Why this Xeon is not for gaming?

TwinDenis · April 23, 2017

1 hour ago, berny22 said:

Whatever you do.. don't get an i5.. Either a Ryzen 5 or a Ryzen 7 or an i7... Getting anything from intel that is not i7 makes no sense.

I guess that is an opinion, which one is the best chip for around under 400 bucks to offer the best gaming performance? Doing some CAD as well but its not a massively heavy workload

1 hour ago, typographie said:

Clock speed matters in some comparisons, and not in others. 3.4 GHz from a Sandy Bridge chip from 2011 is not equivalent to 3.4 GHz from a Kaby Lake chip from 2017. The newer CPU gets more done per each clock cycle, so it's faster at the same clock speed. You do want a decent clock speed for a gaming system, but that can only be compared directly against other CPUs of the same generation.

http://ark.intel.com/products/64621/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-1620-10M-Cache-3_60-GHz-0_0-GTs-Intel-QPI

It looks to me like this Xeon is probably just a rebranded Sandy Bridge-era Core i7, like an i7-2600. It's going to run like any other quad-core Sandy Bridge chip at that clock speed. It's getting a bit old for my tastes, but as long as its cheap enough I don't see a problem with it. It does require the LGA-2011 CPU socket (not LGA-1155), so it's going to need an X79 motherboard, and I think those are still kinda expensive.

The issue with some Xeons is that the higher-end ones often have enormous core counts but only run at 2 GHz or so. They'll run games just fine, but games care a lot more about per-core throughput and a more limited number of cores. So their strengths are usually not applicable to gaming. But quad-core Xeons are usually similar to i7's of the same generation.

Well, again I have the 3.6/3.8ghz version of xeon from that generation.

I was also curious if that shouldn't be the problem, could it be the motherboard as some suggested?

I cant repeat the whole thing here but since the thread progressed please check it out if you will.

To check my motherboard model go to my profile, the computer itself was a prebuild workstation by dell which I then replaced some parts to cover gaming like my gpu and ram as well as ssd.

The components do not seem to be faulty according to dell.

It is hinted that its a mechanical issue and not software.

It just happens every time and is replicated all the time.

Does it make games unplayable? Yes, most of them and some of the less demanding ones as well. Of course some games are optimized to just load the entire game once and have it ready so the system doesnt have to tap into the data all the time so they do not have as much of a problem as other games. We are talking about a big group of games, not just few.

5kept1caL · Friday at 07:31 PM

On 4/16/2017 at 4:35 AM, TwinDenis said:

he said games support fewer faster cpus while looking at my xeon it has 3.6-3.8ghz speeds, this should be enough to run them right?

In my case I notice weird frame skipping when playing lets say heroes of the storm (starcaft engine) after units start to fight and such which of course in some cases affects my performance as well (movements become choppy and less noticable).

Could you review my own xeon and see if that could occur and why?

I am concerned, thanks though

Definitely pair this CPU with a decent Graphics card. I went from a Pentium G4560 to this Xeon, paired with my GTX 1050ti SC, and got over double framerate boost on highest settings. This was an unstable 60 -130 FPS, to a stable 140-220FPS on CS:GO. This older Xeon was 100 MHz better than the Pentium, and got double core & thread boost. The only problem was the downgrade in RAM speed from 2133MHz DDR4 - 1600MHz DDR3. However, I did double the RAM count to from 16GB - 32GB. The best part is going from 3MB CPU Cache, to 10MB CPU Cache. I have tested streaming, and it is flawless on counter strike. I would usually have better performance on Overwatch, than on CS, because of the better graphics engine, so some of the more popular AAA tiltles should have no problem with recording/streaming. Plus, this chip should handle moderate video/audio production.

Weird Face · Friday at 08:55 PM

Xeons were commonly recommended for non-overclocking gamers back in days where they were compatible with consumer Z and H-series motherboards. They're the exactly the same chip as their i7 counterparts, just locked and binned differently. Any Xeon can be used for gaming as long as not too much clock speed was sacrificed for core count (ie: 20+ core processors won't make much sense for gaming).