Do GeForce video cards work with Xeon processors?

[zakzik]

Actually 2 questions. I never had a Xeon processor before, so I'm interested if there are any limitations or problems with combining the CPU with a NVidia GeForce 960 - 980 gfx card.

Also, is there a benefit to suing a core I7 for gaming instead of a Xeon processor.

I know, most gaming machines use I7 processors, but if you end up with a workstation configuration, can I simply upgrade my video card from a Quadro to a GeForce?

 

[DustyDanglerX]

The only limitations from xeon to i7 are basicly ECC memory support no overclocking and some server related features like virtualization which if your a casual gamer or editor you wont use.

The difference would be that I7 would be favorable to gaming since games favor less faster threads as opposed to a lot of threads that are slower.Keep in mind this does not apply to all games.For example a xeon can have 8-16 cores clocked at 2.80ghz and would perform mostly exactly the same as an i7 clocked at 4.5 since games are not coded to use that many cores in the first place and since they are slower cores the game engine would use the faster single core better but in reality it make mostly no difference. Although with dx 12 that's another story but by the time developers implement dx 12 into everything it will be a few years.

If by work station you mean a server motherboard it wont have any benefit for gaming even if you put 4 xeon's on the same board and end up with 40 cores ect. Although id like to have that for my editing rig XD. Most motherboard's let you use xeon's on their sockets you just can't overclock them at least not by the multiplier and ECC support is gone but that's mainly the difference.

Yes you can upgrade from Quadro to Geforce no problem Hope it helps.

Here's a few link's with benchmarks so you can have a better understanding. Some Xeon's are basically i7's without the IGPU.

Explanation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBIfDEcozqM

Benchmarks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ59vHSFfZA

 

[zakzik]

ok, thank you - that completely answers my questions. I did not even put much thought into the differences between the architectures. I also did not mention, that the original reason for the question was not gaming, but to be able to use more affordable cuda cores from GeForce cards for rendering in a workstation. Xeon or not, Cuda cores are very important for most modern path tracing renderers. Unless there is something someone wants to add, I'll consider, that a Xeon workstation with a higher end GeForce card would be better than an I7, for 3D rendering.