Dual Xeon for Gaming

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Pilbromatic

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Dec 24, 2011
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Hi all,

So I have read multiple posts on here about the topic, but they all basically point to one answer: "don't waste your money".

I'm planning to get a new computer which comes with dual Xeon E5-2660 v2's (each are 10 core H/T at 2.2GHz). And I'll say it here - THIS IS PRIMARILY FOR BUSINESS USE. Ok so with that being said, I'm getting it anyway whether I can game on it or not.

The question comes down to whether I buy a couple of fairly nice graphics cards (my budget would be around the $1,500 USD mark), OR do I save up and get a separate gaming rig with not so great graphics?

I'll also note here that I can get pre-built i7 and Xeon PCs extremely cheap, but any extra parts (eg graphics cards) I'm paying more or less retail pricing.

Bottom line is what would two of these CPUs be like for gaming? Thank you! :)
 
Solution
photonboy
Keep ONE SYSTEM: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-3970x-sandy-bridge-e-benchmark,3348-12.html

I did find a benchmark that was close enough. Different XEON, but the point was at 3.1GHz it was doing very well. It's extra cores wouldn't be taken advantage of but it scored very well in all three games.

Your 2.2GHz XEON can actually TURBO at least one core up to 3GHz which makes a big difference for games not well threaded so I would expect SIMILAR performance to the above benchmark in Skyrim (which is well above 60FPS anyway).

If I could prove there was a bigger difference I'd say get a separate machine, but this benchmark seems to indicate XEON architecture shouldn't be a huge bottleneck.

So it appears good enough not to...
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hunter315

hunter315

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May 12, 2009
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At 2.2 GHz you will find yourself CPU limited, especially with a $1,500 graphics card setup, most games won't be able to make use of the parallelism and will be restricted by each core being slow(in relative terms).

$1,500 will get you a very nice gaming rig with a quick processor in it too, that in a large number of games will out perform the Xeon based system. Most games are still stuck with 4 or fewer cores which won't even completely fill up an i7 so the extra 16 cores that the Xeon's bring to bear won't get you anywhere useful, but their lower clock speeds will reduce the performance over a much cheaper, but much higher clocked i7
 
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photonboy

photonboy

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Jun 20, 2006
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You need to find some BENCHMARKS.

I'm tempted to say just keep the same system, but it also depends what games you intend to play. You will have some CPU bottleneck issues due to the lower frequency but newer games like BF4 are more threaded.

As it stands right now though, it seems a 2nd system might be best though I'd get no more than a single 780Ti:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487003

and an i7-4770K which should last you several years.
 
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photonboy

photonboy

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Jun 20, 2006
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Keep ONE SYSTEM: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-3970x-sandy-bridge-e-benchmark,3348-12.html

I did find a benchmark that was close enough. Different XEON, but the point was at 3.1GHz it was doing very well. It's extra cores wouldn't be taken advantage of but it scored very well in all three games.

Your 2.2GHz XEON can actually TURBO at least one core up to 3GHz which makes a big difference for games not well threaded so I would expect SIMILAR performance to the above benchmark in Skyrim (which is well above 60FPS anyway).

If I could prove there was a bigger difference I'd say get a separate machine, but this benchmark seems to indicate XEON architecture shouldn't be a huge bottleneck.

So it appears good enough not to bottleneck poorly threaded games much, and of course in the FUTURE those extra cores will be a benefit. BATTLEFIELD 4 for example, seems to require a lot of threaded CPU processing power for Multi-player.

(anywhere an FX-8350 does well your XEON will too. For example, it's about 35% behind the i5-4670K in Skyrim but the FX-8350 does similar in BF4 due to the better coding to use more threads.)

*So my final advice, barring evidence to refute the above, is keep ONE system and get a single GTX780Ti for gaming and for any CUDA benefit.
 
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Solution
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Pilbromatic

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Dec 24, 2011
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Hi all, thanks for the help on this and I apologise for not replying! I didn't actually notice that I didn't post a reply until just now :)

I ended up getting a Xeon with an E5-2650 v2 which was mid-way between lots of cores and decent clock speed. I've been very happy with it for both work and playing games on - with the Quadro K4000 that it came with it runs everything VERY nicely ;)

Cheers!
 
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