Intel Xeon & AMD Opteron.

Omaeka · 25 Jan 2013 at 15:44

I had never heard of either of these cpu's until a few days ago, yet they are a whopping £1,000+ each. What exactly makes them so good? Googling around hasn't showed me much at all tbh.

Does anyone know where you can find in game benchmarks with them? Like two rigs of exactly the same specs except say, one with a 3570k and the other with the Xeon/Opteron and comparable benches in demanding games? Just curious like. :cool:

d_brennen · 25 Jan 2013 at 15:51

They aren't for gaming, they are server chips

Martini1991 · 25 Jan 2013 at 15:52

d_brennen said:
They aren't for gaming, they are server chips

The 1155 Xeon's I'd pick for gaming.
8mb cache i5's essentially, lock obviously.
Or a cheap/slightly lower clocked i7 3770 at ~180.

Omaeka · 25 Jan 2013 at 15:54

Ah I get ya, would they not at all fare well in gaming then? Or would they just have the raw power to produce high results?

Martini1991 · 25 Jan 2013 at 15:57

The top end 1155 Xeon's, stock for stock would probably be the better chips for gaming than the 1155 normal desktop chips due to the higher end ones having a turbo 4.1GHZ.

But the normal ones on say 2011, maybe not so much, they're not that highly clocked, they're for highly parallel workloads.

d_brennen · 25 Jan 2013 at 15:58

These days server chips are just desktop chips in disguise, maybe with some features you'll never use enabled. Some have a lower TDP than desktop parts at the same clock speed or a lower clock speed to begin with. Some are higher bins, and are faster stock. AFAIK they are also multiplier locked, so overclocking has to be done via bus, which is far from ideal these days. Usually they are quite pricey for what you get too

Omaeka · 25 Jan 2013 at 16:00

They wouldn't produce extreme benchmarks then?

Shame.

Martini1991 · 25 Jan 2013 at 16:03

Omaeka said:
They wouldn't produce extreme benchmarks then?

Shame.

Well if you were running some 16 Core 32 threaded machine, you'd probably get some stupidly impressive benchmark scores on benchmarks that are heavily threaded.

Omaeka · 25 Jan 2013 at 16:05

I mean in something like Crysis 2, my system benches around 60fps, it'd be epic if one of these coupled with say, a GTX690 SLI setup could bench 200+!

d_brennen · 25 Jan 2013 at 16:07

Why? Crysis 2 is rubbish and almost certainly GPU bound on a 3570k

Omaeka · 25 Jan 2013 at 16:13

It's graphically demanding though.

What does GPU bound mean? Only using the GPU?

Martini1991 · 25 Jan 2013 at 16:15

Means it's bottleneck by GPU rather than CPU, unless of course you were running a poor CPU.

Omaeka · 25 Jan 2013 at 16:19

A 3570k is more powerful than a 7950? What kind of GPU power would you need to push the 3570k? I am very confused right now. :eek:

Martini1991 · 25 Jan 2013 at 16:20

Omaeka said:
A 3570k is more powerful than a 7950? What kind of GPU power would you need to push the 3570k? I am very confused right now.

I mean, in Crysis 2 you'd run out of GPU steam before you ran out of CPU power.
But that varies game to game.

Omaeka · 25 Jan 2013 at 16:23

So a 3570k is going to last a very long time? Is CPU tech far ahead of GPU tech then?

Martini1991 · 25 Jan 2013 at 16:27

Omaeka said:
So a 3570k is going to last a very long time? Is CPU tech far ahead of GPU tech then?

A 3570k could last quite a while, unless of course we move into heavily threaded engines that tax a 3570k to its knees to produce acceptable frame rate, but I can't see that happening just yet

It's very much down to the game what the bottleneck will be.

CPU tech arguably progress much slower in terms of all out performance.

d_brennen · 25 Jan 2013 at 16:27

Apples to oranges, you can't compare them like that

Omaeka · 25 Jan 2013 at 16:31

d_brennen said:
Apples to oranges, you can't compare them like that

Depends on the game then.

Martini1991 said:
A 3570k could last quite a while, unless of course we move into heavily threaded engines that tax a 3570k to its knees to produce acceptable frame rate, but I can't see that happening just yet

It's very much down to the game what the bottleneck will be.

CPU tech arguably progress much slower in terms of all out performance.

Well until the consoles start hyperthreading and what have you, I doubt the PC will. Can I get an i7 on my board? Just in case they start threading and whatnot.

d_brennen · 25 Jan 2013 at 16:34

If game engines do become massively parallel (they won't any time soon) an i7 variant would buy you 5-20% more performance based on my scientific tests*

*no tests were conducted, these numbers were plucked from the air but probably not far off the truth, imo

Subliminal Aura · 25 Jan 2013 at 16:38

Martini1991 said:
The 1155 Xeon's I'd pick for gaming.
8mb cache i5's essentially, lock obviously.
Or a cheap/slightly lower clocked i7 3770 at ~180.

Only a partial lock :cool:

i7 2600 overclock : http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18480047
I get similar results with my i7 3770 + e3 1245v2 (approx 10% on top with the same oc)

These are great chips if you want to save a few bob and yes you can game on them very well

OP is looking at the Xeon SMP chips which should be used as intended - no overclock and in multiple cpu configurations