Longevity of i7 vs Xeon

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Mutteks

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Oct 26, 2015
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An employee wants to buy a computer to last more than 10 years. He's a 60 year old man who loves photography, and plans on buying high end consumer high resolution cameras, and use Photoshop, Lightroom, etc. to edit the photos, both now and in the future.

Would buying an Intel Xeon processor be any better than the QuadCore 4.0GHz Core i7-6700K processor? How would or could he notice the difference in 10 to 15 years time?

What I really want to know, is whether a Xeon processor extend the longevity, because he's buying either.
 
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The Xeon and i7 for a given socket are exactly the same thing, except for some enabled/disabled features and artificial market segmentation by making server chips incompatible with desktop chipsets with LGA1151/Skylake.

That's why many people picked Xeon chips instead of i7-3770/4770/4790. Exactly the same performance but Xeons were often cheaper.
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xeons are designed to last longer. however, i have never seen a xeon or stock i7 fail. i have xeons in my house that are going on 10 years now of running 24/7. however, in 10 to 15 years the system may extremely weak in comparison to the rest of the hardware out their and the software might have issues running on it. as for the other hardware build this like a server. have disks in raid to keep the data alive. use high lifespan disks. possibly redundant power supplies.
 
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The Xeon and i7 for a given socket are exactly the same thing, except for some enabled/disabled features and artificial market segmentation by making server chips incompatible with desktop chipsets with LGA1151/Skylake.

That's why many people picked Xeon chips instead of i7-3770/4770/4790. Exactly the same performance but Xeons were often cheaper.
 
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I think expecting a single pc build to effectively last 10yrs outside of lighter weight applications is a bit much. Like expecting to buy a car when you're 20 and have it last until you're 70. Especially as the main workhorse. Not to say components absolutely won't last that long, but the reality of drives lasting 10yrs, power supplies lasting 10yrs, fans etc is more fiction than anything.

If he wants to know what a cpu will be like in 15yrs, set him up with a p2 processor, 1-2gb of ram and winME and see how well it does.
 
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Expecting a modern CPU to remain useful for over 10 years is more realistic now than it has ever been: back in the P2's days, CPU performance was still more than doubling every two years due to massive IPC and clock frequency improvements. Over the past five years though, performance has only increased by about 50%, a drastic pace reduction.

Before my i5, I used to get a new PC every 3-4 years. If the current pace holds up though, I will end up keeping my i5 as my main PC for 7+ years since I cannot be bothered to spend money on a new PC that is less than twice as fast as my current one.
 
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Mutteks,

It's certainly possible to have a computer that can last ten or more years I have a 1998 Dell XPS T700R Pentium III 750GHz / 768MB RAM / 30GB and 80GB EIDE HD that can still run Adobe CS3 on XP 32-bit at a respectable speed:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ox41vtmachz1i6p/Dell%20XPS_F%20with%20keybd%20mouse_6.13.12.jpg?dl=0

(Sorry if this is rotated- Dropbox is acting up)

The only time that system ever failed was when Windows 95 suffered it;s periodic registry failures- not a hardware fault.

Use is a relative term as you can compare the demands on a server running continuously for three years- a typical time they're kept in service and that is equal to 26,380 Hours. If your employee works five 8-hour days for ten years, that's equal to 20,800 hours.

To have this reliability, I suggest Xeon processors as these are configured for reliability over a long period and for that reason are found in servers greats and small. I don't know the details of the processes of binning- selection- and configuration, but Xeons do have some features enabled that benefit content creation and calculation and they are in general running at slightly lower clock speeds than i-core series. I have bought quite a number of Xeons used and have had 100% reliability new or used over the last seven years. One Xeon I bought was an X5460 4-core @ 3.16GHz that arrives in a plain businees envelope in one layer of bubble wrap. I paid $25 for it- the new price was $1,550- and that CPU ran in a pair (Dell Precision T5400) up to 20 Hr's /day 6 days a week for 5 years including 3-day continuous rendering all cores without failure. Xeons are tough!

RAM is also very reliable over a long period, but as Kanewolf mentions, mechanical drives are the weakest link. Still, even those can be more reliable than one might think. I have a number of drives that are five to seven years old, though these are not running continuously or every day. I also use enterprise drives- Western Digital RE and Seagate Constellation, so the thing to look for are 5-year warranties. I have two RE4's from 2010 working perfectly and with quite a lot of use. SSD's can have wear on the memory chips, but these have residual sectors and the data is moved to the reserve memory when the sector is failing. Again, I like enterprise ratings and on my current main system use an Intel 730 480GB. The Intel 730 is rated for read /writes of 70GB per day for 5 years. As my rate of use is about 10GB/day, that would equal about 10 years use.

Of course, non one can predict what the programs of 2025 will be like and the demands to run them, but my sense is that especially working with 2D, your colleague should be able to look ahead to ten years' use from a workstation level Xeon system, perhaps with one or two upgrades and possibly replacement of mechanical drives.

If your colleague is using Adobe and /or Autodesk programs, those companies post recommendations for hardware and systems. I'd recommend at the more generous Dell Precision with an 8-core Xeon E5 , 32GB of ECC RAM, M.2 500GB enterprise SSD, 2TB mech'l storage drive, and a Quadro M4000 (8GB). A very good specification could be done with a Xeon E3, except it would be limited to 4-cores and rendering /effect processing would be more GPU -dependent.

Cheers,

BambiBoom

1. HP z420 (2015) > Xeon E5-1660 v2 (6-core @ 3.7 / 4.0GHz) > 32GB DDR3 1866 ECC RAM > Quadro K4200 (4GB) > Intel 730 480GB (9SSDSC2BP480G4R5) > Western Digital Black WD1003FZEX 1TB> M-Audio 192 sound card > 600W PSU> > Windows 7 Professional 64-bit > Logitech z2300 speakers > 2X Dell Ultrasharp U2715H (2560 X 1440)>
[ Passmark Rating = 5064 > CPU= 13989 / 2D= 819 / 3D= 4596 / Mem= 2772 / Disk= 4555] [Cinebench R15 > CPU = 1014 OpenGL= 126.59 FPS] 7.8.15

2. Dell Precision T5500 (2011) (Revised) > 2X Xeon X5680 (6 -core @ 3.33 / 3.6GHz), 48GB DDR3 1333 ECC Reg. > Quadro K2200 (4GB ) > PERC H310 / Samsung 840 250GB / WD RE4 Enterprise 1TB > M-Audio 192 sound card > 875W PSU > Windows 7 Professional 64> HP 2711x (27", 1920 X 1080)
[ Passmark system rating = 3844 / CPU = 15047 / 2D= 662 / 3D= 3500 / Mem= 1785 / Disk= 2649] (12.30.15)

 
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I couldn't have said it better myself. The generalisation about Xeons being a server CPU simply isn't true.

OP, is this employee going to learn how to overclock the CPU? If not, then a 6700K is a waste of money. Overclocking will offer better performance when processing multiple RAW files, but learning how to do it properly takes time. Is he really going to want to spend hours tweaking BIOS settings and testing for stability?

In terms of longevity, a Xeon isn't any more reliable than any other Intel CPU.
 
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bicycle_repair_man,

The difference in reliability of Core i7 and Xeon is in the binning /selection and the locked multipliers. But it is true that Xeons are intended as workstation and server CPU's. Core i7's are excellent , but for their use are offered in a range of 4 to 8-core, all with quite high clock speeds of 3.0GHz+. There are only three 6 and 8-core models andthat may used one per system. By comparison, there are twenty E5 Xeons from 4 to 18 cores - and E5- v4 will include 22-cores- with the 3600-series capable of use in dual CPU systems. The base clock speeds of E5's are as low as 1.6GHz. Where would someone use an 18-core 1.6GHz processor except in a server?

Comparing i7 and Xeon E5 is the same as comparing any specialist component, i7 is excellent at high single-threaded performance that may be enhanced by overclocking and Xeons are designed for multi-threaded application in continuous running by virtue of locked multipliers and sometimes -100 or 200 MHz clock speeds. Also, i7- commonly include Integrated Graphics which always surprise me by the performance in 2D whereas no Xeon E5 has it. Xeon E5 be configures in dual CPU's configurations, can use up to 12X times as much RAM i7 plus ECC RAM, as well as TXT and vPro. There are Xeon E7 motherboards that support 8 CPU's (costing up to $7,200 each) and 4TB of RAM. Again, ECC error -correcting RAM is used in servers for precision and supported only by Xeons- not i7's. So, the Xeon range is much wider and specialized than i7.

As the user of the proposed system is running workstation applications including the strong possibility of heavily multi-threaded that are better with more cores rather than faster, wants stable running (= no overclocking) and reliability for ten years, so the components designed for this combination are the Xeon E5.

The hardware for content creation is quite different from that for content consumption offer different features, and excels in it's own realm of use.

Cheers,

BambiBoom


 
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True, reliability comes from the binning, but that logic applies to anything. Saying that a Xeon is inherently more reliable than any other Intel CPU is folly. With regard to clock speed, assuming that a Xeon and i7 are equally matched, neither will offer a tangible benefit over the other. Yes, the i7 has an iGPU, but I'd still recommend a dedicated GPU on account of Lightroom (and certain versions of Photoshop) being able to aid in post-processing. The GPU doesn't need to be of gaming-grade; a GTX 950 is the absolute maximum I'd recommend.

I'm a photographer myself, and regularly use Photoshop and Lightroom. having multiple threads is all well and good, and the software does use them, but clock speed is absolutely more valuable, and multiple physical CPUs can't be utilised at all. Consider the cost as well; a Xeon E5 with a similar clock speed to a 6700K or a Xeon E3 1230 V5 costs a fortune. How much would you be willing to pay for your hobby? All things considered, the Xeon E3 1230 V5 is a much better recommendation if overclocking is off the cards. Sure, you get features such as ECC RAM and vPro, but I wouldn't consider these to be valuable for the PC's intended use. What's important is that the E3 can do what the user wants at a reasonable price.

How long a PC can last is relative, and not a question that anyone besides the user can answer.
 
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