New cpu upgrade Dual Xeon-E5-2670 or a i7?

garry14151514

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Aug 26, 2015
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Hi i want to get a new cpu because my current one is bottlenecking my gpu and i can either get a i7 4770 (and get a new motherboard my current one isGigabyte ud7-x58a) or get a server based motherboard which will probably fit in my case (thermaltake gt 10) and get a dual Xeon E5 2670. i wont be editing purely for gaming maybe some photoshop but very light work (mostly banner/logo design for websites.)
PC SPECS
CPU: i7 930 @ 2.8 ghz
GPU: Gigabyte GTX 970 @1470 mhz
Ram: 20 GB
Power Supply: 1000w Xigamatek
Case: Thermaltake gt 10
CPU Cooler: Arctic Freezer pro 13
Motherboard: Gigabyte UD7-X58A
OS: Windows 10
 
Solution
get the BEST cheapest option you have, mind you the emphasis on BEST. and wait till new gen. comes, since its quite close, by the time they arrive youd probably would have saved up to get really good parts for an upgrade. since you were thinking of these "Xeon based build ($600), i7 based build ($750) , i5 based build ($550)" so i assume youd be able to save up properly.
Does an i5 also within your consideration?

Not only its cheaper, the performance gap are negligible. Even better, you could get the K ones at less you'd pay for 4770, and slap something for the rest of budget like H100i to OC it.

That said, the E5-2670 is a beast of its own class. If you could get your hand on it, it would be a much more powerful tool to ease your workload. Gaming or editing.
 
Corsair's Hydro series is pretty straight forward for maintenance. If you actually hold the thing in your hand you'd know exactly what needs to be done.
But! If you don't want the hassle or just too scared with the premise, the EVO series is one of favorable air cooling solution for overclockers and for a good reason. Especially the 212 ones.

There are many tutorials out there for overclocking. Basically, every board that has the feature works similarly albeit different BIOS GUI respectively.
 
LGA1366 CPUs are basically multiplier locked. Only the top end are unlocked for any abuse. Thus, you can only tinker with FSB BCLK, and perhaps a bit over-volting. With proper cooling, you could get 3Ghz easy without tinkering with voltage setting.

At that clockspeed, you can slap a GTX1080. There won't be much bottleneck from CPU side. Relocate your budget on some good SSD and call it a day.
 
I don't want to scare you off too badly, but if you're uncertain about things in a build then you may want to stay away from doing a server/workstation build. For one thing, dual E5 2670s are not going to be any better than even a quad core i7 for gaming any time in the near future. There is a huge clock speed difference. And for a light workload, it's entirely possible that there may not be a linear speedup for 32 threads. In many cases, a smaller number of fast threads is more productive than a larger number of slow threads.

If you decide to go ahead, here are some things that you might run into:
1) First generation E5 2670s aren't terribly expensive right now, but the motherboards for them are getting to be harder to find. They're often out of stock. Newer E5 2670s are extremely expensive.
2) E5 2670 is not LGA1366, it's LGA2011. You NEED to pay attention to the version number after the 2670 (v2, v3, etc), because it's one of the more important things. No version number or v2 is LGA2011, version number v3 or the upcoming v4 is LGA2011-3.
3) There are TWO incompatible cooler setups for LGA2011. A narrow and a square setup. You have to buy the right one for your board.
4) The BIOS version HAS to support your version number. You need to actually check that before buying your motherboard. If it's impossible to find out, buy a different board.
5) Server mobos are terribly picky about RAM. You'll need to verify that either the mobo was tested against the RAM or the RAM was tested against the mobo. Kingston is relatively decent about that testing. If you don't there is a decent chance the machine won't boot.
6) To drive this home a bit more, LGA2011 have sets of 2 and sets of 4 in their memory banks. In most desktop mobos, as long as you populate any pair you're golden. Often times for servers you HAVE to populate pairs in a specific order or the machine won't post. And this isn't always documented in the manual. Making sure you get effective quad channel memory performance can be even more annoying unless you buy quad channel kits of RAM because oftentimes RAM manufacturers use different memory chip suppliers even for the same model.
7) Your PSU should be fine if it's the one I think it is. But you may want to make sure it has 2 8 pin CPU connectors. Not all PSUs have that.
8) Many server mobos do NOT have PCIE x16 slots.
9) Most server mobos do not have sound cards. You'd probably need to buy one separately. You'd have to make sure there is a free, compatible slot for that. Server hardware tends to run behind desktop hardware in a lot of ways, so current boards may not have some things that you would expect, like USB 3 ports. That may also require an add on card.
10) Your case appears to be large enough, but many don't support all possible SSI EEB hole configurations. That may require some manual modding on your part.
11) There are a TON of proprietary things to worry about. For example, Supermicro mobos require buying an adaptor to the front pin headers unless you use a Supermicro chassis, and sometimes even that has issues.
12) Server mobos are crowded. Pay attention to things like heat sink clearance issues. Many standard cooling options simply don't fit because they bump into something or other on the board.
 
I read all of it and thank you for taking the time to write your response i guess ill just stick my i7 930 could someone (using my specs provided above) tell me how to overclock i have looked and tons of guides there also confusing btw at full load (at stock speeds) my cpu maxes out at 65 Celcius idle (at stock speeds) 45 - 55 Celcius. A thank you out of this world if you can.
 
I deal with more server hardware, so I actually misunderstood part of rush21hit's post. The very similarly named LGA1356 socket is the one used by the E5-2470 (and the E5-24XX series in general) which is often confused with the similarly spec'ed E5-26XX CPUs.

The main point of rush21hit's post was to let you know that you really can't overclock your current CPU all that well. There are a few tweaks you can make, but it likely won't get you a huge boost.

Your best bet if you're willing to spend the money is a newer i5 or i7 CPU. For workloads that are purely limited by computational power, a recent i7 will be roughly twice as powerful as the one you have right now. Your CPU is actually 5 generations old at this point, so you'll probably get a lot out of an upgrade.
 
If you're not looking to overclock, I'd really recommend you take a look at the i7-6700 and an H170 mobo to go with it. Should cost ~400-450 depending on the motherboard and you will see a significant improvement in CPU bound tasks. If that's a little expensive, 300-350 will get you an i5-6500 and an h170 mobo, which will perform the same as the i7 in most games and is the processor that would normally be paired with a gtx970.
 


i5-6600k overclocks really nicely and the H100i is a great choice of cooler. Just make sure to invest in a good Z170 motherboard.
 
Overclocking is just hype. There is not instance where a new-ish CPU needs to be overclocked, and it just adds headaches.

I think that the Xeons are just better at everything, including the price for the second-hand ones.
I have one 6core/12threaded on the same LGA1366 and I don't feel that I need more. Now of in the future.
Considering that you have the MoBo already, and it supports the Xeons from below link, it's a no brainer.
http://www.gigabyte.com/support-downloads/cpu-support-popup.aspx?pid=3527
The Xeon W3690 from that list is a beast with passmark 9531 (1572 for single threaded).
My LGA1366 supports even the newer Xeons (lower power basically), like X5670, X5675...
 


Id recommend that you upgrade your GTX 970 soon or when ever you feel like you are really falling behind. and regarding your CPU question if you want purely gaming performance the i7 6700k and i5 6600k will be pretty much all you need, just upgrade your GPU soon if you want to game 3 to 4 years with the same CPU, mobo. the Xeon idea personally i think is good but the 6700k/6600k is really hard to beat at their price and performance for gaming. and some light workloads. and if you can get some good cooling options try overclocking one, assuming you get some good quality motherboards for it.

but in general, as of now the i7 6700k is pretty much all you need or if you want a cheaper option but also good get the i5 6600k. since games rely on fast single cores.
 
People are very eager to spending other people money, with absolutely no research. Plus false info like the games that are supposedly single threaded... when the consoles (and games) are multithreaded since 2006.

The suggested i5 6600K has a passmark of 7798. Requires new mobo, memory... hundreds of $.
The i7-6700K has a benchmark of 10999 and again is tons of money - $350 only for the CPU itself!

The compatible LG1366 Xeon W3690 has a passmark of 9531 and doesn't require nothing extra, works with OP motherboard and memory. It's $180 on eBay.
 
we are talking about gaming. its a total different story. Xeons are powerful i used to work on an E5 2699-v3 Dual CPU config. i know how powerful it is. the only problem is Xeon as good as they are arent viable for gaming since they have many cores but slower individual ones so no games benefit that, the only good thing hed get a Xeon is if he really is going for some hard core workloads, CAD designs etc. which the OP did state hes only doing light workloads, and editing only. so clearly if he wants the best gaming platform and is quite future proof, the i5 6600k or the i7 6700k CPU would be his best bet.

the only good place for a xeon to be on a gaming build would be if he would run multiple GPU setups.
 
i didn't really plan to do a total overhaul at first but what everyone has been telling me (i should get a i5 6600k, i7 6700k, or Xeon processer all have very valid points but too be honest ill just be gaming (at 1080p 60hz) and my gpu is good i know that its just i really dont know if upgrading my cpu is worth it. Becuase 1st ill have to buy a new motherboard Secondly a i7 6700k cost around 500 (in australia) and a i5 6600k cost around 300 + 150 for new mother board + 100 for for cooling giving me a total cost of 550 (AUD) for the i5 6600k and 750 (AUD) for the i7 6700k thats why i was heavily considering the two Xeon-E5-2670 which are around (50$ each on ebay so 100$) And the server based motherboards are around (300$) plus two coolers (200$) it would cost me (600$). And what sshades said it makes look Xeon based pc's to hard to build or run. Thats why im really wanting to overclock (i have looked at so many guides and found nothing that makes sense to me) but i also dont want to risk my cpu by overclocking. I know it is very old (around 5 years) but i still want to keep it just incase i need my computer. so these are my options
Xeon based build ($600)
i7 based build ($750)
i5 based build ($550)

By the way sorry if that made no sense i wrote it on my iphone
 
you wont need more than the i5 based build. trust me. the xeon build is good if you are really into heavy workloads but gaming, at 1080p the i5 upgrade is your best bet, but if you have the budget go for the i7 (evil laugh) but seriously the i5 is more than enough for your needs.

overclocking would be a risk of some sort but you can just look up some simple overclocking methods online or just post a thread regarding help. just get a decent mother board and cooler and you are good to go assuming you are buying the i5 6600k or the i7 6700k. you are good to go.

*well obviously since only the K versions are overclockable now*
 

That's why I suggested above to get a Xeon from eBay that fits your motherboard. In that case you will spend only $170-180 - single Xeon on your existing board is more than sufficient.
But whatever...
 


he can if he really wants to but he would really miss out on his gaming performance. and he did say thats his main concern. thats why the i5 upgrade is the best since its cheap and it will be more than enough to get his 1080p gaming.
 
Really? Do you even have an idea what a Xeon does in games? Is not even sweating (average CPU use 17%, none of the cores break 100%) - below is mine at 1920x1080 ultra settings everywhere, Fallout 4, screenshoot after playing a few minutes.
As you can see Fallout process has 54 threads. I think that's multithreaded all right.
fallout.png