i5 4690k vs Xeon E3-1230, which one?

[ugly ferret]

As title, both can be had for the same price so a straightforward choice?!

I have a pretty cramped HTPC case and I'm not sure how far I'd be able to overclock the hot running Devil's canyon. So I was thinking the Xeon might be a better alternative with it's 8 threads and more cache and still boosts to 3.5ghz on 4 cores. Not sure what kind of clocks most people get from their 4690k's I'm guessing with my HTPC I won't get as far so maybe something like 4ghz? Use my PC almost exclusively for gaming so not sure how much benefit the extra threads and extra cache in the Xeon will be..... at least at the moment. But bare in mind I don't like to upgrade CPU often, still using my q6600 which is getting on almost 8 years old now! Can't help but feel like the Xeon would be a better long term option despite the lower clockspeeds.

So in a nutshell, 4-ish ghz 4 thread 6mb cache devil's canyon or 3.5ghz 8 thread 8mb cache Xeon for a gamer who doesn't like to upgrade often??

Any thoughts and advice would be greatly appreciated!

 

[ugly ferret]

Thanks guys, two different opinions! I can't help feel that while not the obvious choice, the Xeon will be the better choice long term. I would imagine the extra threads might come in useful a few years from now? Knowing how bad my case is for temps, I can't imagine the 4690k clocking too high which is it's main advantage for me. I don't really want an onboard gpu either, just causes unnecessary heat....

 

[ugly ferret]

Another vote for the Xeon then! It also seems that my motherboard (Asus Z97-A) should have a feature to let the Xeon run with all 4 cores at turbo speed, a sort of mini-overclocking? That would narrow the clock speed gap by a fair bit to an OC'd 4690K.

Definitely 90% leaning towards the Xeon now...

 

[ugly ferret]

Thanks guys,

Still not sure which to go for, but if I go for the xeon I'd definitely go for the newer refresh 1231v3 which with my motherboard's MCE I can set to run at 3.8ghz on all 4 cores. If I got a 4690k it'd probably only go to about 4.2ghz in my case, so it's only about a 10% difference. It'd probably take the hyperthreading over that!

 

[ugly ferret]

For anyone who's interested, I went for the Xeon E3-1231 in the end! Boosts to 3.8ghz on 4 cores with 8 threads for less than £200, quite happy with that! Probably wouldn't have overclocked the i5 anyway other than for benching..... managed to recycle my s775 arctic freezer on it too, thought the mounting would be different but it was fine.

Quite a nice jump over my q6600, surprised to see a boost in plenty of games at 4k, didn't think there'd be much cpu bottleneck at such a high res but I guess the q6600 is just that old. Hopefully the Xeon will last me another 7 years haha!

 

[ugly ferret]

Yeah they're underrated little chips! If you're not too bothered about overclocking the Xeons are great alternatives to the i5, seems to run pretty cool too!!