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Lets save the old girl!

IlikeEmus

IlikeEmus

IlikeEmus

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Joined
23 Aug 2022
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2
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United Kingdom
Ok, could really do with some of you oldISh schoolers help.

I am still on an old setup from around 2013 which has stood the test rather well as I put a gtx 1070 in it.

Motherboard = X79 Dark "EVGA has launched their latest X79 Dark motherboard featuring the LGA 2011 socket to supports Intel's high end Sandy Bridge-E and upcoming Ivy Bridge-E processors."

CPU = (Intel Xeon 1650) its scoring a rather lowly 8,072.
www.cpubenchmark.net

PassMark Intel vs AMD CPU Benchmarks - High End

PassMark Software - CPU Benchmarks - Over 1 million CPUs and 1,000 models benchmarked and compared in graph form, updated daily!
www.cpubenchmark.net

I would love to hold off a big upgrade until I really need to so I was wondering, what would be the fastest, or one of the fastest processors I could put in that motherboard as I think I could get a decent boost from simply changing the CPU but I am unsure which one.

The company blurb about the MOBO says it will support the "Ivy Bridge-E processors"
And I have seen a list here (https://www.cpu-list.com/lga2011-cpu-list/eng/) which suggests my motherboard will support one of the higher spec Xeon processors and go from around 8,000 on passmark to around 14,000 which I would see as a worthy upgrade, especially as those CPUS are quite cheap.

I do a mixture of gaming and threaded app stuff like 3d rednering and adobe after effects etc.
Can any of you advise what would be the best option for me to get more CPU from this motherboard and what CPU you would advise?

many thanks, lets try and keep the old girl alive!
 
For gaming it is only worth putting a 1650 V2 (which I assume you already have) or a 1680 V2 in there - many of the other Xeons are very limited if at all possible to overclock, with low stock clocks - you might get lucky with all core turbo but still likely limited to around 3.5GHz, while the 16xx are mostly multiplier unlocked - with the right cooling mid 4.xxGHz clocks are easily possible and even beyond.

1680 V2 won't be much of a benefit over the 1650 for gaming as many games still don't use 8 or more CPU cores effectively and/or if they do you are likely IPS limited compared to newer CPUs anyhow but will be a benefit for thread heavy desktop apps.

If you already have a 1650 in there I don't really see it worth spending the money on a 1680 though at this point - you might get lucky with an ebay special but the more reliable sellers are still fairly expensive for them.

A max overclocked 1680 V2 (and some do overclock very well) you are still looking at stock to mild overclocked Ryzen 2000/Intel 5000 series kind of performance.
 
i had x79 with a 3930k and it cant see why that cpu wouldn't still eat games for fun when overclocked.
but for the cost... i7-3970X(£50)

the i7 4c/8t CPU's are still the most popular CPU on steam and because of GPU limits old 6c/12t CPU's can still 4K all day
 
Your only real improvement on your Xeon 1650 is to get the 8 core 1680 V2 and this is really only in the 3D rendering etc that you do that uses all threads. This will see a nice ~33% improvement in those tasks. There's a couple Xeon 1680 V2's going on the bay for ~£90.

You didn't state whether your current Xeon 1650 was overclocked but if you want to get the best out of them and extend the longevity then you should definitely overclock. Even a modest overclock should see you getting to ~4.5Ghz relatively easily on the 1680 V2 (decent cooling and air flow notwithstanding!)

Your Xeon 1650 is basically a 3930K so technically I think there are several CPU's that you could 'upgrade' to on that socket. 3970X, 4930K (Xeon 1650 v2), 4960X which are all 6 core and the unlocked 8 core Xeon 1680 V2.

As stated your best bet is to go to 8 cores for the fully multithreaded work. All the other variations are only slight speed bumps and you're simply not going to see major improvements for single threaded tasks or most games.
 
MartinPrince said:
Your only real improvement on your Xeon 1650 is to get the 8 core 1680 V2 and this is really only in the 3D rendering etc that you do that uses all threads. This will see a nice ~33% improvement in those tasks. There's a couple Xeon 1680 V2's going on the bay for ~£90.
Click to expand...

The difficulty is that at £90 you are almost at the cost of a new processor (i3-12100F) that absolutely destroys the old Xeons in single thread performance, and because of that IPC advantage will probably even be better in multithreaded situations despite having less cores/threads.

Not to mention benefits in power consumption, newer tech (PCI-E 4.0 etc)


Sell your old board and chip and move to a newer platform, and the upgrade cost probably isn't going to be that much more than buying an old Xeon :)




My basket at OcUK:

Total: £109.99 (includes delivery: £0.00)​



​
 
Armageus said:
The difficulty is that at £90 you are almost at the cost of a new processor (i3-12100F) that absolutely destroys the old Xeons in single thread performance, and because of that IPC advantage will probably even be better in multithreaded situations despite having less cores/threads.

Not to mention benefits in power consumption, newer tech (PCI-E 4.0 etc)


Sell your old board and chip and move to a newer platform, and the upgrade cost probably isn't going to be that much more than buying an old Xeon :)




My basket at OcUK:

Total: £109.99 (includes delivery: £0.00)​

​
​
​
Click to expand...

This is probably what I would recommend as well, though maybe holding off for few months as the imminent new CPU's should make current gen cheaper. Though I would add that the total upgrade costs for new memory, motherboard, CPU and probably cooler will be significantly more than ~£90. ;)
 
Armageus said:
Not to mention benefits in power consumption, newer tech (PCI-E 4.0 etc)
Click to expand...

Something people often miss with these 16xx Xeons is just how much silicon overhead most of them have - they are cherry picked cores originally selling for well into the 1000s of dollars - you can tune most for significant power consumption reductions even at speeds above stock or alternatively get some pretty significant overclocks out of them without much effort or voltage increase over stock.

I notice with a lot of the benchmarks for them people are often running 1600MHz RAM with stock timings for some reason as well - 2400MHz performance RAM (CAS 9/10) can easily add non-negligible increases in many cases - the quad channel architecture if you take advantage of it can help to make up ground in some more recent applications where otherwise CPUs of this era fall down.

That said I think this platform has had its day now - it was quite forward leaning for its time which has helped it to hold up well - I'm only still using it as my main machine due to Windows 7 compatibility as 10/11 are such tragic OSes if you need something to rely on - I have a 11th gen desktop and 10th gen laptop alongside the setup in my sig but on Windows 10 and I just can't depend on them the same way otherwise I'd have probably moved to a 12th gen setup before now.
 
Some interesting replies on this thread, I'm running my 1680V2 at 4,600mhz all core with a 6900xt and running pretty much everything I want at 4k... so for me, if you find one cheap go for it... it's cheaper than a mobo, new ram and new CPU... I've even picked a 2nd 1680V2 up for £58 quid just before Xmas as a spare.

Yeah new CPU's will demolish it in raw performance, but if using for games at 4k... not convinced... however I'll be running mine until it dies I think.
 
pugheaven said:
Some interesting replies on this thread, I'm running my 1680V2 at 4,600mhz all core with a 6900xt and running pretty much everything I want at 4k... so for me, if you find one cheap go for it... it's cheaper than a mobo, new ram and new CPU... I've even picked a 2nd 1680V2 up for £58 quid just before Xmas as a spare.

Yeah new CPU's will demolish it in raw performance, but if using for games at 4k... not convinced... however I'll be running mine until it dies I think.
Click to expand...

As posted recently there are situations where the 1680V2 can even keep up with some of the Ryzen 5000 series even in some games at higher resolutions, even giving more consistent performance in some cases. Albeit in other cases it will be some way behind - clock for clock, core for core, they are on average more closer to the 2000 series Ryzens for gaming.
 
I was in a similar situation only wanted faster I/0 so picked up a prebuilt newish i3 with M2 slots on the motherboard and it smokes my old Zeon. was very little money. Not been able to sell the old zeon though. Might have to dump that.
 
Yeah it's always one of them really... once you hit 100fps in games I find that as long as nothing slows down... why upgrade? I don't know, I don't need the latest and greatest CPU to use windows in general... and I don't use for productivity only for gaming and as I game at 4k, there's less reliance on the CPU anyway even in the latest game... but that's just me, everyone's different but I still see a place for older CPU's in todays world. The Z79/Z99 platforms were simply epic and have lastest so long... I mean my rig is now 13 years old hahaha... that's the longest ever... same mobo, same ram.. a 10 year old CPU... and it rocks in everything I use it for... mad really isn't it.
 
If it's still doing the job then I'd hold off, unless you were specifically looking for some of the better/newer features on later platforms.
Similar to one of the above posts. It's easy to get blinded by the benchmarks, as newer CPUs see a huge boost in benchmarks and real-world. The old CPUs in general don't suddenly fail to work (unless they don't support the instruction sets) when newer stuff comes out.
If you could get a good price for the motherboard, then it might make an upgrade way more appealing.
 
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