Dual Quad Core Gaming

Would a Dual Xeon E5520 Quad Core be any good for gaming, i have spare parts laying around due to i over ordered for my business expansion. So i was wondering if i could convert a server into a gaming pc.


Spec would be Dual Xeon E5520 Quad Core 2.26ghz QPI: 5.86GT/sec
4u / tower barbones workstation kit , has 2 x PCIe 2.0 (i dont know if it does SLI)
24GB ddr3 1066 mhz Ram (12 x 2GB) ECC UDIMM (unregistered)
865 watt continuous power supply
2 x 73gb SAS 15,000 Rpm harddrives Raid 0

All i would need to buy is 1 GTX 295.

just wondering if this would be practical for gaming.

Cost does not matter, all i would have to pay is 500$ for a GTX 295

I usually use these for servers for my business but right now i have a extra one laying around.

I'd say it won't be much better than a standard i7

That cpu benchmark you linked is about as useful as a road killed cat for judging game performance.From a pure gaming standpoint the second cpu would be doing nothing but idling,most games have trouble making use of a single quad never mind 2.I'd guess your lower clocked server parts would run 10% slower than a i7 920 if both where pushing a gtx 295. But hey if you only have to buy a vid card to make it fly,why not.

Simple answer, no.
No game utilised more than 3threads currently. With two E5520 you'll have 8core/16threads. The utilised threads will just go to waste, idling. Performance will mainly be dictated by IPC/core in this case.

if you play FSX it will be amazing, if you play anything else, it will perform slightly worse than a HT enabled i7 920, or about the same or better if you disable HT as this will give you a higher IPC.