Xeon X5675 LGA1366 vs i7 990x LGA1366 in a gaming build - need reasons not opinions please

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itsVance

itsVance

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Hello all,

I have been considering jumping to a i7 970 or 990x rather than to spend a lot on new mobo/cpu/ram.

It occurred to me the Xeon X5675 is very close to the 990x.. in fact they were released at the same time. I know many people are against using a Xeon for a gaming machine and they say it doesn't perform as well. I have never seen a thread where actual facts were posted to support this. I would like a second and maybe third opinion from our other experts on why it should not be done. Please point out specifications or examples to back up your theory.

Looking here to compare them I see the X5675 actually looks better on paper. Maybe not good for overclocking but I am ok with that if I am running 2 Xeons.

the Xeon supports more RAM, TEC, a few more features the 990x doesn't, has better control of the memory and with higher bandwidth. Can be run with a dual cpu configuration. Uses significantly less electricity.

Now before you say something about the ECC memory it supports, you don't have to run ECC memory with an X5675, and if you did I found this thread debunking the ECC is slower myth.

http://www.techspot.com/article/845-ddr3-ram-vs-ecc-memory/

Compare on intel ARK:
X5675 - http://ark.intel.com/products/52577/Intel-Xeon-Processor-X5675-12M-Cache-3_06-GHz-6_40-GTs-Intel-QPI

i7 990x - http://ark.intel.com/products/52585/Intel-Core-i7-990X-Processor-Extreme-Edition-12M-Cache-3_46-GHz-6_40-GTs-Intel-QPI

Compare on CPUBOSS:
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Xeon-X5675-vs-Intel-Core-i7-990X

These processors have been out since 2011, and that should be plenty of time for our community to have developed firm facts to support one determination over the other.

Thanks in advance for your participation in this little research project of mine.

 
Solution
Rogue Leader


Dual Xeon more powerful than the 990x? Yeah, considering one is only a bit slower than the 990x a pair is technically faster. But for playing games, I don't know that they will ever catch up with using dual processors, there never really is going to be an application for dual processors in a home system.
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Rogue Leader

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So theres a few things, 1 don't trust CPU Boss, it doesn't give real world performance.

The 990x has faster single core performance (it runs at a higher frequency as the Xeon) otherwise the processors are nearly identical. Single core performance still has the most effect on games as they still don't utilize multi-core threading as much as they should. Xeons are set up to perform better in a virtualization environment, and hence for a desktop user you just won't see the performance as well as you would from an i7.

You mention running dual Xeons, but that means buying a motherboard thats likely rare and hard to come by, and for what? At that point buy something new thats faster.
 
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Eximo

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I would go with whichever is cheaper. If you already have any flavor of LGA1366 i7, then you aren't going to see a huge boost in gaming performance. Many people ran i7-920 at 4GHz with great cooling. Without much effort, and even a little undervolted, I ran my i7-950 at 3.67Ghz, so aside from the 2 cores and a little cache, identical to the 990x. Single threaded performance puts them around the un-overclocked performance of a 2nd/3rd gen i5.
 
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J

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I'm currently running a Xeon X5650 in my gaming PC and it's fine. A small but noticeable improvement over the i7 930 it replaced. I haven't overclocked it, but I've read of people overclocking LGA1366 Xeons without trouble.
Xeons may be designed for virtualisation/server workloads, but that really has no effect on their performance in desktop environments. It generally means a little more cache, and some features that you probably won't use such as ECC memory support, but other than that they're pretty much identical to i7s.
Though if you don't already have a dual socket LGA1366 motherboard, a newer mobo/CPU would really be a better option.
 
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itsVance

itsVance

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Ok thanks for that info.

For games not set up to utilize multi core threading, its a no. What about newer games like Star Citizen that are supposed to be set up to utilize multi-core?

I can get the motherboard I need for dual Xeons about $100. I can get the Xeon's for Under $250. Ram kits prolly under $100. 2 xeons should perform at least 1.5x better than a 4790k, at least on paper. That is why I'm trying to get some opinions here.
 
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Rogue Leader

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Star Citizen does really well on my Phenom X6 which doesn't have the best single core performance, but is a 6 core processor. The thing is the 990x is the same number of cores and threads as the Xeon you want, yet has higher frequency cores, so in theory it should be as fast if not faster.

Really the only advantage is the multi-cpu support, however I'm not even sure a game would take advantage of that second processor. Considering theres many games that barely use multiple cores ones that would utilize multiple processors are probably even less. On paper is quite a bit different than the real world, For the same price you could get yourself a new motherboard, Skylake i5-6600k, and ram, and demolish that setup bar none, AND its brand new equipment, AND not have to worry about game support.
 
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itsVance

itsVance

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Good points there.

Plus I think Cryengine 3 only supports up up to 8 cores at the moment. If it did see the 2nd processor, it would probably only use 2 of the extra cores.
 
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Rogue Leader

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Yeah if it even worked, but like I said based on the economics of it, I just don't see it as a viable solution. Aside from the fact with the new stuff you have faster memory, more PCIe bandwidth, etc.
 
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Rogue Leader

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Dual Xeon more powerful than the 990x? Yeah, considering one is only a bit slower than the 990x a pair is technically faster. But for playing games, I don't know that they will ever catch up with using dual processors, there never really is going to be an application for dual processors in a home system.
 
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itsVance

itsVance

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Thanks. You were really helpful. I will probably lean toward the 990x for now unless I see a crazy deal on a Xeon system.

What you said did remind me of something though

"No one will need more than 637 kb of memory for a personal computer—640K ought to be enough for anybody," Bill Gates, Microsoft, 1981.
 
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Rogue Leader

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LOL good point, I actually thought of that after I wrote what I wrote.

Back in the day I got a 386SX 25mhz computer with a 340mb hard drive, at a time when like 50-100mb hard drives were normal. I remember people saying "wow 340mb, you will NEVER fill that up..."

yep... never ......
 
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