[SOLVED] Xeon for a gaming CPU

[mangaman]

I'm thinking of putting the E3-1231 v3 into my system, as a replacement for my Pentium G3258. I was going to put an i5 4690k, but seeing how it only has 4 cores and 4 threads, compared to the E3-1231 v3 which has 4 cores and 8 threads, I'm heavily leaning on the Xeon.

I'm going to be playing games such as the Witcher 3, BeamNG, Yakuza 0 and CitySkylines as my main forms of entertainment. However, I'll also be doing plenty of virtual machines, such as VMware workstation and such.

I know the Xeon is meant as a server grade CPU, but seeing game play videos comparing an i7 4790k to the Xeon, I'm fairly impressed by it.

Thoughts on this CPU as a gaming and workstation solution?

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

It will be a huge upgrade over your current Dual Core. Well worth it.

 

[Barty1884]

The 1231v3 is pretty much a Xeon equivalent of an i7-4770. The 4770 has a 100MHz higher boost clock, but that's mostly it.

For the ~$70(ish) selling prices I see on eBay, it makes a lot more sense than it's i7 counterparts (4770, 4770K, 4790, 4790K) which routinely sell for close to doubt the price ($120+), and it's only nominal more money than a 4690K (seems to be ~$50)

Compared to a modern platform such as Ryzen, with it's higher core/thread count... it's not going to be phenomenal, but from where you're stepping up from, it should be night & day.

 

[mangaman]

The 1231v3 is pretty much a Xeon equivalent of an i7-4770. The 4770 has a 100MHz higher boost clock, but that's mostly it.

For the ~$70(ish) selling prices I see on eBay, it makes a lot more sense than it's i7 counterparts (4770, 4770K, 4790, 4790K) which routinely sell for close to doubt the price ($120+), and it's only nominal more money than a 4690K (seems to be ~$50)

Compared to a modern platform such as Ryzen, with it's higher core/thread count... it's not going to be phenomenal, but from where you're stepping up from, it should be night & day.

Ya, the i7's that I'm looking at are $120-150 which is just way too much. Not only should the Xeon be good in gaming, but it also should be much better in virtualization compared to the i5.

 

[mangaman]

Also, whats the difference between the E3-1231 v3 and the E3-1281 v3? The 1281 does have a 200Mhz higher boost clock, but is $160 compared to the $80 1231. Can the 1281 be overclocked?

 

[Barty1884]

As far as I know, it's strictly clock speed. In that era, Xeon's were (are) pretty locked down. Potentially a slight BCLK boost, but no 'true' overclocking, no.

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

200mhz , is not worth the extra $$$.