Xeon vs i7

[amokrae]

Hello,
i have an i5 2500k on z68 but wish to upgrade to a cpu with hyperthreading, but rather considering i7 i wish to try xeon E3 1245 which has the H.T capabilities and close in spec to i7s. is this a suitable CPU on gigabyte z68 for desktop and would it give me better performance than i7 2600k or i7 2700k?

 

[pauls3743]

I wouldn't bother. All that hyperthreading does is to keep your processor active for more time while waiting on other things happening. It does not give a massive performance boost. It merely helps with a heavier workload.

 

[amokrae]

thanks for your views, I will have heavy work load at times such as encoding HD, Blueray, and conversion. I have a GTX 480 and wish to make the best out of its performance. I read that Xeons are similar in performance to i7s but more stable during long and heavy work loads. If my Mobo takes Xeon E3 1230 it seems to be close to i7 2600 but considerably cheaper. I am not interested in OC however.

 

[holykalo]

I would go for the i7 2600 or 2600k, though the xeon will still do what you are looking to do, for cheaper. i5s are simply not suited for what you are doing, they are more geared for gaming, and conventional day to day tasks. Xeons are purely work processors, in many situations such as rendering data, they outperform i7s. Though, if you are planning to do gaming, it would be best to spend the extra on a i7 as xeons lag very far behind in the category. Though if you are looking for a cheaper solution, the xeon still offers hyper threading, allowing it to use "virtual cores" technically doubling your performance from an i5 in hyperthreaded applications.

 

[amokrae]

I have more need for processing power than games, therefore i will look for the xeon E3 2130 as i heard this might work with my mobo, i hope i am correct. thanks for your input.

 

[k1114]

That is completely incorrect holykalo; i5, i7, xeons do exactly the same type of work and work exactly the same. Xeons and i7 are exactly the same performance when comparing same architecture especially 1155 xeons. There's really nothing different about the 1155 i7 and xeon other than the xeons are most likely binned. It's true they are geared for servers/workstations but not the way you think. They are geared towards being at full load 24/7, nothing else is really different. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/xeon-e3-c206-workstation,2933.html It's not a worthwhile upgrade imo. I'd say wait for IB, they will be compatible with z68. You can get an i7 version of that and have a decent boost over the 2500k. The i7 3770 will be the same price as the 2600. They are planned to be released in april.

 

[amokrae]

That is completely incorrect holykalo; i5, i7, xeons do exactly the same type of work and work exactly the same. Xeons and i7 are exactly the same performance when comparing same architecture especially 1155 xeons. There's really nothing different about the 1155 i7 and xeon other than the xeons are most likely binned. It's true they are geared for servers/workstations but not the way you think. They are geared towards being at full load 24/7, nothing else is really different. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/xeon-e3-c206-workstation,2933.html It's not a worthwhile upgrade imo. I'd say wait for IB, they will be compatible with z68. You can get an i7 version of that and have a decent boost over the 2500k. The i7 3770 will be the same price as the 2600. They are planned to be released in april.

thank you k1114; I think you are right as i found others stating the same about xeon from 2500k. however, i might still need to change to i7 because my video editing programme says it produces 3D footages with i7 and doesn't mention i5. it is Cyberlink Powerproducer Ultra10. I don't know if that is true?

 

[k1114]

An i5 can do everything an i7 can but will be slower in this case. Any other cpu is the same, they are all capable of video rendering. I would still suggest the i7 3770 if you are going to upgrade.

 

[IntelEnthusiast]

+1 k1114 is right.

There is 1 real differene between our currenty Intel® Xeon™ E3-1200's and our Intel Core™ i7's and that is the ability to support ECC memory (but this is more of a chipset feature). For this reason it is likely that you wouldnt be able to get the Intel Xeon E3-1245 to work on your current board (check the motherboard manufacturer's website for support CPUs).

Moving from the Intel Core i5-2500K to the Intel Core i7-2600K would only really increase your performance if the application can take advantage of hyper-threading. For most games you get very little value for hyper-threading. When we move up to an application like Adobe CS5 you will see some performance gains from hyper-threading in that solftware. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/288?vs=287

Christian Wood
Intel Enthusiast Team

 

[amokrae]

dear k1114 & Christian;
thanks very much for your comments, I will then probably stay with my i5 for the time being and wait for the i7 3770. I will need a cpu boost with the HT for my HD rendering, BD burning and possibly producing 3D from my newly purchased power director 10. according to cyberlink this app utilises hardware resources very capabely.
One more thing, to be clear about any bottlenecks in my system, the only measure I have to benchmark my PC is the windows index experience. my GTX 480 and RAM hit the 7.9 but my CPU is 7.5 and my Corsaire force 3 makes to 7.7 only. do I need to worry about any thing or my system has enough harmony? or is this WIE is only a myth!

thanks

 

[javaskull]

+1 k1114 is right.
...
Moving from the Intel Core i5-2500K to the Intel Core i7-2600K would only really increase your performance if the application can take advantage of hyper-threading. For most games you get very little value for hyper-threading. ...
Christian Wood
Intel Enthusiast Team

But if you use ancilary programs, like streaming or googe talk, teamspeak, chat programs like ICQ or what have you at the same time that you are gaming I would think you could benefit substantially.

That said I am very happy with my 2600K

 

[MU_Engineer]

I have more need for processing power than games, therefore i will look for the xeon E3 2130 as i heard this might work with my mobo, i hope i am correct. thanks for your input.

There isn't a lot of difference in performance between any LGA1155 Xeon or Core i7 and your i5-2500K, since your i5-2500K is one of the fastest chips made for that platform. The only thing the i7s or Xeons give you would be HyperThreading which gives a fairly modest if any increase in performance in actual applications. Have you considered moving to a workstation setup that can use CPUs with more than four cores and possibly more than one CPU? I would look for something that can either use a six-core CPU or better yet, two CPUs with six or more cores. I'd look into a dual C32 setup for Opteron 4300s if budget is an issue and a dual 1356 or 2011 Intel setup or dual G34 Opteron 6300 setup if performance is more of an issue than absolute cost. Eight core Xeons get pretty danged pricey as do the high-clocked 16-core Opteron SEs. Moderately clocked 6 core Xeons aren't horrendously priced neither are most of the standard-power Opteron 6300s, even the 16-core ones.

I also would go by performance in the programs and tasks you run rather than a synthetic benchmark like the Windows Experience Index. That tool is really only there to let you know if there is a major bottleneck, such as building a Core i7-3970X machine with 32 GB of DDR3-1866 and then putting your OS on an old 80 GB IDE hard drive.