Question Would upgrading from a Xeon 1620 v2 to a 1650 v2 help with gaming?

[Cyber_Akuma]

I have a Dell Precision T3610, it's a Xeon based workstation.

It has a Intel Xeon 1620 v2, it's a 4C8T CPU with a base clock of 3.7GHz and Turbo of 3.9Ghz and 10MB of L3 cache.

Apparently my motherboard does support upgrading the CPU to a 1650 v2

The Intel Xeon 1650 v2 is a 6C12T CPU with a base clock of 3.7GHz and Turbo of 3.9Ghz and 12MB of L3 cache.

Other than that they seem to have the same specs, including thankfully the TDP so I can just re-use the existing cooler since I have no idea what my options would be for a Xeon cooler in a proprietary Dell case.

The 1650 v2 can be had for under $20 on eBay. Would the additional 2 cores/4threads and 2MB of cache help with using this as a gaming system? Or would it actually hold me back due to the lower base clock speed?

 

[COLGeek]

For gaming, I would expect you to see little (if any) gain. Probably not worth the expense, in my opinion.

 

[Cyber_Akuma]

Would it hold me back in any way? My main worry was if gaming performance would be worse, since these systems aren't really made for gaming in mind, but I do a little bit of everything with my system so for some tasks like video encoding or compiling the additional cores could help. I just didn't want to sacrifice gaming performance for that.

 

[Cyber_Akuma]

Actually, now I am getting some people telling me that a 1650 v2 is the most it can handle, and others telling me that it can go up to a 2687 v2 or 2697 v2 , though I would need better cooling for that.

Not sure what to trust now.

 

[Bob.B]

I have a Dell Precision T3610, it's a Xeon based workstation.

It has a Intel Xeon 1620 v2, it's a 4C8T CPU with a base clock of 3.7GHz and Turbo of 3.9Ghz and 10MB of L3 cache.

Apparently my motherboard does support upgrading the CPU to a 1650 v2

The Intel Xeon 1650 v2 is a 6C12T CPU with a base clock of 3.7GHz and Turbo of 3.9Ghz and 12MB of L3 cache.

Other than that they seem to have the same specs, including thankfully the TDP so I can just re-use the existing cooler since I have no idea what my options would be for a Xeon cooler in a proprietary Dell case.

The 1650 v2 can be had for under $20 on eBay. Would the additional 2 cores/4threads and 2MB of cache help with using this as a gaming system? Or would it actually hold me back due to the lower base clock speed?

For 20 bucks?.....try it.

Lower base clock?........looks like 3.7=3.7

 

[Cyber_Akuma]

For 20 bucks?.....try it.

Lower base clock?........looks like 3.7=3.7

Actually, it seems like this system might be able to take up to a 2697v2. If that's the case, I am thinking that the 2667v2 would be my best bet, since the 2697v2 while it goes for around $45-60 on eBay has a significantly lower base clock of 2.7ghz, likely due to being a 12C24T CPU with 30MB of L3 cache. The next step down, the 2687W v2 doesn't seem like a good idea either mostly because it goes for over $100 on eBay right now and has a higher TDP of 150 from my current 130 so I would likely need a better cooler too.

The 2667v2 however is a 8C16T CPU with 25MB of L3 cache for the same 130TDP, and goes for around $25 on eBay.

My only concern with that one is that while it has a slightly faster turbo clock of 4GHZ over my 3.9, it's base clock is a significantly slower 3.3Ghz over my 3.7, so I hope that doesn't cause much of an impact.

All of this is of course assuming that my system CAN handle a 2667v2 since the official documents by Dell say it only goes up to a 1650v2... but those documents are old and it's in Dell's best interests to make you think you need to buy a whole new system to get a 2000v2 series CPU, as well as several people on forums saying they have done this, but I can't get any official confirmation that it would work.

 

[DSzymborski]

It would extremely odd if Dell were intentionally "hiding" the fact that a certain CPU didn't work with their motherboard since they would have had to make the choice to include the microcode that would make that CPU run on their motherboard in the first place. They don't need to "trick" people into not upgrading when they could have more simply not made it compatible in the first place.

 

[Cyber_Akuma]

Might just be unintentional old documents that were never updated then.

Or maybe it won't actually work, but there seem to be several reports of people who put various 2000v2 series cpus in this exact system and it worked.

 

[DSzymborski]

Really, the only way will be to test. It definitely sucks that documentation on prebuilts is almost universally garbage.

 

[Cyber_Akuma]

Guess so. At least for $25 with most sellers accepting returns it's not a huge risk. Wish I could get some more information on the cooling situation.