Discussion would an i7 980x still hold up in modern games?

[Order 66]

I know that the 980x's 6c and 12t would be useful today. I'm not sure what exactly would make it struggle today. My theory is lack of instruction sets and relatively slow clockspeed.

 

[Eximo]

Not particularly well. Not just the clock speeds, but just general IPC improvements over the years. Also has a lot less cache than newer CPUs. Memory bandwidth, though triple channel helped. PCIe speeds. DMI speeds (storage via chipset), general lack of NVMe drives (though a lot of third party recycled boards added M.2 support to older platforms)

You could clock those up to 4+ Ghz if you got lucky and were able to run 220+Mhz base clocks or thereabouts. I was able to do 166 Base clock at 22x for 3.67Ghz on an i7-950 while keeping my DDR3 running at 1600. Fun times.

 

[Order 66]

Memory bandwidth, though triple channel helped.

Wouldn't the slow ram also not help. I guess I just don't understand the point of triple channel memory, with slow ddr3.

PCIe speeds.

Didn't it only support pcie 2.0? Also, side note: wouldn't you need an entire 16x PCIe slot's worth of bandwidth to feed a PCIe 4 SSD? I guess I don't understand how you would make an older board compatible with NVME.

 

[stonecarver]

Besides not having AVX instructions it's the same CPU as the Xeon 5690 both 6 core 12 threads.

There is no issue playing anything game wise that does not use AVX instructions. No studder no lagging good FPS no glitches, Just works.

On the right motherboard you can use registered memory that is considered old slow and useless. 1333 and not a problem at all gaming.

There is great newer better gear out there but these old CPU still have life.

 

[Eximo]

Wouldn't the slow ram also not help. I guess I just don't understand the point of triple channel memory, with slow ddr3.

Didn't it only support pcie 2.0? Also, side note: wouldn't you need an entire 16x PCIe slot's worth of bandwidth to feed a PCIe 4 SSD? I guess I don't understand how you would make an older board compatible with NVME.

Yes, I was referring to the slower memory. At the time DDR3 was the fastest available, triple channel better than dual channel. But then HEDT moved on to quad channel and stayed there until just recently with 6 and 8 channel options now available without needing server hardware.

Essentially adding channels lets you be more efficient. Instead of addressing to two, three, or four memory banks individually, you can do all of them with a single clock cycle. Now you can't always do that in practice so the theoretical maximum bandwidth is rarely achieved in practice.


PCIe is both a speed of data transfer and a physical connection. So no, you wouldn't be able to use an 16x slot to gain full speed with a PCIe 3.0 or 4.0 SSD without a fancy switch chip to handle the traffic with PCIe 4.0 4x on one end and PCIe 2.0 16x on the other. That would be prohibitively expensive.

Bandwidth aside, adding M.2 / NVMe is simply a matter of protocol, it still runs on PCIe. They simply rewrite the BIOS and design a board with the appropriate slot. PCIe 2.0 at 4x is still about 4 times faster than a SATA drive.

 

[punkncat]

I assume that you still have other systems that are usable, so since this is sitting in front of you just about all that is left is to load some things up and see what happens.

 

[Order 66]

I assume that you still have other systems that are usable, so since this is sitting in front of you just about all that is left is to load some things up and see what happens.

Sorry, but you misunderstand. The reason I put this thread in opinions and experiences is because I don’t, nor have I ever owned an i7 980x. I only asked the question because I noticed that another user had started a thread about overclocking another first gen i7, which reminded me that the i7 980x existed.

 

[punkncat]

Gotcha, yeah the only way I would even consider messing with something that old is if I got it for free. I try to stick with at or newer than 3rd gen Intel. I have a bit less consideration for anything prior to AM4 on the AMD side.

Case in point, I bought out a friend of mine of his old leftover PC store stock. Among that was an A10 5800K (IIRC) with a set of HD7770 and the Crossfire bridge cable. It was neat building it up, is an astounding looking system, but modern titles are simply too much for it.

 

[stonecarver]

Didn't it only support pcie 2.0?

True but I have a Titan X Pascal on that 2.0 and no slow down again gaming is buttery smooth. I don't think it's a smart idea to use anything past the Nvidia 2000/3000 GPU's honestly I think at least for this old girl the Nvidia 1000 cards is where I would leave it but I have seen people put in Nvidia 3000 cards.

At some point it becomes pointless asking a 1366 system to deliver or try to deliver what a new Nvidia 4000 series card can do. It's not the platforms fault just new specification wise the performance would be hobbled like a car stuck in third gear.



I actually feel lucky that I have worked on so many combinations of AMD and Intel parts that I'm more into function than riding that current out now generation that's only next years old gen parts.

I like power and if I find it to me age is irrelevant.

 

[Eximo]

I7-960 was the more popular chip. Still got you six cores, just didn't have as high a multiplier, but that didn't matter much since so much of 1st gen overclocking was BCLK based.

I actually gave my LGA1366 board to a member here as part of a retro build, and they confirmed it was still messed up. Memory channels died, presumably, from the very high voltage that early DDR3 1600 required.

I have my i7-950 somewhere. I have been tempted to pick up one of those recycled boards.

 

[Order 66]

I7-960 was the more popular chip. Still got you six cores, just didn't have as high a multiplier, but that didn't matter much since so much of 1st gen overclocking was BCLK based.

I hate to do this, but the i7 960 has 4c and 8t. I'm not usually the one to call people out because I don't usually know enough myself.
https://www.intel.com/content/www/u...20-ghz-4-80-gts-intel-qpi/specifications.html

I have my i7-950 somewhere. I have been tempted to pick up one of those recycled boards.

Another thing, I wonder how the i7 950 would perform in cinebench r23 and 2024, if they would even be compatible.

 

[Eximo]

Sorry, I got confused myself. The only year Intel did the numbering like that. i7-970 was the cheapest with six cores. After that they realized that locking down the overclocking to only the high end models was a better business model.

People also generally bought the i7-920 and overclocked it for the quad core. I actually wanted the higher multipliers so got the i7-950.

 

[stonecarver]

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BQGK2R6T/ref=sspa_dk_detail_6?psc=1&pd_rd_i=B0BQGK2R6T&pd_rd_w=EwUzJ&content-id=amzn1.sym.f734d1a2-0bf9-4a26-ad34-2e1b969a5a75&pf_rd_p=f734d1a2-0bf9-4a26-ad34-2e1b969a5a75&pf_rd_r=CWEFX06KK1XWBG26MT0W&pd_rd_wg=cnDm9&pd_rd_r=36399a6e-7ae5-49fc-b445-0bf01db192f0&s=pc&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9kZXRhaWw

I have 4 of these boards and bought two 16Gb registered memory for 32Gb each system with Xeon 5670's and 5690. The first one was ok lets see if this piece of crap board works and holy crap it turned out to be a winner.

The board that really shines and is a sleeper is from Dell 9100 XPS machines. Slap in a Xeon 5680 six 8 Gb sticks of ddr3 and a SSD and life is good.

I like to do a lot of hands on an this old 1366 platform being as it's still powerful an economic outlet to play with while still holding up with gaming.
It's my adult Lego set.

To keep my reality in check meaning these older retired parts to there newer counter built computers that sit right next to them. Seem the same to me. Not like when we would go from a Celeron to a Pentium 4. You knew it instantly back than.

For the most part the only one I get a little hint being different is an 1366 HP I put in a Xeon 5650 but again gaming buttery smooth.

To anyone who reads this in the future IF you have a 1366 system fall into your lap cheap or better FREE and you have free spare parts laying around you can have a relevant still today performer for games. But again NO AVX instructions.

For having cheap toys to play with cool

If your just starting out wanting to play with older parts for gods sake get newer gear as time is marching on unless like I said FREE or dirt cheap.

 

[Eximo]

LGA2011 and 2011-3 boards are relatively cheap if you want to play with higher end hardware from a while back.

LGA2066 and STR4 are still a little new to very cheap.

For the most part Ryzen kind of took over the workstation role for most high end users. 16 cores is enough for most power users. And Intel is no slouch with the 8P cores and 16E cores.

 

[Order 66]

STR4

wait a minute, STR4 had 8 lanes of PCIe 2, and 66 lanes of PCie3? The pcie 3 makes sense, but why does it have PCIE 2, it's from 2017, it's not that old!

 

[Eximo]

Not all devices require high bandwidth. Those lanes will be coming from the chipset, not the CPU. Keep in mind that to get faster and faster PCIe speeds you have to do very specialized board layouts to achieve it. Faster the signaling the more precise the length of the traces have to be and the less tolerance you have for interference from other board layers.

You could also ask why some boards still had PCI and ISA well after PCIe was the standard. It wasn't always broken out in the form of slots, but the buses where there hosting various lower priority hardware on the motherboard.

 

[Order 66]

On the topic, Would the i7 980x even be able to run cinebench? I know that cinebench uses AVX heavily which the 980x doesn't support.

 

[stonecarver]

I know on older builds of cinebench you could run it I guess I will check the latest version and let you know. Un zipping now.

I will say this before hand it will be a slaughter even if it runs at all.

 

[Eximo]

Cinebench has older versions that you could use to compare more directly. But some have thread limits too, so you can't take the latest 96 core monster and test it directly against older chips. Though you could compare single thread scores.

 

[Eximo]

There are also other benchmarks:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compar...-i7-980X-vs-Intel-i7-8700K-vs-Intel-i5-13600K

 

[stonecarver]

Well here's your answer. Nope you get a your crappy CPU is unworthy to run test

 

[Order 66]

There are also other benchmarks:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compar...-i7-980X-vs-Intel-i7-8700K-vs-Intel-i5-13600K

Wow, the difference is huge. My 7700x scores 36057. Surprisingly close to the 13600k and actually beats it in single core.

 

[Gilbert Chodura]

Yes, it can actually play any reasonably current game and Cyberpunk is also relatively easy to play with overlocking 4,8 GHZ at an average of 75 FPS.

 

[Order 66]

Yes, it can actually play any reasonably current game and Cyberpunk is also relatively easy to play with overlocking 4,8 GHZ at an average of 75 FPS.

Interesting. I had thought the IPC difference would hold it back even with overclocking.

 

[stonecarver]

Yes, it can actually play any reasonably current game and Cyberpunk is also relatively easy to play with overlocking 4,8 GHZ at an average of 75 FPS.

I don't even overclock and there is nothing the CPU " mine is a Xeon 5690 same as the i7 980x "can't play. Mine is matched with a Titan x Pascal GPU and just buttery smooth gaming.

If not for the AVX instructions on some games that's the only drawback.