Question about CPU Benchmarks

[BlizzardGamer]

I see there is i7 and i5 processors in the benchmark section, very detail information and almost every small detail there suggest that one should get i5 2500k or i7 2600k for his or hers ultimate media station / gaming platform CPU.

However, I find it disappointing that there is no Xeon CPU's benchmark-ed at all. This gives me a conclusion that tomshardware wont even consider that people would use Xeons in media or gaming usage, or that they have been given introduction to not include these at all in the same category becose they would be far superrior to the normal highend desktop CPU usages.

However, Im wondering how would x5260-x5660 do in gaming. ^^

-BlizzardGamer

 

[DJDeCiBeL]

The reason is that Xeon's are usually WAY out of most people's price ranges, and they don't offer anywhere near enough performance in gaming to justify their cost.

A x5260 is old and relatively inexpensive, but a x5660 is too, but still very expensive. A Sandy or Ivy i5/i7 would be better for gaming and most other uses, but the x5660 would probably pull away in video editing by a small margin.

It just doesn't make much fiscal sense for a gamer to go with a Xeon. Xeon's are for servers, not for normal people to use.

 

[BlizzardGamer]

Well I was looking at the xeon prices and those two that I mentioned I could get nice deal of only 400 euros for 2x xeon dual core workstation with everything in it.
Yes they are relatively old, but processors like everything else too so I was thinking of putting modern graphic card next to it. However, should I go with this or get i7 2600k instead with p8z69-v gen3 with it?

 

[hunter315]

Xeon's and i5's/i7's are very similar CPUs with very similar performance characteristics, the x5260 was wolfdale based and would perform quite similarly to the E8600, its a different socket though and has some slightly different requirements but the overall performance would be quite similar for most applications
http://ark.intel.com/products/33907/Intel-Xeon-Processor-X5260-(6M-Cache-3_33-GHz-1333-MHz-FSB)
http://ark.intel.com/products/35605/Intel-Core2-Duo-Processor-E8600-(6M-Cache-3_33-GHz-1333-MHz-FSB)

The x5660 would be similar to the i7 980X which was also obscenely expensive, both would have very similar performance.


The reason tom's doesn't bench xeons is because they aren't the market most people are in. Xeons show up more in workstations with multiple processors and ECC memory, very few people would be willing to drop over $1200 on an x5660 and very very few people need that much CPU power anyway, tom's is aimed much more at the entusiast and gamer who need a moderate CPU and are interested in systems between about 300 and 2500, if you have 10k to drop on a workstation you are in a whole different range than tom's is meant to cover, thats why they don't bench them.

 

[DJDeCiBeL]

For your needs, a 2600K and a Z77 mobo would be plenty (Z77 just because it's newer, really). If I was gonna get a dual Xeon system, I'd just build a server or Folding system out of it or maybe even make it part of a render farm.

It would be ok for gaming, but it's not any better than a 2600K (and maybe a bit worse). Better architecture and higher clocks mean more in gaming than extra cores. Most games can't even use more than 2 or 3 cores (BF3 and a couple others being the outliers, but even then, a 12 core/24 thread system would be severely underutilized). Just not worth it, even for the deal that you would be getting.

 

[BlizzardGamer]

Thanks for the info. But Im not sure if I want to spend extra 50€ to 100€ on z77 while z68 gen3 has basically the same benefits.

 

[blackhawk1928]

However, I find it disappointing that there is no Xeon CPU's benchmark-ed at all. This gives me a conclusion that tomshardware wont even consider that people would use Xeons in media or gaming usage, or that they have been given introduction to not include these at all in the same category becose they would be far superrior to the normal highend desktop CPU

Tomshardware cares about what its viewers care about, thats the purpose of the website. Tomshardware's viewers care about doing research on products, reading reviews, and deciding the best place to spend money on in computer parts mostly. People who do this are always on some sort of a budget. Xeon buyers are usually professionals or corporations who don't need reviews on websites and know what they are doing as well as willing to spend a lot of money. I doubt for example that a global wide corporation will go to tomshardware to read reivews on xeon processors before making a multi billion dollar purchase of xeons for servers.

Xeons are chips that support ECC memory, probably go through more testing, higher quality and a tougher selection process much like ECC memory is picked off a line as well as having better warranty and support from Intel.

Just like Fibre Channel HDD's, and enterprise class PCI-E SSD's and professional level graphics cards like Quadro's and FireGL's, normal consumers don't buy them and most of toms' viewers are probably normal consumers, not businesses and companies (maybe some representatives). Company's are always years behind consumers on technology. For example, it will probably be a long time until companies will use SSD's and newer versions of windows as well as software, they tend to use it until support for it is gone. I highly doubt companies will migrate off of Windows XP until Microsoft says they are cutting support.