[SOLVED] Really no Xeon as good as a i5-3570k?

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trialandimprovement

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Jul 5, 2016
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Hello lovely forum people.

I have been building my own servers for years, but now for various reasons I have decided to buy a Supermicro server. My server runs a custom single threaded application, there isn't much data and infrequent usage, but it runs a CPU intensive task every now and then and I need it to run quickly.

I have previously built my servers with a i5-3570k as I considered that a reasonable 'medium' CPU (yes I know it's not a proper server CPU, go easy on a guy). The performance of the application on this was not great but acceptable.

Now I am getting a Supermicro I am naturally (?) looking at Xeon processors. But checking out some of the online benchmark websites it seems like none of the Xeon processors can match the i5-3570k for single thread performance. I know server processors are meant for multithreading and power efficiency not single threading but I was pretty surprised as the i5-3570k is kind of cheap and old. Is this really the case or is my research bad?

Thank you very much for taking a look.
 
Solution
volkgren
Oh okay, I see. There's a 1240 V2 and it's the same architecture (Ivy Bridge) and the same clock speed as the i5-3570K so they are basically a direct comparison for single-threaded performance, but the Xeon has hyper-threading so it has much better multi-threaded performance. It's basically an i7-3770 with slightly slower clock speeds. Xeons typically have slower clock speeds and are not unlocked anymore, I'm pretty sure Ivy Bridge is included in the non-Overclocked Xeons.

The E3-1220 V2 is more like your i5-3570K because it doesn't have hyper-threading, but it also has slower clock speeds. It's common for Xeons to come with slower clock speeds compared to their mainstream desktop equivalents.

It's difficult to beat an Ivy Bridge...
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If you don't need ECC Memory then you can certainly use a non Xeon desktop CPU for your server.

There should be several newer Xeons that are faster than the 3570K at single-core speeds. It's possibly you are seeing the overclocked benchmarks of the i5-3570K. Those would be slightly faster single-core than a newer Xeon.

E3-1220 V5 or V6 is newer and should have slightly faster single-threaded speed than the 3570K at stock. Which, a non-overclocked 3570K is the same as the non-K. So for cost efficiency you should get the 3570 non K if you bought were buying one of those. They are still great CPUs for your basic stuff if you can find a motherboard for them.

Or, if you don't need ECC memory you have several options to include Pentium Gold, Core i3, and Core i5 from 8th-gen Coffee Lake for budget options. All of those would beat a stock i5-3570K in single-threaded speed.
 
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There are xeons that are for single threaded work. Xeons aren't just server cpus, they're workstation too and not everything is highly threaded. There are typically xeons with higher clocks than equivalent i series. The v5 and v6 cpus are "older" even though skylake and its refreshes are really the "same." They switched to a new naming with the newest xeons and mainstream coffee lake are xeon e-21xx.
 
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Very nice, I must have missed them because I wasn't following along with the server CPUs. The Coffee Lake Xeon lineup looks great!
 
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Thank you both very much for your advice.

k1114, would you mind suggesting a Xeon cpu with a better single threaded performance? I'm guessing something like the Xeon Silver 4112? To be honest I'm finding the processor range a little bit confusing, bit disappointing since I seemed to know them all by heart when I was a teenager! Actually same with the Supermicro product line. Leaning towards Xeon because it doesn't seem easy to find a i5 / i7 board with an IPMI port. Shame they don't seem to have a feature table or filtering form etc.
 
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It probably is a silly question. But after having been out of the CPU market for several years I wasn't really sure where to start. Yes as that chart I linked shows I can see now there are many Xeon processors faster than the 3570K. It's just a lot of the basic looking online comparison websites don't seem to reflect that. I'm not looking to use it for gaming but I can see there are still plenty of options.
 
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He's asking about single-threaded performance. Your Westmere Xeon will not outperform an Ivy Bridge K-series i5 if overclocking is on the table for both. Not even close.
 
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As pointed out the Westmere is 4 cores and 8 threads, it is enough to negate the IPC advantage in many newer games and severely outperforms the i5 in software that can make use of the extra threads.

IPC matters less now than it ever did before.
 
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He's not playing games with it. He's running a server that runs a custom single threaded application. If you read the very first post you wouldn't be here derailing this thread.
 
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Ahh however i used a use case scenario which relies on IPC to some degree in order to make a point to the subject at hand.
There are X58 Xeon's & X79 Xeon's that are multiplier unlocked and are able to clock significantly higher than stock.

In many cases people are topping out around 4.2-4.5ghz on Westmere.

At this point IPC is close, very close to SB / IB, but it does so by losing it's power efficiency benefit.
It however muscles out the i5 in multithread by a large degree. The advantages come in the form of more L3 cache than the consumer friendlier i7's & are also 32nm CPU's.

So in this specific case i am fully on topic, you are just not refuting my stance with facts and are in fact just attempting to make me seem like i am not on topic by using non logically backed efforts, such as i am not on topic, and it does not cater to the original post or topic, it relates heavily.
I relate by understanding IPC, games show it, just that in today's usages IPC matters less, software is more multi thread aware than it ever was before, software has a huge advantage on a 8 thread Xeon clocked nicely above stock vs the i5.

Facts are facts, however your personal subjective opinion can be just that, subjective, it is however not applicable to a logical or factual conversation, so please don't ever attempt to do that to me again. Thank you.

 
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You are not on topic because you are saying multi-threaded performance makes the Xeon faster than the i5-3570K. We are specifically discussing single-threaded tasks, of which the Xeon is NOT faster than the i5-3570K.

There's really nothing more to discuss about this.

 
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Then perhaps you can explain why the original poster has even brought up the Xeon discussion, is it smugness?
The topic at hand is not answerable, the OP already knows, look at it from both ways and you will understand that all you are doing is adding to the OP's views, this is not a thread asking for help.

My view is different and i play to the strength of the Xeon because i have first hand experience with them & the Sandy Bridge architecture, Ivy is 5% faster than SB in 95% of use case scenarios.

If the OP was planning on moving his CPU to a better one he would be looking at the 8000 series and perhaps be considering an i3 or i5 K sku, which for the use case is still overkill because apparently it uses 1 core.

The right method would be to update the software or use software that is multi thread aware to gain more from it.
He would gain far more from that approach vs buying a new CPU or coming here stroking his mind.

This discussion is nonsensical and is going nowhere.

The OP is stroking yours and his own ego through the like system, enjoy.



 
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Sounds like you read the topic only and felt the need to comment with your own view or ego relating to Xeons that doesn't actually relate to the thread. Now, after several posts you are up to speed and have said what I said in my very first post on this thread.
 
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Is that true? it blatantly states Xeon in the topic title and in the original post.

Reported the thread for being meaningless and pandering to a fixed view that needs no help. This is what an off topic section is for.

 
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Xeon and core-I, same thing. Same IPC. Only differences were some instruction sets, igpu etc. A Xeon 1250v2 same as a i5-3570/i7-3770. It was only the core-I K ability to OC that'd bump performance.

So running a core-I instead of a Xeon doesn't make any real physical difference, unless the programming used, security, ECC ram etc benefits from the Xeons additions. So using core-I for a server is fine, but for a secure server, a Xeon would be needed.
 
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Just for clarity, sorry I should have mentioned this earlier, but I do not use overclocking on my server systems. As I understand the i5-3570k is specifically designed for overclocking so that may have been confusing. I just happened to have a cheap source for these when building my servers. So would benchmark comparisons with a i5-3570 be more accurate in my case?

Karadjgne, I have seen there is shared engineering between Xeon and Core. Is the Xeon 1250v2 and i5-3570 (or factory clocked i53570k?) a direct equivalence? If it is then I will probably get the 1250v2 since I can expect the same performance (accepting the ECC hit)
 
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You have the best reference for comparison, the Passmark score charts you linked above. Those would not be overclocked and would reflect actual performance at stock.
 
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I don't see a 1250 V2, which one are you looking at? If it is Ivy Bridge then you can expect relatively the same single-threaded performance given clock speeds are also close to being the same.
 
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Oh okay, I see. There's a 1240 V2 and it's the same architecture (Ivy Bridge) and the same clock speed as the i5-3570K so they are basically a direct comparison for single-threaded performance, but the Xeon has hyper-threading so it has much better multi-threaded performance. It's basically an i7-3770 with slightly slower clock speeds. Xeons typically have slower clock speeds and are not unlocked anymore, I'm pretty sure Ivy Bridge is included in the non-Overclocked Xeons.

The E3-1220 V2 is more like your i5-3570K because it doesn't have hyper-threading, but it also has slower clock speeds. It's common for Xeons to come with slower clock speeds compared to their mainstream desktop equivalents.

It's difficult to beat an Ivy Bridge Core i5 for value performance. (single-threaded)
 
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