Question Intel Xeon E5-2699 Upgrade From i7-5820K

[GARRIGA]

Have an old build that realistically has perhaps 5 years of actual run time at home originally built in 2015. Looking to extend life until Windows 10 Pro no longer supported before jumping into a new build. Main focus being day trading and running large Excel models for which my current build tends to handle proficiently but at time CPU the bottleneck as I see all six cores and hyperthreads maxed out. Hoping more cores will help. Anyone know whether the E5-2600 family of Xeon will bring added relief? According to PassMark, E5-2699 V4 scores almost 25k vs the 5820K around 9800. Never understood how that relates in real world but seems it should be an improvement. Memory and GPU has never been a bottleneck and purely the CPU.

I don't overclock CPU or memory with stability being key.

Build
Board: ASUS X99-E WS
CPU: i7-2820K
Heatsink: BeQuet Dark Rock Pro 3
Memory: Dominator DDR 32GB
GPU: 750Ti
Storage: Intel 750 Series 400GB PCIe (getting upgraded to Samsung 990 Pro NVMe 4T)
Case" Cooler Master Cosmos II
PSU: Corsair AX860i

Also any leads on best place to buy used Xeon with reliability being key vs saving a few dollars. I'll pay a premium for getting that which works vs the hassle of dealing with returns.

 

[faalin]

according to a few webpages the 2699 is 150% faster then the 5820k, they both run at the same boost speed but the 2699 has way more cores and threads.

I would make sure your bios is on the latest for the board, you can find the 2699 v4 pretty cheap on ebay for 135$

 

[GARRIGA]

according to a few webpages the 2699 is 150% faster then the 5820k, they both run at the same boost speed but the 2699 has way more cores and threads.

I would make sure your bios is on the latest for the board, you can fins the 2699 v4 pretty cheap on ebay for 135$

I'm always skeptical of eBay.

I'm aware it has more cores but will that make a significant impact on my needs? Logically based on the fact I'm pegging all my CPU and the benchmark score it would seems so but have no real world experience to rely on.

I don't overclock as stability is key.

 

[kanewolf]

Have an old build that realistically has perhaps 5 years of actual run time at home originally built in 2015. Looking to extend life until Windows 10 Pro no longer supported before jumping into a new build. Main focus being day trading and running large Excel models for which my current build tends to handle proficiently but at time CPU the bottleneck as I see all six cores and hyperthreads maxed out. Hoping more cores will help. Anyone know whether the E5-2600 family of Xeon will bring added relief? According to PassMark, E5-2699 V4 scores almost 25k vs the 5820K around 9800. Never understood how that relates in real world but seems it should be an improvement. Memory and GPU has never been a bottleneck and purely the CPU.

I don't overclock CPU or memory with stability being key.

Build
Board: ASUS X99-E WS
CPU: i7-2820K
Heatsink: BeQuet Dark Rock Pro 3
Memory: Dominator DDR 32GB
GPU: 750Ti
Case" Cooler Master Cosmos II
PSU: Corsair AX860i

Also any leads on best place to buy used Xeon with reliability being key vs saving a few dollars. I'll pay a premium for getting that which works vs the hassle of dealing with returns.

Excel is not famous for multi-threading. Having a lot more cores may not make any difference.
An E5-1680V4 would provide clock speed improvement and more cores than the 5820K, but you might already be overclocking today to 4Ghz.
Any E5 Xeon you buy will be pulled from a server. Most were installed in 2018 or so.

 

[GARRIGA]

Excel is not famous for multi-threading. Having a lot more cores may not make any difference.
An E5-1680V4 would provide clock speed improvement and more cores than the 5820K, but you might already be overclocking today to 4Ghz.
Any E5 Xeon you buy will be pulled from a server. Most were installed in 2018 or so.

What I do on Excel utilizes all cores. Think about building a data mart in Excel. Have built 1GB plus files containing 250 plus tabs with some tabs containing 1m plus records and 250 plus fields and every cell containing a nested formula often going 16-25 levels along with array formulas off pivots that organize data. Can't compare online Excel charts as I have no clue what metrics that is based on and likely what the average office worker might use. What I do gets later transferred to a server based solution by a programmer. Think of me as the architect and use case tester.

Why holistically speaking I believe more cores matter over speed. Then memory comes into play when I build these large files and another benefit of going with a workstation based solution but I've never actually built one so can't speak to it.

When my work was transferred to a virtual server did see some improvement but we weren't on a gigabit lan which hampered me therefore don't have real practical experience on what work would be like on a server based solution which the Xeon should provide plus I'd have the option to go ECC for further stability although not sure it would matter. Focus right now is the easy of upgrading the CPU vs building a 285K or 9950X.

Guessing best comparison being one who runs large sequel data base and needs to crunch through data along with multitude of where case statements in a relational snowflake schema format.

 

[kanewolf]

What I do on Excel utilizes all cores. Think about building a data mart in Excel. Have built 1GB plus files containing 250 plus tabs with some tabs containing 1m plus records and 250 plus fields and every cell containing a nested formula often going 16-25 levels along with array formulas off pivots that organize data. Can't compare online Excel charts as I have no clue what metrics that is based on and likely what the average office worker might use. What I do gets later transferred to a server based solution by a programmer. Think of me as the architect and use case tester.

Why holistically speaking I believe more cores matter over speed. Then memory comes into play when I build these large files and another benefit of going with a workstation based solution but I've never actually built one so can't speak to it.

When my work was transferred to a virtual server did see some improvement but we weren't on a gigabit lan which hampered me therefore don't have real practical experience on what work would be like on a server based solution which the Xeon should provide plus I'd have the option to go ECC for further stability although not sure it would matter. Focus right now is the easy of upgrading the CPU vs building a 285K or 9950X.

Guessing best comparison being one who runs large sequel data base and needs to crunch through data along with multitude of where case statements in a relational snowflake schema format.

Without actual testing there is no way to predict how a specific workflow will scale in multithreading. Two more physical cores might be the limit or four more. I can't predict. I will just say, that buying the most cores possible, for probably the most cost, may not be the best use of your $$$$. Are you familiar with the Intel ARK -- https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark.html That is a quick source of possible CPUs. Unfortunately Asus doesn't publish a CPU compatibility list anywhere so there is no guarantee from the motherboard manufacturer.

Is that 32GB RAM two DIMMs or four?

 

[GARRIGA]

Without actual testing there is no way to predict how a specific workflow will scale in multithreading. Two more physical cores might be the limit or four more. I can't predict. I will just say, that buying the most cores possible, for probably the most cost, may not be the best use of your $$$$. Are you familiar with the Intel ARK -- https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark.html That is a quick source of possible CPUs. Unfortunately Asus doesn't publish a CPU compatibility list anywhere so there is no guarantee from the motherboard manufacturer.

Is that 32GB RAM two DIMMs or four?

My thought process with more cores being this is Xeon and perhaps best suited for that task. Slower clock but better suited for multiple tasks. Don't know because the one instance when I did run on a Xeon the bottleneck was the LAN. Although did seem faster when just running calc and yet don't recall exactly what was used.

I'm running four DIMMs and understand likely faster with two but original thought process was to utilize all 8 DIMMs. Highly doubt that's my bottleneck, however.

My biggest concern with just trying is that my heatsink is a nightmare to remove/replace once board installed. Rather do that once otherwise seek something else and then cost starts piling up and better off just building from scratch 285P or 9950X and reuse my case, storage and GPU. Probably in the end what I'll do but was hoping to not have down time. I don't build PCs every day and every time I do it takes an entire day because I'll forget to attach something and dread having to deal with a bunch of connections plus having to install OS plus programs. CPU swap considering cost and time much easier assuming I didn't waste time upgrading something and little benefit found. Plus that heatsink is really a nightmare to deal with. AIO not a consideration.

 

[kanewolf]

My thought process with more cores being this is Xeon and perhaps best suited for that task. Slower clock but better suited for multiple tasks. Don't know because the one instance when I did run on a Xeon the bottleneck was the LAN. Although did seem faster when just running calc and yet don't recall exactly what was used.

I'm running four DIMMs and understand likely faster with two but original thought process was to utilize all 8 DIMMs. Highly doubt that's my bottleneck, however.

My biggest concern with just trying is that my heatsink is a nightmare to remove/replace once board installed. Rather do that once otherwise seek something else and then cost starts piling up and better off just building from scratch 285P or 9950X and reuse my case, storage and GPU. Probably in the end what I'll do but was hoping to not have down time. I don't build PCs every day and every time I do it takes an entire day because I'll forget to attach something and dread having to deal with a bunch of connections plus having to install OS plus programs. CPU swap considering cost and time much easier assuming I didn't waste time upgrading something and little benefit found. Plus that heatsink is really a nightmare to deal with. AIO not a consideration.

Cores are cores. Software doesn't know the difference.
As long as you have four DIMMs, you have all the memory bandwidth that the CPU was designed for.

 

[GARRIGA]

Cores are cores. Software doesn't know the difference.
As long as you have four DIMMs, you have all the memory bandwidth that the CPU was designed for.

Memory bandwidth not my bottleneck. Pegged cores is and trying to figure out if having more cores and specifically from a Xeon solution will help.

Noticed another thread where CPUs were tested using a Monte Carlo simulation in Excel. I’m trying to find if that was done with desktop vs server based CPU as likely better gauge of what I do.

 

[kanewolf]

Memory bandwidth not my bottleneck. Pegged cores is and trying to figure out if having more cores and specifically from a Xeon solution will help.

Noticed another thread where CPUs were tested using a Monte Carlo simulation in Excel. I’m trying to find if that was done with desktop vs server based CPU as likely better gauge of what I do.

Desktop vs server is not really a thing if the platform is the same. Most desktop CPUs only have dual channel memory, for example. BUT, you have a quad channel motherboard, so a desktop and a server CPU with the same cores and clockspeeds will be similar. A Xeon will have some more on-chip cache. Will that make a huge difference? Only benchmarking will tell. Look at this reddit thread for more discussion on core scaling -- https://www.reddit.com/r/excel/comments/co5g1x/ecc_memory_and_cpu_core_scaling/?rdt=59059