[SOLVED] Is it worth it to upgrade from an i7 860 to a Xeon X3480?

[Genralkidd]

I've got an old gaming PC from way back that I still use from time to time. It's currently got an i7 860, 16 GB DDR3 RAM, and a GTX 660 GPU (upgrading to a spare GTX 1050 soon).

It's definitely aged a lot but I was wondering if I could upgrade a bit to a Xeon x3480 which costs roughly $50-60. According to Passmarks scores, the X3480 is the most powerful CPU I can get for the LGA 1156 socket, even more powerful than the i7 880. So is it worth to upgrade from the 860 to the X3480 for gaming and video editing purposes? Will I see any significant performance games?

 

[scallumal]

The single core performance is slightly better due to higher boosts but do you have a motherboard that can overclock? It should beable to match or pass the x3480 and if not does the motherboard support the x3480? Im not sure how the oc works for the x3480 if its bclk or not but ive seen people get 4ghz on the xeons im pretty sure the 860 can get that too

 

[mamasan2000]

View: https://youtu.be/iP8OikHCtzs?t=265

Compare to your system.. His AMD RX 570 isn't the most powerful GPU out there.
Plus it is a 3470.

 

[Genralkidd]

The single core performance is slightly better due to higher boosts but do you have a motherboard that can overclock? It should beable to match or pass the x3480 and if not does the motherboard support the x3480? Im not sure how the oc works for the x3480 if its bclk or not but ive seen people get 4ghz on the xeons im pretty sure the 860 can get that too

Unfortunately my motherboard is not able to overclock, it's a very basic Intel DH55TC motherboard or something close to that model. So whatever CPU I go with I'm basically stuck with stock settings. I don't see why that motherboard wouldn't support the X3480 though, it's the same socket and I'm pretty sure the Xeons of that generation were mostly just rebrands i7 equivalents.

View: https://youtu.be/iP8OikHCtzs?t=265

Compare to your system.. His AMD RX 570 isn't the most powerful GPU out there.
Plus it is a 3470.

Huh yeah those games he showed definitely do look like they're running pretty smoothly. His RX 570 is definitely more powerful than my GTX 1050 but if it runs that well already i should be able to still get a decent experience.

 

[Genralkidd]

I also noticed the X3470 costs like $15-20 now. Is that still a significant/noticeable upgrade from my current i7-860 and is there enough of a performance gain from the X3470 to X3480 to justify an extra $30-40 increase from the X3470?

 

[scallumal]

Unfortunately my motherboard is not able to overclock, it's a very basic Intel DH55TC motherboard or something close to that model. So whatever CPU I go with I'm basically stuck with stock settings. I don't see why that motherboard wouldn't support the X3480 though, it's the same socket and I'm pretty sure the Xeons of that generation were mostly just rebrands i7 equivalents.



Huh yeah those games he showed definitely do look like they're running pretty smoothly. His RX 570 is definitely more powerful than my GTX 1050 but if it runs that well already i should be able to still get a decent experience.

Okay so since it doesnt support oc getting the xeon would be worth it a bit have you checked maybe for a better motherboard? Because overclocking would be better anyways even if you went for a x3480 just my personal opinion. I see on aliexpress p55 motherboards for +-$70 (asus or gigabyte) and theres some good coolers for $15 if u dont have one but the x3580 is a cheaper boost

 

[SkyNetRising]

There's ~8% performance difference between max turbo of i7 860 (3.46Ghz) and Xeon x3480 (3.73Ghz).
Doesn't seem like worthwhile effort. You can achieve this with slight OC.

 

[Genralkidd]

Okay so since it doesnt support oc getting the xeon would be worth it a bit have you checked maybe for a better motherboard? Because overclocking would be better anyways even if you went for a x3480 just my personal opinion. I see on aliexpress p55 motherboards for +-$70 (asus or gigabyte) and theres some good coolers for $15 if u dont have one but the x3580 is a cheaper boost

Yeah preferably I just want to do a low cost CPU upgrade and am not looking to swap out the entire system since I already I have a newer PC as my main gaming PC.

There's ~8% performance difference between max turbo of i7 860 (3.46Ghz) and Xeon x3480 (3.73Ghz).
Doesn't seem like worthwhile effort. You can achieve this with slight OC.

Unfortunately my motherboard doesn't support overclocking so I'll have to decide if $50-60 is worth it for an 8% improvement, or if go for the X3470 instead, if $15-20 is worth it for a smaller improvement.

Is the only difference between those CPU's literally just the clock speeds? Or is there more differentiating factors?

 

[SkyNetRising]

Only difference between them is max turbo clock. 8% difference is not worth $50 (IMHO).
And X3470 would give you ~4% performance difference. Probably not even noticeable.