60fps no oc cpus, non i3/5/7

[alidan]

Ok, right now I am banking on the zen being a good cpu compared to current intel's offerings at around 350-500$ for an 8 core cpu.

If amd fails this and doesnt come within 10% of the current cpu lineup intel has in the i7 range, i want to know what is the fastest cpu I can get with the most cores.

I want to play games at 60fps without oc, but also don't want to tie myself to an i3, i5 or i7.
I seen a dual socket xeon and seen the xeons for that socket were 6 cores and 130$ each new... its hard to pass up on that considering i want to do rendering workloads off the computer too where single core isn't better than many cores.

however im wondering if this cpu motherboard combo is the be all end all of what i can get, so im asking what my alternatives are in this area.

 

[jimmysmitty]

1. Not sure why it matters if you get a i5/i7 as those are great CPUs.

2. What Xeons can you get for $130 bucks? If anything you realize those Xeons are based on the same core uArch as the i3/i5/i7s, correct?

3. We have no idea what will be the best if Zen fails to impress. Zen is not out until sometime next year and by then we will have Intels Skylake and a possible refresh of Skylake before getting CannonLake in 2017 (10nm).

The CPU is not the major limiting factor to worry about, especially with DX12 coming soon. The GPU is what you want to worry about. Most i5/i7s will push 60FPS in most games with most top end GPUs at 1080/1440p. But again the GPU matters more than the CPU.

 

[synphul]

There are i7's with 6 cores and 12 threads in that price range as well. If you get a dual socket xeon you need to make sure the software you want to run operates on a multiprocessor system. Not all multithreaded programs do and it's not as easy as just tossing more cores/cpus/sockets at the problem. Also it doesn't really matter how many physical cores or threads a cpu has, more often than not a quad core i7 with hyperthreading easily out performs an 8 core fx cpu. It sounds like you're assuming more cores are always better and confused that cpus with high single core performance can't also be good at multi threaded applications.

Single core performance is sometimes misleading, it doesn't mean a cpu is 'only' good at tasks with 1 thread or process. It means that at the core level of computing, core for core it's stronger. Now add multiple stronger cores to a cpu, which is how quad core intels out perform 8 core fx chips. You're also talking about gaming at 60fps while not being tied to the very cpus that are capable of this.

If you saw brand new xeons for a dual socket setup and they were only $130 each new, I can guarantee they're outdated turds. The budget 1231v3 quad core xeon with performance similar to current i5/i7 are $240 each.

What program is it you plan to use for rendering? It's best to look at some actual cpu benchmarks for that program to get a proper point of reference of how one cpu compares to another. Otherwise in theory you'll be getting outdated complex xeon setups that in all reality will probably struggle next to a single current generation locked core i5.

 

[kittle]

you may endup being disappointed if you go with a xeon chip.

Why?
Most xeons are server/datacenter centric chips where number of cores is king (thus you can get an 8 core CPU), but they do this by sacrificing clock speed. But for gaming, click speed matters more than core count beyond 2-4 cores.

The current i3/i5/i7 line up has an "average" clock speed of 2.8-3.0ghz. I challenge you to find a 3.0 ghz xeon chip running at that same speed for $130

A quick search for 6-core xeons on newegg gives this
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117550
Its "slow" at 2.2ghz, but only $99. however its also VERY old, so the rest of the system around it will use older and slower technology.

A 3ghz current generation version is here:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117499
But its $600 ... Im going to assume this is more than you are willing to pay.


Also - if your looking at a dual socket system, the motherboards are usually expensive and always quite large, so you will need to buy a bigger (more expensive) case. You will need server-grade ECC ram which is also more expensive.. and so forth and so on...

I have done this in the past, and I had a lot of fun. But cheap? save money? no way. The motherboard alone was $750


Stick with an i5 and you will be happier overall:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117302
only $189, and runs at 3.2ghz.

Or if you MUST have 6 cores, you can try this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117402
but its $389

 

[alidan]

for the zen i'm assuming that its within 10% of current i7 in single core performance, and because its apparently going to be an 8 core 16 thread cpu, if it was within the 350-450 range with that power, i would go with that just because it would be easier than going with a xeon, however a lot of the time i'm finding you can get a xeon chip that's as capable as the i7 for cheaper than the i7, but you are sacrificing i believe overclocking, something i don't do anyway.

what im rendering would be video, and im finding out that if the programs don't like multi cpu or even multi threaded rendering, i could always open another instance of the program and set it to use the other cpu or threads.

also, dx12 isn't magic, a dx12 game will more likely than not have the gpu as the bottleneck over the cpu, but there aren't dx12 games right now, and there is a crap ton of dx9 and dx11 out there.

because intel puts out so many cpus and so many skus and then after a while puts out more that makes looking inbetween confusing at the very least, so im asking here about non i3/5/7 because i figured people here know more about it than i would without needing to look it up or at the very least know where to look.

my only real requirement for performance is that it can get 60fps in games at stock.

i'm still likely 6+ months away from looking into everything seriously, but still need to gather my information at some point, may as well start early.

 

[ChiefSpartan117]

I wouldn't bank anything on AMD cpu but I'd suggest getting a i7 4790k if you don't really want x99 but if you want ddr4 and all the new stuff get a i7 5820k or 5930k or wait to see if skylake releases in the next month or two but I'd suggest intel over AMD especially if you're wanting to do workstation loads the higher number of threads will help hugely compared to cheaper AMD cpu and another thing I want to mention before I go this is something all AMD fan boys share "If it has more cores it's better hands down" that is not true a i5 3570k can beat a AMD fx 9590 that is overclocked to 5.0ghz it's quality over quantity