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How badly will clock speed affect my gaming?

ALXAndy

ALXAndy

ALXAndy

Soldato
Joined
23 Apr 2010
Posts
12,295
Location
West Sussex
Hi all. My rig has basically stopped working correctly. A couple of months back I tried to boot the rig (3970x) and it just kept resetting at POST. I cleared CMOS and set it to stock and it ran fine. The motherboard was odd from day one though, as when overclocked it took two attempts at boot to start.

Fast forward to a week ago and I started to notice the board was whining. It has started to reset at POST again only now it's at stock. I benchmarked GTAV when I got the game and at 4k it was running mid 40s minimum and usually at at 60. However over the past couple of weeks performance has utterly tanked and now I'm in the 30s all of the time. Last night I did some more testing and realised that when under load the CPU is throttling to 1.1ghz.

So basically the power phases on the board are dead.

So I need to RMA the board.

As a stand in I could use my 8 core Ivy Xeon and X79 UD3 the problem is it's only clocked to 2ghz on all 8 cores.

When I first bought the Xeon I ran some benchmarks and it was just about even with my FX 8320 @ 4.7ghz. It scores around 10k Firestrike physics.. I only ran one game benchmark (Metro 2033, I'm really kicking myself now I wish I'd tested more) and the Xeon was better than the AMD.

So my question is how much do you think the low clock speed will affect gaming?

What I love about the Xeon is that it's a 95w CPU and I've only ever seen it use 60 and at idle it uses a mere 14w. My 3970x on the other hand is a greedy pig, easily using 200w or more when overclocked.
 
I know this is not the answer you seek but there are simply to many variables (resolution, running SLI/Xfire) to accurately calculate the framerate hit you're going to experience. There will be a hit but how big I'm not exactly sure. Speaking strictly about GTAV, that game seems to be CPU-heavy so there might be a noticeable performance drop. My uneducated guess would be that you're going to sit somewhere around [email protected] performance.

Since you mentioned you're at 4k then I guess you're running a multi-GPU setup. At such resolutions CPU grunt matters a bit less but then again you need quite a bit of power not to bottleneck the cards. I know this is a **** answer but I'm not entirely sure how's it all going to run.
 
Yeah I know it's a hard one to answer mate so no probs there :)

I'm running two Titan Blacks in SLI...

To be completely frank and honest I have found GTAV to be not CPU bound at all. I also have a Pentium clocked to 4.2ghz with a Titan Black also and at 1080p it had a minimum of 42 FPS at max settings.

The fact I was still getting mid 30s with my CPU running 1.1ghz says it all.

What I'm hoping for is for the Xeon to be OK at 4k (because rumour says the CPU becomes far less important at 4k) and that I can just keep it in there given how unfussy it is.
 
Well, if GTAV runs ok then I think you should be all right for quite some time:) At 4k it's mostly GPU grunt that matters but since I've never actually run anything at that res, I don't want to spread false info. Hopefully, someone a bit more in the know about the matter chimes in and tells you what you can roughly expect.
 
Cheers. Doesn't seem to want to load on my phone so I'll check it later :)

I'm not too worried about GTAV. If it ran playable at 1.1 ghz then I'm sure on a 2ghz Ivy it'll run better. I did think about looking for I3 benchmarks on one of those weird S models with the really low clocks but my Xeon has 20mb cache so will obviously demolish any I3.

I benched it vs a 4690k in a fully threaded benchmark in Mac OSX and it scored over double.

It's a very fast chip.

I think it's going to be a case of suck it and see really. The only other option is to use my 8320 rig but in the one benchmark I ran the Ivy was better.

There are also the benefits of Ivy. I will get PCIE 3 as well as quad channel memory :)

I'll probably run some benchmarks. Before I can fit it though I need to paint the sinks black because right now they're white and would look totally honking in a black and orange rig.
 
Can you use the i7 3970x with the X79 UD3 whilst you wait for an RMA?

Or am I missing something here?
 
Disco_P said:
Can you use the i7 3970x with the X79 UD3 whilst you wait for an RMA?

Or am I missing something here?
Click to expand...

I could but apparently the UD3 isn't very good at overclocking due to crap phases. If I put it in there I'd be tempted to overclock so I don't want to. I'd rather wait to get my big bang 2 back :)

I'm really tempted to just leave the Xeon in that rig and sell off the 3970x. For a few reasons really, but yeah I just want something reliable.

Next upgrade for me will be Zen. Also as I mentioned 4k gaming doesn't really put a strain on the CPU and if these new APIS are any good the Xeon would be overkill.

It scores 10,000 in Firestrike Physics and that's without HT. Those threads just sat redundant.

I'll see how I get on with it.
 
Well I'm happy to report that GTAV really doesn't care about clock speed, at least at 4k. My FPS are high 50s hitting the 60 wall in Gsync in the city and mid 40s to mid 50s in the desert.

I even got a warning stating the CPU clock speed was not high enough, but that hasn't seemed to bother it any.

Well happy :)
 
ALXAndy said:
I could but apparently the UD3 isn't very good at overclocking due to crap phases. If I put it in there I'd be tempted to overclock so I don't want to. I'd rather wait to get my big bang 2 back :)

I'm really tempted to just leave the Xeon in that rig and sell off the 3970x. For a few reasons really, but yeah I just want something reliable.

Next upgrade for me will be Zen. Also as I mentioned 4k gaming doesn't really put a strain on the CPU and if these new APIS are any good the Xeon would be overkill.

It scores 10,000 in Firestrike Physics and that's without HT. Those threads just sat redundant.

I'll see how I get on with it.
Click to expand...

even at stock it's going to be what 80% quicker than the xeon. UD3 was only really bad going after high overclocks, it'll get your chip to 4.5 easy enough. A high cpu is going to help you out with your minimums i'd have thought
 
From what I've seen so far in a few newer games the clock speed hasn't affected it at all. Now this could be for two reasons. 1 because I'm running 4k. 2 because the new consoles have low clocked 8 core CPUs..

I know I could put the 3970x in and get up to 4.5ghz but I'm worried about the longevity of the rig being overclocked. When I built the rig I spent a stupid amount of money on it and boards are getting harder to find as each day passes. I'd rather it be working.

I'm not going to get rid of the x just yet, I'll see if there comes a point where I need it :)
 
You can add Project : Cars to that too. Solid jammed 60 FPS @ 4k with everything maxed (no MSAA don't need it at this res).
 
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