dual Intel L5639 or wait for IB-e

[Smoblikat]

Hey guys, I want to upgrade my rig, and have decided its between two routes.

Either a dual Xeon L5639 build with 96gb RAM and an EVGA SR-2 motherboard.
or
an I7 4930K, with 64gb RAM and an ASRock X79 Extreme11/whatever their new one might be.

Everything will be WC'd and thrown in a Caselabs Th10. Given the two options, which would you choose? I will mainly do gaming, but eventually will do some heavy video encoding.

 

[crashtech]

The second option will be by far the best, but for the money, the out of retirement Xeons are unbeatable. It's all about the budget, really.

 

[sm625]

lol what uses anywhere near 64GB of RAM? One of the most advanced FPGAs on the market, the Xilinx Virtex 7, doesnt even require half of that much memory for synthesis.

 

[Smoblikat]

The second option will be by far the best, but for the money, the out of retirement Xeons are unbeatable. It's all about the budget, really.

OK, thank you. I might go with option 1 then, since two chips will cost me like 190$ shipped vs 550$+ for 1 of the new ones.

lol what uses anywhere near 64GB of RAM? One of the most advanced FPGAs on the market, the Xilinx Virtex 7, doesnt even require half of that much memory for synthesis.

My e-peen......

 

[jason166]

For gaming, the dual L5639 choice doesn't make a lot of sense, but for rendering, database or virtualization workloads this is currently an amazingly cheap option.

The only big downside is that you miss out on the power savings that Sandy/Ivy bring.

If you could find a cheap SR2 motherboard used for ~300 and then buy a couple L5639s on ebay for $100, you've got a 12 core/24 thread monster for the price of mid range box. With a little overclocking, most people could probably get to at least 3.2ghz.

If I could get a hold of a cheap SR2 motherboard I would jump on this in a heartbeat.

 

[crashtech]

If I was going to build a budget LGA1366 system for gaming, a single overclocked L5639 and an X58 board would be the ticket. Gains from a second CPU won't be realized in games at all, 6C/12T is plenty.

 

[aigomorla]

i7 which cant not attain 4ghz has no place having gpu's which require 8pin PCI-E power plugs..
unless ur bitcoining or folding.

meaning... if ur gpu uses a 8pin, your gonna GIMP yourself more by bottlenecking your gpu more so then adding more cores.

 

[crashtech]

The CPU requirements of various GPU setups have been discussed over and over. It's been shown that a relatively modest CPU can drive a couple high-end cards.

Think of it this way, if any sub-$100 CPU has any chance at driving a mid-high end gaming rig, it's probably an OCed Westmere Xeon.

 

[aigomorla]

The CPU requirements of various GPU setups have been discussed over and over. It's been shown that a relatively modest CPU can drive a couple high-end cards.

Think of it this way, if any sub-$100 CPU has any chance at driving a mid-high end gaming rig, it's probably an OCed Westmere Xeon.

drive is not the same as scaling...

sure the ich10r can drive 4 ssd's however its capped at 3 in scaling.

We building an efficient machine? or we still stuck in 2009 where overkill was the man word?

This chip will limit the GPU end... and by 5-10fps i predict... from a over 4ghz machine... which is why i keep telling people..
MOAR CORES only matters when u know what it truely means.

The other guy who built his machine is using 2 x 5850, he's not really CPU limited on those...
i would predict tho he would be CPU limited greatly on his gpu's if they were 2 x 7970 and the Nvidia counterparts.
So yeah, if ur gpu is using 2 - 8pin PCI-E PSU rails.... this kind of setup may not be for you.

 

[tarmc]

option 1 would be a ton of fun, but what would you ever need 12cores/24threads for?

 

[crashtech]

drive is not the same as scaling...

sure the ich10r can drive 4 ssd's however its capped at 3 in scaling.

We building an efficient machine? or we still stuck in 2009 where overkill was the man word?

This chip will limit the GPU end... and by 5-10fps i predict... from a over 4ghz machine... which is why i keep telling people..
MOAR CORES only matters when u know what it truely means.

The other guy who built his machine is using 2 x 5850, he's not really CPU limited on those...
i would predict tho he would be CPU limited greatly on his gpu's if they were 2 x 7970 and the Nvidia counterparts.
So yeah, if ur gpu is using 2 - 8pin PCI-E PSU rails.... this kind of setup may not be for you.

The point remains that these old Westmeres are a tremendous value. What CPU in the $100 price range could perform better? Not an FX-6300. Can you think of one?

For the record, I agree that two of them would only serve to add to the electricity bill.

 

[Shmee]

How much are these chips? And what are the specs?

I might recommend one to my friend to replace his i7 920 on the Gigabyte UD5

 

[SocketF]

The L5639s are currently really the way to go. I am watching the prices of these chips, too as I have a 1366 system. The only reason why I havent bought such a cpu,yet, are the low multipliers, to reach 4 GHz I would need 230 Mhz QPI-clock (assuming that the all core turbo is 2.26 Ghz which is multiplier 17) , which is not feasible on most boards (and also mine).

@Shmee:
Check ebay currently around US-$ 95.

For the specs:
http://www.cpu-world.com/sspec/SL/SLBZJ.html

 

[tarmc]

it looks like a decent cpu, and cheap. tdp seems good at stock, but whats it look like oc'd to 3.2? or 3.4?

 

[Shmee]

would depend on how much Vcore is needed. That and uncore voltage.

 

[Gillbot]

lol what uses anywhere near 64GB of RAM? One of the most advanced FPGAs on the market, the Xilinx Virtex 7, doesnt even require half of that much memory for synthesis.

on my x58 with 48gb of ram, when I do database work it would peg at 100% ram usage as soon as I start.


I updated to a 3930k w/ 64gb and the same thing happens:
http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=2613613

I'm currently toying with the idea of switching to a workstation class board for more ram slots.

 

[tarmc]

well, if the op can make good use of the 2xL5639 why not, theyre cheap enough and why not stroke the epeen a bit haha.

 

[HendrixFan]

well, if the op can make good use of the 2xL5639 why not, theyre cheap enough and why not stroke the epeen a bit haha.

Because he says he will be primarily gaming, in which case he is hurting his expected performance.

 

[tarmc]

Not very useful for gaming but he does mention heavy video editing. Would be great for that but not so much for gaming.

 

[greenhawk]

Cost could be issue as large sized ram for a xeon cpu system would be expencive seeing as registered / ECC ram is not cheap. Wanting large sized sticks means I would not expect to find them on ebay cheaply.

 

[tarmc]

Does it have to be ecc? I would assume it would run with non ecc mem

 

[Gillbot]

Does not (should not) be ECC.

 

[crashtech]

Well, it depends on the board, but the Xeons can swing both ways, as it were.

Interestingly, the chipset in the OP's DP board 5520 chipset can support ECC in a different setting. I don't think X58 can, no matter the board.

 

[aigomorla]

Because he says he will be primarily gaming, in which case he is hurting his expected performance.

yes...

this is the point im trying to get across...

Will it be better then some AMD systems?
Yes it will... were talking about the last bit of FPS from 4ghz+ clock on a monster GPU class.
However those last bit of performance is there.

Again... if monster GPU class doesnt fit in your build... then these chips are solid.

 

[Gillbot]

Well, it depends on the board, but the Xeons can swing both ways, as it were.

Interestingly, the chipset in the OP's DP board 5520 chipset can support ECC in a different setting. I don't think X58 can, no matter the board.

It depends on the CPU since the memory controller is in the CPU, BUT the times i've tried ECC (NON-REGISTERED) in ANY board, it would work fine but of course YMMV.