Best LGA 1366 CPU for Gaming

[Boraes]

Ok I know it's an older Chipset and I will be upgrading my MB and chip with something new in a few months but for the meantime.

What is the best chip (I series or Xeon) for this socket? I work in trade IT and can pick things up for cheaper than even eBay and have it tested at work for free so it's simply a matter of pushing my current build to it's max.

I have Alienware Area 51 Tower

i7 930 OC to 4.0Gb (need better cooler to go that little bit further as it gets a tad hot @ 4.2Ghz)
12gb DDR3
2 x GTX 970 in SLi
1 x GTX 760 as Physx + extra displays card

Opinions people?

 

[spentshells]

The i7 980X or the i7 990X and i7-970 would be the best available for that socket, all three would be very expensive while not worth spending any money on over your 930. They have more cores the 990x.

If you are getting a new setup soon, either get a better cooler or quit worry about the temps and simply run the cpu hot otherwise you are wasting money.

 

[RobCrezz]

For gaming, there isnt a cpu on that socket worth upgrading to (as your overclocking). The Xeon X5660 is a popular upgrade though, as they can be bought used for cheap and are 6 core / 12 thread chips that overclock very well. The additional cores wont help much in gaming but can be nice to have, also sometimes the xeons will overclock higher due to the binning process.

Not all 1366 motherboard take the xeons so worth confirming before hand.

 

[faalin]

The best that you could do is a 990x, those ran about $1000 new. The 930 is not bad and ive seen them run in the 4.2Ghz range. For gaming i would run my 950 at 4.2Ghz even though it could hit 4.9Ghz, the extra .7 didnt give me much more FPS vs the heat and shorter life of the parts to justify running it that fast.

Moving to any other cpu for the 1366 socket is more of a lateral move and not really an upgrade. Moving to a 970 will give you 2 more cores but since you said your gaming its not really going to help much.

 

[spentshells]

700Mhz didn't gain you anything? Was that with the 980? Or what was your previous gpu.

 

[faalin]

700Mhz didn't gain you anything? Was that with the 980? Or what was your previous gpu.

It was with 2 580's overclocked to 1000Mhz

 

[Boraes]

Thanks for all the replies. Ok slight update on my situation.

My motherboard is 0J560M and will take the Xeon.

I have in my hand for free the choice of

1 x i7 965
1 x W3960

I will over clock them

Being that there is no cost involved which do people think is better? Or is it not worth the hassle of the physical change over?

 

[RobCrezz]

The W3960 if your motherboard takes it! Might not make much difference for gaming at the moment, but who doesnt want 6 cores?!

 

[spentshells]

For gaming I doubt you would see any advantage today, perhaps in a year or more down the road, but you mentioned a future upgrade which nullifies this upgrade as you would gain almost nothing in gaming due to the current limitations in place by current game design practices.

 

[Sibbe_]

Ok I know it's an older Chipset and I will be upgrading my MB and chip with something new in a few months but for the meantime.

What is the best chip (I series or Xeon) for this socket? I work in trade IT and can pick things up for cheaper than even eBay and have it tested at work for free so it's simply a matter of pushing my current build to it's max.

I have Alienware Area 51 Tower

i7 930 OC to 4.0Gb (need better cooler to go that little bit further as it gets a tad hot @ 4.2Ghz)
12gb DDR3
2 x GTX 970 in SLi
1 x GTX 760 as Physx + extra displays card

Opinions people?

just do a x5650 6c/12t beast for 50 bucks, overclocking is amazing on it

 

[RobCrezz]

Ok I know it's an older Chipset and I will be upgrading my MB and chip with something new in a few months but for the meantime.

What is the best chip (I series or Xeon) for this socket? I work in trade IT and can pick things up for cheaper than even eBay and have it tested at work for free so it's simply a matter of pushing my current build to it's max.

I have Alienware Area 51 Tower

i7 930 OC to 4.0Gb (need better cooler to go that little bit further as it gets a tad hot @ 4.2Ghz)
12gb DDR3
2 x GTX 970 in SLi
1 x GTX 760 as Physx + extra displays card

Opinions people?

just do a x5650 6c/12t beast for 50 bucks, overclocking is amazing on it

Thread is from 2015...