- Aug 5, 2013
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hi all,
I've just replaced my I5 with a Xeon and thought I'd share my experience as there isn't so much information on this and some concerns the Xeon is somehow special and has compatibility issues.
Firstly, the I5 I have is awesome, it overclocks very easily to 4.4GHz, has low temps and with a bit more voltage will hit 4.7-4.8GHz.
But, I was very interested in the Xeon, particularly as it's slightly cheaper than the I5 here in Oz, and is basically the I7 without the GPU. The main downside being the locked multiplier, however with games and other applications starting to utilise more than 4 cores, I was interested to see the effect of Hyper-threading.
Swapping the CPU was very simple, with the cooler off, it dropped straight into my Asrock Z77 LGA1055 mobo as you'd expect.
The BIOS recognised it and booted straight into windows which automatically installed the Xeon drivers, no issues, all 8 threads were visible in task manager.
I didn't have to reinstall any video drivers, nor anything else.
The main concern was with memory compatibility. The Xeon spec says 1333 or 1600 memory. There are some other discussions about the requirement for buffered/non-buffered, ECC/non ECC memory.
I have 8GB of G-skill Ares 2133, which I normally o/c to 2400 with the same timings using my I5. Surprisingly, this worked straight away with the Xeon too, with no issues, same o/c, same timings, which is awesome.
The temperatures with the Coolermaster Evo cooler are very good, at 55C fully stressed on the lowest fan setting (barely audible)
In the Asrock BIOS there is an option to set the "all core multiplier", but unfortunately this is limited to 37 as expected. Changing this to 37 from Auto, doesn't make all cores run at 37, (3.7GHz), it still reduced this down to 35 when all 4 cores are active and stressed.
The typical CPU voltage is 1v, however it is completely stable at 0.95v, reducing the power consumption by nearly 7W and dropping the temps a little.
I tried some test with adjusting Bclk (I understand it's almost pointless). 105MHz was stable, giving a 5% boost, but I've left it at stock. (EDIT: actually settled on 104MHz BCLK, to bring it closer to a stock 3770k).
In bench marking (with the Xeon at 3.5GHz), I found 3Dmark 11 had a 30% boost over the I5 at 4.4GHz, mainly due to improved physics and Firestrike was about 15% better. Passmark was around 12% better.
In games; Battlefield 4 made good use of all 8 threads and significantly decreased the CPU utilisation to below 50% where-as the I5 @ 4.4GHz was around 60-80%. So the Xeon should be good for multithreaded games which punish the CPU twice as much as BF4 does! Is hyperthreading pointless in games? I'm beginning to think not, but we'll see.
Titanfall by comparison however, places almost no stress on the CPU, using only 3 threads at about 10-20%.
I'll test a few more games over the coming nights.
I tested a couple of video convertors, which made good use of all 8 threads, but I don't have any comparison data with the I5.
Is the Xeon better than the I5? We'll it seems to perform better at 3.5GHz than the I5 does at 4.4GHz in apps that use more threads. Of course, the o/c I5 will perform better in single treaded apps, due to the o/c, but at stock clocks, it's almost the same.
There are a few good looking games coming out over the next few months, it'll be interesting to see how they use hyperthreading.
Thanks for reading.
I've just replaced my I5 with a Xeon and thought I'd share my experience as there isn't so much information on this and some concerns the Xeon is somehow special and has compatibility issues.
Firstly, the I5 I have is awesome, it overclocks very easily to 4.4GHz, has low temps and with a bit more voltage will hit 4.7-4.8GHz.
But, I was very interested in the Xeon, particularly as it's slightly cheaper than the I5 here in Oz, and is basically the I7 without the GPU. The main downside being the locked multiplier, however with games and other applications starting to utilise more than 4 cores, I was interested to see the effect of Hyper-threading.
Swapping the CPU was very simple, with the cooler off, it dropped straight into my Asrock Z77 LGA1055 mobo as you'd expect.
The BIOS recognised it and booted straight into windows which automatically installed the Xeon drivers, no issues, all 8 threads were visible in task manager.
I didn't have to reinstall any video drivers, nor anything else.
The main concern was with memory compatibility. The Xeon spec says 1333 or 1600 memory. There are some other discussions about the requirement for buffered/non-buffered, ECC/non ECC memory.
I have 8GB of G-skill Ares 2133, which I normally o/c to 2400 with the same timings using my I5. Surprisingly, this worked straight away with the Xeon too, with no issues, same o/c, same timings, which is awesome.
The temperatures with the Coolermaster Evo cooler are very good, at 55C fully stressed on the lowest fan setting (barely audible)
In the Asrock BIOS there is an option to set the "all core multiplier", but unfortunately this is limited to 37 as expected. Changing this to 37 from Auto, doesn't make all cores run at 37, (3.7GHz), it still reduced this down to 35 when all 4 cores are active and stressed.
The typical CPU voltage is 1v, however it is completely stable at 0.95v, reducing the power consumption by nearly 7W and dropping the temps a little.
I tried some test with adjusting Bclk (I understand it's almost pointless). 105MHz was stable, giving a 5% boost, but I've left it at stock. (EDIT: actually settled on 104MHz BCLK, to bring it closer to a stock 3770k).
In bench marking (with the Xeon at 3.5GHz), I found 3Dmark 11 had a 30% boost over the I5 at 4.4GHz, mainly due to improved physics and Firestrike was about 15% better. Passmark was around 12% better.
In games; Battlefield 4 made good use of all 8 threads and significantly decreased the CPU utilisation to below 50% where-as the I5 @ 4.4GHz was around 60-80%. So the Xeon should be good for multithreaded games which punish the CPU twice as much as BF4 does! Is hyperthreading pointless in games? I'm beginning to think not, but we'll see.
Titanfall by comparison however, places almost no stress on the CPU, using only 3 threads at about 10-20%.
I'll test a few more games over the coming nights.
I tested a couple of video convertors, which made good use of all 8 threads, but I don't have any comparison data with the I5.
Is the Xeon better than the I5? We'll it seems to perform better at 3.5GHz than the I5 does at 4.4GHz in apps that use more threads. Of course, the o/c I5 will perform better in single treaded apps, due to the o/c, but at stock clocks, it's almost the same.
There are a few good looking games coming out over the next few months, it'll be interesting to see how they use hyperthreading.
Thanks for reading.
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