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I'm glad I didn't wait for the 6950

Pooh

Pooh

Pooh

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22 Oct 2006
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1,178
I built my 5960 rig about 2 months ago and was really torn about taking the leap or waiting.

I was lucky and got a good deal on the chip which pushed me over the edge.

It sits at 4.5 running on 1.25v and 64Gb of DDR4-2400 clocked at 2666 on 1.26v

The 6950s seem to struggle to get over 4.3, and the Price :eek:

I know the two extra cores would make a difference but never-the-less.

if2uzl.jpg
 
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It also has 2 extra cores, though. So depending on your workload your mind should have been made up already. Also not impressed unless you can push 3200Mhz on the RAM whilst you're there with all 64GB.

BWE can ;)
 
I don't understand all the complaints about the 6950X, its not a gaming CPU and yet everyone seems to want to overclock it and run Firestrike.

I'll be running 10+ VM's on it 90% of the time and gaming 10%, modern CPU's are more GPU limited in games nowadays so my 1080 on pre-order won't be bottlenecked even if I later SLI it.

Just seems like sour grapes as its an expensive CPU, but for me, its also a tool to help me at work.
 
There have been Xeon options available for ages that are similar, that's why people are complaining.

It's not not a gaming CPU, it's a high end CPU marketed at non commercial use from people who have lots of disposable income.

There have been Xeons available for over a year in the same sort of price bracket as the 6950X with the same or higher core counts that are for the VM Ware part of the market.

Why does this sort of thing always have to boil down to implications of jealously or envy due to being able to afford something others can't, or your perception that they only criticise because it's something they want or can't have?
 
spoffle said:
There have been Xeon options available for ages that are similar, that's why people are complaining.

It's not not a gaming CPU, it's a high end CPU marketed at non commercial use from people who have lots of disposable income.

There have been Xeons available for over a year in the same sort of price bracket as the 6950X with the same or higher core counts that are for the VM Ware part of the market.

Why does this sort of thing always have to boil down to implications of jealously or envy due to being able to afford something others can't, or your perception that they only criticise because it's something they want or can't have?
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Last time I checked, this is overclockers.co.uk. If running 64GB at 3333Mhz frequency whilst both core and uncore are overclocked and utilising turbo boost max technology to make use of the best cores depending on the level of workload doesn't interest you - then yes, it's quite possible that this CPU isn't for you, and an equal pegging Xeon is better suited to your needs. It's not that much of a stretch to come to an understanding, that if having that many cores, and unprecedented performance is what you want - then this is the CPU for you.
 
Silent_Scone said:
Last time I checked, this is overclockers.co.uk. If running 64GB at 3333Mhz frequency whilst both core and uncore are overclocked and utilising turbo boost max technology to make use of the best cores depending on the level of workload interests you - then yes, it's quite possible that this CPU isn't for you, and an equal pegging Xeon is better suited to your needs. It's not that much of a stretch to come to an understanding, that if having that many cores, and unprecedented performance is what you want - then this is the CPU for you.
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Exactly
 
last time I looked clocking a 5960 to 4.5 and ddr2400 to 2666 was overclocking

Apologies - Didn't realise you had to clock the nuts of everything to qualify.
 
spoffle said:
Exactly
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I honestly think a lot of it is born of people who generally purchase these lines and don't really push them to the limits anyway. People might disagree but from the discussion on here sometimes, it's fairly apparent that most people don't.

As I mentioned previously, take memory for example - you find a lot of people buy into this platform and just buy the biggest density kit they can afford regardless of their needs, as opposed to a lower density at a speed that will push the IMC close to the unconditional limits. It's that mentality difference where people vary, and it's where people should re-evaluate what they need from a CPU.

Bit of a moan from my corner really. Personally I can't justify the cost of the 6950. If I could, I'd buy it - and not out of any need
 
Pooh said:
I built my 5960 rig about 2 months ago and was really torn about taking the leap or waiting.

I was lucky and got a good deal on the chip which pushed me over the edge.

It sits at 4.5 running on 1.25v and 64Gb of DDR4-2400 clocked at 2666 on 1.26v

The 6950s seem to struggle to get over 4.3, and the Price :eek:

I know the two extra cores would make a difference but never-the-less.

if2uzl.jpg
Click to expand...

why does your cpu core speed show as 4500.01 mhz and my 5930 cpu core speed show as cpu core speed 1500.00mhz??
#
i thought the 5930k was 3500 default right?
 
Silent_Scone said:
I honestly think a lot of it is born of people who generally purchase these lines and don't really push them to the limits anyway. People might disagree but from the discussion on here sometimes, it's fairly apparent that most people don't.

As I mentioned previously, take memory for example - you find a lot of people buy into this platform and just buy the biggest density kit they can afford regardless of their needs, as opposed to a lower density at a speed that will push the IMC close to the unconditional limits. It's that mentality difference where people vary, and it's where people should re-evaluate what they need from a CPU.

Bit of a moan from my corner really. Personally I can't justify the cost of the 6950. If I could, I'd buy it - and not out of any need
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Most definitely. I've got 64GB myself in 16GB DIMMS, I haven't tried overclocking it or my 5960X yet as I've been too busy lately with work, but I do intend on doing so soon.

hobib_ali said:
why does your cpu core speed show as 4500.01 mhz and my 5930 cpu core speed show as cpu core speed 1500.00mhz??
#
i thought the 5930k was 3500 default right?
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Speed step, it's a power saving feature.
 
hobib_ali said:
why does your cpu core speed show as 4500.01 mhz and my 5930 cpu core speed show as cpu core speed 1500.00mhz??
#
i thought the 5930k was 3500 default right?
Click to expand...

Core speed on CPU-Z shows what it is actively running at. His due to the test he is running is at 4.5 Ghz. Stress your CPU while you have CPU-Z up and it will show the speed it boost's to.

As for 6950x, was it not a case of initial Haswell-E being okay clockers. More recent chips do seem to perform better. Also by the virtue of being 10 core means it would likely clock less anyways.
 
Radox-0 said:
Core speed on CPU-Z shows what it is actively running at. His due to the test he is running is at 4.5 Ghz. Stress your CPU while you have CPU-Z up and it will show the speed it boost's to.

As for 6950x, was it not a case of initial Haswell-E being okay clockers. More recent chips do seem to perform better. Also by the virtue of being 10 core means it would likely clock less anyways.
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oh right i see, ok ive just stressed the cpu and its shot up to Core speed on CPU is now 3749.9Mhz so does that mean my cpu is overclocked to 3.7Ghz?

also do you think thaty my cpu 5930k is gone to 3.7 becuase i have activated XMP? usually its 3.5 stock on a 5930k, i wanted to over clock but havent a clue on what to do so thats why i used xmp.
 
Pooh said:
if2uzl.jpg
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That's probably not IBT stable, you're only getting about 52% CPU usage with "Standard" memory.

You need to increase the memory usage to get 80%+ of peak GFLOPS.

Peak GFLOPS at that speed is 8*8*4.5 = 288 GFLOPS so your target is at least 230 GFLOPS, 260 better.

You might want to experiment with using 8 and 16 threads, the latter will get hotter. Also 10 loops is probably overkill.
 
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Silent_Scone said:
It also has 2 extra cores, though. So depending on your workload your mind should have been made up already. Also not impressed unless you can push 3200Mhz on the RAM whilst you're there with all 64GB.

BWE can ;)
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With the quad memory controller providing oodles of bandwidth do you need 3200 though? Even 3000 shows practically no gain over say 2666!

Practically no benefit to running much above 2666 unless your running a memory bandwidth test!

Even running dual channel doesn't effect performance much at 2666+
 
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danielanthony said:
I don't understand all the complaints about the 6950X, its not a gaming CPU and yet everyone seems to want to overclock it and run Firestrike.
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Actually it is a "gaming CPU", that's the reason. If you're a professional, or even a "pro-sumer", there are Xeon equivalents that are cheaper. This really is just dropped into a gaming CPU line as part of that series. If you were a professional looking for a chip, why wouldn't you get a Xeon E5-2640 v4? It's got a lower base clock, but the boost is comparable and it's substantially cheaper. You can put two of them on a motherboard for only a little more than a single 6950. Anandtech made this point in their review.

I'm generally of the opinion that if it comes in a shiny black box with fancy gold lettering and is branded as part of a gaming CPU line (to use your term), then it's a gaming CPU.

Now if you want to argue that it's hopelessly over-qualified for that role, I agree. But I think it's branded that way and whilst ordinarily I would ignore branding, you have the problem that it is undercut by the actual professional range.
 
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h4rm0ny said:
Actually it is a "gaming CPU", that's the reason. If you're a professional, or even a "pro-sumer", there are Xeon equivalents that are cheaper. This really is just dropped into a gaming CPU line as part of that series. If you were a professional looking for a chip, why wouldn't you get a Xeon E5-2640 v4? It's got a lower base clock, but the boost is comparable and it's substantially cheaper. You can put two of them on a motherboard for only a little more than a single 6950. Anandtech made this point in their review.

I'm generally of the opinion that if it comes in a shiny black box with fancy gold lettering and is branded as part of a gaming CPU line (to use your term), then it's a gaming CPU.

Now if you want to argue that it's hopelessly over-qualified for that role, I agree. But I think it's branded that way and whilst ordinarily I would ignore branding, you have the problem that it is undercut by the actual professional range.
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It is a bit of an apples and oranges comparison. Having had a nice Xeon setup myself for my old home lab.

When you go down that route you tend to then go for a professional grade dual socket board, most commonly from SuperMicro in that space. They aren't cheap.

Then you aren't going to just stick average consumer RAM in there, you are going to go down the route of ECC server spec memory, that's not cheap in the slightest, say hello to a few hundred quid per 16GB stick.

Both setups have their place, only reason for me getting rid of my pizza box servers were power consumption and space/noise. For the times I used them they were great but leaving them on all the time was a pain in the ass.

I switched out to some Intel NUCs which are great for the odd few VM's here and there, but they are very RAM limited and you end up needing to spend a small fortune on just getting more and more and more of them to have the capacity you need. Fully spec'd out those things are close to a grand each.

So for me the HEDT/Extreme range (which correct me if I'm wrong is a High-End Desktop range, not seen anything in the literature that specifies gaming, I think that's something the community has pinned to it) gives me some nice balance.

I'll run Windows on the machine for day to day when I want to use it for playing games or video editing or streaming etc., then I'll have a load of nested ESXi VMs running in Workstation so that if I need to top up the available resources for my lab it is there.

Also unless you are looking at the used market, the Xeons aren't really substantially cheaper, the E5-2640v4 is still in the region of £800+. A few hundred quid once you are already into that level of spending is no longer substantial.
 
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