TwinDenis :
Hello, I have a dell precision t3600 desktop workstation with an xeon e-1620, 8gb ram that came with it and upgraded to gtx980 from quadro 600, I was looking into upgrading the pc to a gaming pc gradually, I get lower fps in some games and I have heard that it is caused by the game being cpu dependant so I was hoping if I could upgrade to a i7 cpu from my xeon on this motherboard. If you ask about what motherboard I have, well it is obviously manufactured by dell so it is the same as my pc model and came with it.
so my main question is if it is compatible with the i7 4ghz+ models that come out on the market right now.
TwinDenis,
While it seems an i7 should work in a Precision T3600- the E5-1620 (LGA2011, 4-core@ 3.5 /3.8GHz)
http://ark.intel.com/products/64621/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-1620-10M-Cache-3_60-GHz-0_0-GTs-Intel-QPI
> is more or less the equivalent to an i7-4820K:
http://ark.intel.com/products/77781/Intel-Core-i7-4820K-Processor-10M-Cache-up-to-3_90-GHz?q=i7-4820K
> I'm not entirely sure. Looking at Passmark baselines, all 203 tested fsystems have Xeon E5's. One of the specification I notice is that the i7 can use 1866 RAM whereas the E5 uses 1600 ECC, so there may be a motherboard incompatibility.
In any event if it were possible you would gain +200MHz- at this level probably at or below the minimum that makes a noticeable difference and certainly it can't be overclocked. Also, as your system has ECC RAM that would have to be changed.
My suggestion is to keep the E5-1620- and put the upgrade into a really good GPU. Xeons are very good at games because they are calculation oriented- moving polygons- and don't have integrated graphics. They are also slightly understressed for stability in long slogs. I've had an HP z420 with an E5-1620 for two years and never a single BSOD even during long rendering sessions. There are T3600 on Passmark with excellent graphics scores using high end gaming cards:
High graphics scores for Precision T3600:
1. GTX Titan > 2D=815 and 3D=8423
2. GTX 970 > 2D=538 and 3D=7250
3. Radeon HD 7970 / R9 280X > 2D=507 and 3D=5434
4. GTX 760 > 2D=761 and 3D=4997
5. GTX 760 > 2D=822 and 3D=4913
For contrast, the best graphics score for a T3600 with a Quadro 600 is 2D=552 and 3D=1975. The 1975 score is actually better than I'd thought, but it's not going to be a screamer in any game.
I'll bet a GTX 980ti would light up some pixels!
Cheers,
BambiBoom
HP z420 (2015) > Xeon E5-1660 v2 six-core @ 3.7 / 4.0GHz > 32GB DDR3 ECC 1866 RAM > Quadro K4200 (4GB) > Intel 730 480GB (9SSDSC2BP480G4R5) > Western Digital Black WD1003FZEX 1TB> M-Audio 192 sound card > 600W PSU> Logitech z2300 > Linksys AE3000 USB WiFi > 2X Dell Ultrasharp U2715H (2560 X 1440) > Windows 7 Professional 64 >
[ Passmark Rating = 5064 > CPU= 13989 / 2D= 819 / 3D= 4596 / Mem= 2772 / Disk= 4555] [Cinebench R15 > CPU = 1014 OpenGL= 126.59 FPS] 7.8.15
HP z420 (2013) >
Xeon E5-1620 four core @ 3.6 /3.8GHz > 24GB DDR3 ECC 1600 RAM > AMD V4900 (1GB) > Seagate 500GB > Linksys WMP600N WiFi
[Passmark system rating = 2372 / CPU = 9001 / 2D= 712 / 3D= 1353/ Mem= 2261 / Disk= 712]