Xeon or i7

[Carlos M]

I’m building a new pc, so far I have three GTX 780ti and I’m at the point wear I have to decide which CPU to go for. I am not interested in gaming lets get that cleared. My needs are primarily heavy rendering with software’s such as Autodesk Maya, 3DS MAX, Revit etc. The CPUs that I have in mind are: i7 4930k, Xeon E5 2640v2, Xeon E5 2660v2 and Xeon E5 2670v2.

 

[dish_moose]

Rendering will take advantage of more cores - Xeon for you.
-Bruce

 

[Carlos M]

Rendering will take advantage of more cores - Xeon for you.
-Bruce

Thanks for the quick reply. What about the GHz? If you look at the i7 in comparison to the Xeon CPUs GHz, i7-4930k has 3.4GHz in comparison to the XeonE5-2660v2 that has 2.2 GHz.

 

[hunter315]

That gets evened out pretty quickly by the increase in core count for the later ones. Since most of the apps you listed scale with more cores pretty well the difference in clock speed and the difference in cores will shift in favor of the larger xeon chips. The i7 is 70% higher clocked and the 2640 so it wins there since its only a 33% boost in core count, but its only 36% higher clocked than the E5 2670V2 which has 67% more cores so the xeon wins there.

You may also want to consider a dual socket board so you don't necessarily have to get the $1k+ xeon and can instead get 2 6 core xeons for a lower price and run them on a single motherboard.

 

[dish_moose]

And the Xeons can be OCed to close to 3GHz.
-Bruce

 

[logainofhades]

I don't think you can overclock Xeons anymore.

 

[mlga91]

Most lga 1150 xeons are actually locked i7 without their igpu, they cost less than a i7 but you cant overclock them, personally, i consider them a killer deal. If you dont plan to overclock go for a xeon like this one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116906&cm_re=xeon_1150-_-19-116-906-_-Product

 

[dish_moose]

^ I see that Intel did indeed lock previous & this generation of Xeon. Good news is they are faster base clocks than they were.
-Bruce

 

[mlga91]

^ I see that Intel did indeed lock previous & this generation of Xeon. Good news is they are faster base clocks than they were.
-Bruce

And they're way more cheaper now.