Xeon gaming?

alxlwson

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So, I've seen all these new motherboards coming out of CES, that are advertised as "gamer" boards.
I'm due for an upgrade. So, can someone enlighten me? Is there a reason for the Xeon over the i7? I remember someone mentioning price.

Thanks!
 
Xeons can have more cores which if you want to stream your game to twitch come in useful but if you are just gaming an i7 is cheaper and can be overclocked more. Extra cores are also good for content creation like photoshop and video editing. If your just gaming look at the i7 5820k it has 6 cores and Microcenter has it for $299.
 
So, I've seen all these new motherboards coming out of CES, that are advertised as "gamer" boards.
I'm due for an upgrade. So, can someone enlighten me? Is there a reason for the Xeon over the i7? I remember someone mentioning price.

Thanks!

Keep in mind that the Xeon often shares core architecture with the standard retail Core i5/i7 processors. Xeon's are offered in single CPU forms for entry level server and workstation applications. Essentially, they are pretty much the same thing. These processors are simply configured somewhat differently for different target markets.

The primary reason why you see interest in these for gaming applications or home use is due to the second hand market for them. These processors are often pulled from servers which have been upgraded to higher end processors for various reasons. These CPUs are also available as engineering samples as people put them up on Ebay who often have access to them for QVL testing purposes. People aren't supposed to sell those, but they are readily available regardless. Another component to the desirability of Xeons is the fact that Intel offers far more cores in the Xeon line than they do I the Core ix series. Additionally some Xeons actually have unlocked multipliers. This makes them desirable for overclocking purposes.
 
If you can get an equivalent xeon for close to same price, it still be worth it. I have always felt they are more of a commercial grade product vs budget product. God honest truth, I would not hesitate to buy another used one next time i build a new system, assuming it saved me a fair bit of money...As long as its not a higher price, it be foolish not to get the xeon
 
Xeons are usually much higher quality/grade. Dare I say cherry picked for the Xeon lineup.

I came from a 3930K at 4.3GHz and 1.3V, and it hit the low 80's C in Prime95 stress testing. Picked up a cheap E5 1650 V2 (4930K is the i7 equivalent) and it runs at 4.5GHz and 1.43V (+100 offset) while only hitting 68C on my hottest core in Prime95. HUGE difference in my (granted, one) experience.

Keep in mind, only the E5 16XX (V1, V2, and V3 so far) chips are multiplier unlocked. The others can only be BCLK overclocked if the motherboard supports it (and 2P and 4P server boards just dont).
 
the MAIN reason is better perf for the price.

Take for instance, if you wanted 4 cores with HT, you have to pay i7 mone0, as i5s lack HT across the board. There are some Xeons with 4 cores+HT for not much more than an entry level i5. Essentially getting i7 multitasking performance for i5 money.
 
Very good!

So, my next question then is this! Xeon/i7 setup or a nice 980Ti?
I have roughly 650 to spend.
 
980 Ti will BLAST your current setup. not to mention, a CPU upgrade will give you ~10-20FPS more performance (nothing to scoff at!) but a new GPU will give you roughly DOUBLE your current performance.
 
Very good!

So, my next question then is this! Xeon/i7 setup or a nice 980Ti?
I have roughly 650 to spend.

gods honest truth.....video cards are on the verge of huge progress with both camps this year....cpus are not going to change more than 5% gains (if that) by this time next year....the 980ti and the furys are going to look pretty weak this year...cpu is a better investment at least until the new cards come out
 
As Dan pointed out, most people are picking up Xeon's to extend the hardware that they already have. It is a cheaper alternative and usually giving a decent boost to your current hardware.

Generally people picking Xeon's as new to go with as far as a build are doing content creation, where having more cores is a distinctly huge advantage over having less cores that are faster.

You may want to consider seeing if you are CPU or GPU bound in the types of games that you are playing. Looking at CPU/GPU utilization is a good start of that, but can depend how well the games handle multiple cores as well.

When I first got my 920, the GTX 285 was one of the faster video cards, upgrading to a GTX 580 a few years later, basically doubled my performance in almost all the games that I was playing at the time. The vast majority of the times you are going to be GPU bottlenecked playing games right now.
 
I'm playing FO4, BF4, D3, Anno 2205, and Rise of Nations :D

Finally slow-down time at work so I get to have some extra gaming time.

I keep task manager and gpu-z open on my second monitor when I'm gaming. The only game that pegs the cpu is BF4. I know that D3 would benefit from stronger processor with the insane amount of math that goes on during higher GRs... I think I would benefit more generally from a 980Ti. Now I just need to pick one I want! Suggestions please! Will be ordering in the next two weeks.

I'm curious though because it's hard to find comparative benchmarks... What kind of improvement can I realistically expect when going to the 980Ti from 280x Crossfire (that only gets used in BF4)?
 
I'm playing FO4, BF4, D3, Anno 2205, and Rise of Nations :D

Finally slow-down time at work so I get to have some extra gaming time.

I keep task manager and gpu-z open on my second monitor when I'm gaming. The only game that pegs the cpu is BF4. I know that D3 would benefit from stronger processor with the insane amount of math that goes on during higher GRs... I think I would benefit more generally from a 980Ti. Now I just need to pick one I want! Suggestions please! Will be ordering in the next two weeks.

I'm curious though because it's hard to find comparative benchmarks... What kind of improvement can I realistically expect when going to the 980Ti from 280x Crossfire (that only gets used in BF4)?
Well, either way the improvement you will notice from the newer processors seems to be higher min frames judging by some of the Digital Foundry videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDo-j00vUtw

I think many people are going 5820k because the 6700k is so ridiculously overpriced right now and the comparative platform cost is MUCH closer than it used to be. Even specing out my mini itx system (which has only the ASRock x99 motherboard available) the price difference is less than $50! For $50 you get roughly comparable gaming performance and much better multicore use. The 6700k will beat the 5820k in single threaded games though not by much. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFNhlq2b518
 
the MAIN reason is better perf for the price.

Take for instance, if you wanted 4 cores with HT, you have to pay i7 mone0, as i5s lack HT across the board. There are some Xeons with 4 cores+HT for not much more than an entry level i5. Essentially getting i7 multitasking performance for i5 money.

This is the exact reason I went with a Xeon for my build. The additional 2MB of L3 helps too.
 
This is the exact reason I went with a Xeon for my build. The additional 2MB of L3 helps too.

Yep, went with the x58 32nm Xeons (in sig) as I was looking for a nice cheap upgrade over my previous i5-750, seeing as how Intel hasn't faced any real competition over the last 6-7 years. Maybe in 2 years' time I'll get a new CPU/Motherboard.
 
Yep, went with the x58 32nm Xeons (in sig) as I was looking for a nice cheap upgrade over my previous i5-750, seeing as how Intel hasn't faced any real competition over the last 6-7 years. Maybe in 2 years' time I'll get a new CPU/Motherboard.

Could change towards the end of this year ;)
 
For gaming, place a bit more focus on the GPU and pair it with a CPU that won't bottleneck it.

A 980Ti and pretty much any 3.0+ GHz i5 or i7 that's a Sandy Bridge or newer will suffice.
 
xeons are far superior for gaming provided you are willing to set any cry engine game to use 22 cores and set cpu physics etc using cfg, ini and xml files and run wondows server 2012 r2 as main os
 
xeons are far superior for gaming provided you are willing to set any cry engine game to use 22 cores and set cpu physics etc using cfg, ini and xml files and run wondows server 2012 r2 as main os

You don't have to run Server. Any recent 64bit Pro or Enterprise OS supports two physical processors up to 256 cores total, iirc.
 
i am expecting huge gains if Ashes ever comes gets finished..that game maxes out all 12 threads in the benchmark part lol...first i ever seen such in a game
 
I'm actually hoping those 'gaming' C232 and C236 boards make it to the US so I can pick up a Skylake Xeon instead, or just give up on PC building and purchase a workstation... it's probably a lot more useful to me anyway :p
 
If you choose a Xeon at a decent clock speed it should perform great. The problem is so many of them are clocked below 3.0ghz, and suffer in lesser threaded workloads like games as a result.
 
One thing I don't see mentioned is the support for giant ECC RAM sticks.

I have 48GB RAM, and build/use a 36GB Ramdisk to load all my games. Load times are virtually non-existent, but doesn't help me in like SC2 when you have to wait on the other guy's computer to load.

Stuff like Civ5, KSP and WoW has no buffering and zero lag. It's pretty sweet.
 
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