games are single you just happen to play the 1% that are multithreaded so you luck out.

If i didn't need single thread i would be using my Xeon or own an 8 core.

Additionally, As i have showed on this forum over and over nearly every program is single thread. From OS, to browser, to explorer, to OCR, to PDF, basically everything. If you actually pay attention to the programs you use and look at your CPU and monitor it you will see everything is single thread limited.

I also beat this like a dead horse the IBM study from the 80s.
http://jlelliotton.blogspot.ca/p/the-economic-value-of-rapid-response.html

I dare you to make a list of multi threaded games vs single and you will quickly see most games are single thread.

Off topic response to capt cope.
capt_cope
As i said i dont just only play games. I also regularly float with 16+GB always used not counting when playing a game.

I also use RAMDisks for various things where it is beneficial. Also RAID 0 is useful for installing and moving files and media creation and loading RAM. I also encrypt most my stuff. I also future proof my shit. Raid 0 also speeds us virus scan and allows you to multitask. If you ever seen me post i have shown that i have made a Sandisk Extreme Pro actually stall lol. I can do up to 6-8 different HDD intensive things at once and its annoying. Also when things are RAID0 encrypted containers are faster. I showed a 950PRO vs a Extreme Pro even CPU limited saw a boost. I also showed RAID0 showed improvements even though its generally CPU limited.

I forget the list i made in the past but its like this. I had this going one day and my Extreme Pro eat shit.

AV
AM
Game install
3 BD burns
another app installing
generally windows ussage
moving some files
and something else too

That even murders my 950 PRO.

Interestingly enough, I download faster than my Extreme Pro can keep up. Now throw in all the above and it eats shit. Add FDE? lawls.

I also noticed my 950 PRO the other day when downloading and installing ark with 2 other HDD tasks going on it was pausing the download waiting for my 950PRO to catch up.

my 950 PRO can't even keep up with the above. I don;t do it all the time but its annoying when i have 5 HDD things going at once. Thats also why I am starting to rip to the RAID 0 to off load on my 950 PRO

I was someone who showed i averaged 350GB reads a day and 100-150GB of writes in a day with my Extreme Pro. That isn't a consistent usage. That was the average over like my first 9-12 months of the drive. So most my usage is very consolidated. like 100s of GBs written in a single day with days my computer not even used.

Shooting RAW photos and videos is a huge source of that too.
 

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Luka said:
I play on 144Hz, my monitor is 1440p gsync 144Hz refresh rate. I am not sure what do you mean by old games and all the games i played had no problem performing at all and nothing ever dropped < 60FPS. Battlefield 3, 4, Battlefield 1, COD IW, Crysis 1, 2, 3, Far Cry 3, 4, Primal, Watch Dogs 1, 2, Doom!!!, F1 2016, Tomb Raider, Rise of Tomb Raider, Deus Ex Mankind Divided (this games runs particularly well!!!), Civilization V, Rome Total War 2, Sniper Elite Series...name it. Not a single a game dropped below <60 FPS in 2k max settings. I can imagine that older games will run even f. better, why? Because they are not demanding at all....

Either way you will never get higher FPS than me with single 980 ti vs SLI 1080 ;) But, let's say we have same SLI 1080 setup and just because you have Kaby Lake running 5Ghz and pulling 200 FPS vs me who is running 10/20 [email protected] and pulling 170 FPS i could care f. less. In 4k we are going to have same frames regardless do you know why? Because we are not cpu bound anymore, fuck even AMD FX will pull same frame in 4k in most games. In newer titles 2k will give us same experience. On the other hand my Xeon will eat your Kaby Lake in about everything, encoding, decoding, virtualization and what not. I do not only game. That's why i said that this Xeon for $350 is a perfect balance between gaming, powerhouse and price. At the end of all this new Ryzen will eat both of our CPUs for its price. ;)
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The games I know that have issues with lower IPC would be games like SINS OF A SOLAR EMPIRE, Guild Wars 2, Civ 4, Heroes of the Storm, World of War Craft.

The good news is we are moving away from just issues. I think most FPS engines/games are spear heading this with RTS style games coming in second.
 
Shadohh said:
The games I know that have issues with lower IPC would be games like SINS OF A SOLAR EMPIRE, Guild Wars 2, Civ 4, Heroes of the Storm, World of War Craft.

The good news is we are moving away from just issues. I think most FPS engines/games are spear heading this with RTS style games coming in second.
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It is getting better for AAA games but not for the others overall.

The other sad issue is server clients aren't multithreaded. If you know anything about game hosting server clients are total crap.

It is all do to laziness really. I have a document scanner that uses OCR....they couldn't bother to make that multi-threaded.....like seriously? You can't send 1 page per logical core.......

I have an audio editor that is single thread too -_-

Also browsing is single thread limited. Its amazing how fast web pages load on this PC vs my other lower single thread PCs. (media intensive pages) Loading and smoothness of navigating.
 
lolfail9001 said:
So basically stock 6950X or 2687Wv3 for $300-$350? Damn, that is a steal.
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Yes. Some guy was selling couple of Xeon E5-2666 10/[email protected]@3.2 All [email protected] 1-2-Cores for $350 with all features enabled. I just could not resist, they were sold in like a day. So, you are right i got stock 6950x for $350 and temperature on thing thing is so low even if i hit 100% on all 10/20 cores. Xeon E5-2666 -> never heard of this CPU and from what i found online Amazon used them for their cloud servers.
 
Shadohh said:
The games I know that have issues with lower IPC would be games like SINS OF A SOLAR EMPIRE, Guild Wars 2, Civ 4, Heroes of the Storm, World of War Craft.

The good news is we are moving away from just issues. I think most FPS engines/games are spear heading this with RTS style games coming in second.
Click to expand...

Those games are not demanding will still give you >60 FPS.
 
Shadohh said:
what are you 1080p only? anything can do that.
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This was going to be my point. If you are gaming at any resolution sub 2560x1600, you are not really going to see much difference between CPUs with any medium-high end GPU in hardly any game. Take things up to 4K+ and go with a high end GPU. The landscape will change dramatically. You'll find sub-4.0GHz speeds to be inadequate in such cases.
 
It is all do to laziness really. I have a document scanner that uses OCR....they couldn't bother to make that multi-threaded.....like seriously? You can't send 1 page per logical core.......
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The Leadtools OCR engine costs a ton more for multi thread support. The open source engines don't (or didn't last time I checked) support threading.
 
I bought a E5-2683 V3 Retail for $350 last month. Been using ever since with an Asrock X99E-ITX/ac MB. I plan on getting a V4 once those go down in price. I mainly use it to do my simulation work at home.
 
Dan_D said:
This was going to be my point. If you are gaming at any resolution sub 2560x1600, you are not really going to see much difference between CPUs with any medium-high end GPU in hardly any game. Take things up to 4K+ and go with a high end GPU. The landscape will change dramatically. You'll find sub-4.0GHz speeds to be inadequate in such cases.
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There's a pretty big difference at 1440p when you're trying to maintain a ~120fps minimum. I've even lowered settings and now push 200 on some games. That's beyond what my monitor can display, but I can actually feel the very slightly input delay of running a locked 120 now. The 7700K I have running 5ghz and 4000 RAM does a much better job of maintaining higher frames rates than my 5960X at 4.4ghz and 2400 RAM did.
 
blade52x said:
There's a pretty big difference at 1440p when you're trying to maintain a ~120fps minimum. I've even lowered settings and now push 200 on some games. That's beyond what my monitor can display, but I can actually feel the very slightly input delay of running a locked 120 now. The 7700K I have running 5ghz and 4000 RAM does a much better job of maintaining higher frames rates than my 5960X at 4.4ghz and 2400 RAM did.
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Lower resolution you go more difference you will see with CPU. In 4k you would be even fine with AMD FX.

Here are some additional benchmarks

http://www.3dmark.com/fs/11790011

http://www.3dmark.com/spy/1259762
 
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cdabc123 said:
my curent main rig has dual e5-2670's at 3.3 and honestly it does pretty decent in games better then i would have tough paired with a nice gpu. and i can blck overclock them alittle :p
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I could use your insight on the 2670's. I have an Asrock ep2c602 with two 2670's 64gb Samsung DDR3 1300. Any help with settings to get speeds like yours?
 
Popa2caps said:
I could use your insight on the 2670's. I have an Asrock ep2c602 with two 2670's 64gb Samsung DDR3 1300. Any help with settings to get speeds like yours?
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its impossible. you need a sr-x board to even adjust it a small amount.
 
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