XEON E3 1241 v3 vs I7 4790K

[Technoclaw]

Which is best for gaming and workstation use.
gaming will be the primary use for my rig but when I build it I will also use zbrush and udk/ue4 often. Which one would you recommend?

 

[Darkbreeze]

The only difference between them is that the base clock on the i7 has 500mhz faster stock speed, the Xeon can't be overclocked and the i7 has integrated graphics. Since the i5-4690k at 3.5Ghz puts up nearly identical numbers as the i7 in gaming benchmarks, with half the threads of the Xeon, I'd say performance for gaming will be similar plus it's additional threads make it a better performer for threaded and high end applications.

If the price isn't an issue, go with the i7. If you want a great chip but need to shave some of the cost off, go with the Xeon. I don't think you'll notice any detrimental performance hit from doing so and it's likely to perform better in demanding applications or highly threaded game titles.

 

[Technoclaw]

Ok, thanks. I was getting the I7 but remembered I still needed to add windows into the budget which costs $135 so if the xeon is $70 cheaper it's a start

 

[kneebender]

I just put a xeon 1241 v3 in my system last month it benches identical to the 4770k which runs at the same 3.5mhz. I found in the bios, under some cpu specs menu, it says the state of the processor is unlocked. I don't know exactly if that referred to overclocking or not but my motherboard doesn't support OC anyway, but it did make me curious.

 

[Technoclaw]

Oh, so the xeon may be the right choice than.

 

[boosted1g]

For your purposes a i7 > Xeon > i5.

If you have to make a compromise getting the lower clock Xeon is better then going down to an i5 which lacks hyperthreading so the Xeon is a good call

 

[Technoclaw]

I was going to get the 4770k before devil's canyon

 

[Technoclaw]

Also the xeon may not need an expensive AIO because it can't overclock.

 

[Darkbreeze]

The only real difference between the 4790k and any of the v3 Xeons is clock speed. And with the IPS of the i-series chips, the clock speed isn't a big factor. The i5-4690k at 3.5Ghz benches almost identical to the faster 4790k, so there is really not much, if any, performance loss by using the Xeon v3 chips, which will game just as well, but likely perform better in modern applications and threaded game titles, like I said before.


The i7-4790k is unlikely to have any gaming advantage over the Xeon or i5, except in game titles that are heavily CPU dependent, and those are few and far between. Most games are GPU bound and so long as you have something like an i3-4360 or higher, you can game on with pretty much any GPU you want. Any Haswell refresh i5, i7 or Xeon is going to perform similarly with maybe very slight differences in FPS.

 

[Technoclaw]

Cool thanks, I think I'll pick up a xeon then. Thanks for the help.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Anytime.

 

[Technoclaw]

You've got a pretty good rig too

 

[Darkbreeze]

It's funny you should mention that because I'm going to be upgrading to a Xeon here pretty soon and giving this rig to my mom. It's crazy because she's like sixty six years old and she likes to game but she's got an old Phenom II right now so I need to upgrade her to something more recent. I'm probably going to go with an E5 v3 six core with twelve threads though as I run multiple high end applications sometimes that take my cpu usage skyhigh with the 8 core AMD chip.

 

[Technoclaw]

Haha wow I never new people at that age played games. Nice. But yea, xeons are good

 

[Darkbreeze]

Good luck with the upgrade. If you have more questions later, don't hesitate to ask.

 

[Technoclaw]

Thanks man. I'll remember to.