Xeon CPU upgrade?

[ADW]

Hi All,
I have a Tyan Tempest i5000XT (S2696) motherboard with dual Xeon 5060 3.2 GHz CPU's & 16GB RAM in my main development PC. I don't do games, but usually have a lot of applications open at any one time, including one or sometimes two VirtualBox VM's. I was wondering if I would see any performance benefits from upgrading the CPU's to Xeon E5320's, which I believe are the latest CPU's that this board can handle. I know that this is an old(ish) board & there are much better solutions available now, but it's served me well for the last few years & much as I'd like to, I can't really afford to splash out on a whole new system. However it looks like the E5320's can be picked up quite cheaply on eBay, so might this be a worthwhile upgrade?

I'd appreciate any advice.
Thanks,
ADW

 

[malcolm]

You've probably done your homework and realise you will be going from 3.2Ghz by 4 of Netburst Technology to 1.8Ghz 8 core Core architecture, which will certainly get more instructions per clock, plus you'll be going from 2 x 130watt to 2 x 80 watt, so it looks like a worthwhile upgrade. There are some pretty cheap 5345's out there as well, at 2.3Ghz a good bit faster than the low end 5320.

Some years ago I went from a dual skt 601 based machine that had 2 single core 3.2Ghz Xeons to a single 5120 based machine, which was certainly much quicker, but then it also gained faster memory and a better chipset.

I was surprised that your board covers all the way from Netburst to the quad core Core based Xeon's, since my current machine has the Intel 5000 chipset but does not support anything newer than the 51xx series. However that is not a problem, so good luck.

 

[ADW]

Thanks for the feedback Malcom. When I looked at this yesterday, I only checked the 1066MHz FSB parts, but the board also supports 1333MHz FSB, so apparently can accomodate CPU's right up to the Xeon X5365. (http://www.tyan.com/support_download_cpu2.aspx?socketid=10) These are still quite expensive & as you suggested, the E5345's seem to provide the best 'bang for the buck', so I'll see if I can pick up a pair of these to try.

ADW