Question Upgrade i7-950 to a xeon x5650

[DST10]

So I really would love a new cpu. unfortunately my financial situation doesn't allow me to get anything decent, so im looking to get the best thing that my ancient motherboard supports, which shouldn't be too expensive. I got an asus p6x58D-E, and when browsing the common builds for my motherboard on userbenchmark, I noticed that a few of them had xeons in em, mainly the x5650s. I figured I could overclock pretty high with one since I have a pretty great AIO that I got gifted. These old xeons run pretty cheap on ebay, would it be worth getting one and overclocking it? would it be faster than my i7-950? Also how would I do this, would it need a bios update to work?

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

The Asus P6X58D-E doesn't support any Xeons according to Asus own support list:

P6X58D-E CPU Support | Motherboards | ASUS Global

www.asus.com

 

[lynx1021]

Your board works with xeons but not supported by Asus. The X5650 would be a small downgrade 2.8Mhz Vs 3.06Mhz. The 5650 is lower wattage so it would run cooler.
Processor that will fit. https://www.game-debate.com/motherboard/index.php?mot_id=8&cpuList=Asus P6X58D-E
Here is a guy that over clocks a X5690 to 4.5Ghz.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=356B1-K7W_g

Probably need the latest BIOS.

 

[DSzymborski]

Yeah, you have a good chance of getting it to work -- lots of boards of this era had Xeons work without official support -- but you just don't get enough of a bump except on very highly threaded workloads to make it worth the bother.

 

[lynx1021]

I agree with DSzymborski, About the only reason to use the xeon would be if you had a board and needed a processor the used xeon would be a cheap alternative. For an upgrade you could go with the I7 990X used from https://www.aliexpress.com/item/329...chweb0_0,searchweb201602_9,searchweb201603_53 For $145.80
I ordered converted Xeons for my board becase they were about 1/3 the price of a used Q9650