General Intel HEDT Xeon/i7 Discussion

[Zando_]

Just now, XR6 said:

@Zando Bob I've got some questions regarding X99. I'm able to get a 5820K for £110, but for about £30-40 more I'm able to get a 5930K. Is it worth the extra money?

Also, how's the thermals on your 5820K with the NH-D15? I'm going to be using that cooler in my next build so it would be nice to know how it performs before buying.

3.5Ghz base, 3.7Ghz boost on the 5930K, 3.3Ghz base, 3.6Ghz boost on the 5820K. You're gaining 200Mhz at base, 100Mhz at max boost (not noticeable at all in anything other than benchmarks really), and that's assuming you leave it at stock, which would be silly and also get you lackluster performance. They come into their own around 4.2-4.4Ghz or higher, and that throws any stock/boost numbers out the window. Getting an extra 100-200Mhz you won't even use because you manually OC anyway for another 3rd the price of the 5820K isn't worth it IMO. I don't think they're a much better bin for OCing either, and most 5820Ks hit 4.4 or so easily from what I've read. 

 

On my NH-D15S (offset NH-D15 with one fan instead of two) temps will hit 93C or so in Prime95 small FFT with a full AVX workload at 1.32v, so I don't push it any harder than that (Using Noctua NT-H2 paste, did my temp testing in an Air 540 with two front fans). In real world use IIRC it's closer to the 60s and 70s depending on the workload, I don't do anything that pushes it close to as hard as Prime95 will. I tend to just use Prime95 as a worst case scenario and extreme stability test, only thing to ever push a CPU as hard as it does was the one time I mucked around in Unreal Engine 4 on my Ryzen 7 2700X and opened a massive sample model in the previewer. Normal gaming/productivity temps are usually 10-20 degrees cooler. 

[LDTech]

Hey, so I have a Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R, which supports LGA 1366. I currently have an i7 920 2.67ghz overclocked with a dual fan Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo. I am a complete noob at overclocking and might not have overclocked it very well, but either way, I am not getting nearly the performance I want out of it. I can run PUBG at low but when I do I get crazy frame drops, which I know is mostly CPU. I am going to upgrade my ram from 8gb to 16gb and I have a 1050Ti which isn't the greatest card but I am on a budget. While I am upgrading the ram I would also like to upgrade my CPU. I didn't know if it would be worth the CPU upgrade to a Xeon or if I should try and overclock the i7 920 more than I have now. I believe I got it to 3.6ghz and anything after that would overheat it, so I'm not sure I could even overclock it more. At the same time, I don't even know if the overclock was effective because I am getting around the same Cinebench score I was getting before around 450, and CPU-Z says I am getting 2833mhz. I have been looking at a Xeon W3580 or maybe a W3680 if the extra money is worth it. I am on a really tight budget but want something that won't bottleneck my system and will give me a non-irritating PUBG experience. What do you guys think? Will the Xeons even be worth it or should I try and get the best out of the 920? Will the xeons even be overclockable too/how to do that cause I'm a total noob at overclocking? Thanks

 

Here's my motherboard's support list:

https://www.gigabyte.com/us/Motherboard/GA-X58A-UD3R-rev-20#support-cpu

[Pasi123]

3 hours ago, LDTech said:

Hey, so I have a Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R, which supports LGA 1366. I currently have an i7 920 2.67ghz overclocked with a dual fan Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo. I am a complete noob at overclocking and might not have overclocked it very well, but either way, I am not getting nearly the performance I want out of it. I can run PUBG at low but when I do I get crazy frame drops, which I know is mostly CPU. I am going to upgrade my ram from 8gb to 16gb and I have a 1050Ti which isn't the greatest card but I am on a budget. While I am upgrading the ram I would also like to upgrade my CPU. I didn't know if it would be worth the CPU upgrade to a Xeon or if I should try and overclock the i7 920 more than I have now. I believe I got it to 3.6ghz and anything after that would overheat it, so I'm not sure I could even overclock it more. At the same time, I don't even know if the overclock was effective because I am getting around the same Cinebench score I was getting before around 450, and CPU-Z says I am getting 2833mhz. I have been looking at a Xeon W3580 or maybe a W3680 if the extra money is worth it. I am on a really tight budget but want something that won't bottleneck my system and will give me a non-irritating PUBG experience. What do you guys think? Will the Xeons even be worth it or should I try and get the best out of the 920? Will the xeons even be overclockable too/how to do that cause I'm a total noob at overclocking? Thanks

 

Here's my motherboard's support list:

https://www.gigabyte.com/us/Motherboard/GA-X58A-UD3R-rev-20#support-cpu

I would get a Xeon X5670 or X5675. They are a big upgrade from the i7-920 and they run cooler too. The Xeons are really easy to overclock to 4GHz or a bit higher

[MaratM]

There is no point to try to push 920 any further. Just get a x56xx xeon and oc it to safe max you cooler can deliver. Will have to updete the bios for it.

 

 

 

 

[Adam132]

3 hours ago, LDTech said:

Hey, so I have a Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R, which supports LGA 1366. I currently have an i7 920 2.67ghz overclocked with a dual fan Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo. I am a complete noob at overclocking and might not have overclocked it very well, but either way, I am not getting nearly the performance I want out of it. I can run PUBG at low but when I do I get crazy frame drops, which I know is mostly CPU. I am going to upgrade my ram from 8gb to 16gb and I have a 1050Ti which isn't the greatest card but I am on a budget. While I am upgrading the ram I would also like to upgrade my CPU. I didn't know if it would be worth the CPU upgrade to a Xeon or if I should try and overclock the i7 920 more than I have now. I believe I got it to 3.6ghz and anything after that would overheat it, so I'm not sure I could even overclock it more. At the same time, I don't even know if the overclock was effective because I am getting around the same Cinebench score I was getting before around 450, and CPU-Z says I am getting 2833mhz. I have been looking at a Xeon W3580 or maybe a W3680 if the extra money is worth it. I am on a really tight budget but want something that won't bottleneck my system and will give me a non-irritating PUBG experience. What do you guys think? Will the Xeons even be worth it or should I try and get the best out of the 920? Will the xeons even be overclockable too/how to do that cause I'm a total noob at overclocking? Thanks

 

Here's my motherboard's support list:

https://www.gigabyte.com/us/Motherboard/GA-X58A-UD3R-rev-20#support-cpu

If you are just playing games you might not even need the 16gb ram. Your gpu should be fine too, you should just upgrade to a Xeon, just make shure that your bios is up do date.

[Crunchy Dragon]

7 minutes ago, Adam132 said:

If you are just playing games you might not even need the 16gb ram. Your gpu should be fine too, you should just upgrade to a Xeon, just make shure that your bios is up do date.

16GB of memory is really nice for multitasking, though.

[Adam132]

14 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

16GB of memory is really nice for multitasking, though.

Yes it is and with the lower prices for ddr3 it would be a good idea.

[LDTech]

23 hours ago, Pasi123 said:

I would get a Xeon X5670 or X5675. They are a big upgrade from the i7-920 and they run cooler too. The Xeons are really easy to overclock to 4GHz or a bit higher

My motherboard only officially supports up to an x5570, what would happen if i were to put an x5670 or x5675 in it? Would it cause issues? 

[Pasi123]

19 minutes ago, LDTech said:

My motherboard only officially supports up to an x5570, what would happen if i were to put an x5670 or x5675 in it? Would it cause issues? 

It should work just fine if you have the latest bios version.

[Slayer3032]

34 minutes ago, LDTech said:

My motherboard only officially supports up to an x5570, what would happen if i were to put an x5670 or x5675 in it? Would it cause issues? 

You would get 2 more cores and 4 more threads with like another ~500mhz of overclocking possible on top of some improved power consumption over 45nm, if you don't use it to instead push the cpu harder lol. For around $18 to $24.

 

As far as issues, yeah X58 has a really large issue where as soon as you get one, you want more!

 

12 minutes ago, Pasi123 said:

It should work just fine if you have the latest bios version.

As long as he's running the FF bios or newer, he'll be fine as it has the "13" microcode which isn't horribly broken. I just tossed it at intelmicrocodelist real quick to check. I wouldn't bother installing Windows 7 to run @BIOS

https://www.gigabyte.com/us/Motherboard/GA-X58A-UD3R-rev-20#support-dl-bios

[Zando_]

On 6/22/2019 at 3:39 PM, Pasi123 said:

I would get a Xeon X5670 or X5675. They are a big upgrade from the i7-920 and they run cooler too. The Xeons are really easy to overclock to 4GHz or a bit higher

big is putting it lightly, they're a massive upgrade. Much better temps, much better overclocking, and those extra cores really help.

 

On 6/22/2019 at 4:25 PM, Adam132 said:

If you are just playing games you might not even need the 16gb ram. Your gpu should be fine too, you should just upgrade to a Xeon, just make shure that your bios is up do date.

 

I'd go with 12-24 GB of RAM in a 3x config instead of 16GB. Going with triple channel DDR3 will get you an extra boost to RAM bandwidth, should help more in a lot of games to have 3x4GB instead of 2x8GB.

 

[Slayer3032]

5 hours ago, Zando Bob said:

big is putting it lightly, they're a massive upgrade. Much better temps, much better overclocking, and those extra cores really help.

Speaking of big performance, I did a Cinebench R15 on a stock i7 920 last night and it didn't even break 450cb lmao. My old X5660 which would only hit 4.4ghz, on it's worst day would still beat that at least twice over generally scoring around 1000cb but sometimes in the mid-high 900's.

 

Just dropped off that EVGA board at a repair shop that will move the resistor, hopes and prayers that it works when it comes back lol.

[Pasi123]

5 hours ago, Slayer3032 said:

Speaking of big performance, I did a Cinebench R15 on a stock i7 920 last night and it didn't even break 450cb lmao. My old X5660 which would only hit 4.4ghz, on it's worst day would still beat that at least twice over generally scoring around 1000cb but sometimes in the mid-high 900's.

 

Just dropped off that EVGA board at a repair shop that will move the resistor, hopes and prayers that it works when it comes back lol.

Here is some old screenshot of what I got with an i7-950 at stock (3.06GHz base and 3.33GHz turbo). That is with only 4GB of RAM in dual channel, I don't know If it would get better score with triple channel memory. Nowadays that PC has 8GB of RAM.

 

[MaratM]

Today I was testing my office pc.

It is 9400F CPU with 16GB of 3200CL16 RAM and GTX 670 (temperary GPU) all running on Asus z170i Pro Gaming (YES it is possible) with intiel box cooler (temp CPU cooler)

All settings in BIOS on auto exept XMP.

Run Cinebench R15 on it - 960 points, all 6 cores run at 3.9gHz

To get the same score on x58 I had to put a massive cooler and run it at 4.2-4.3 gHz with fans at the full blast.

You might ask why I'm writing it here?

I think it is time to give up X58, unless you got the motherboard to start with. 

I was thinking that i5's are not good CPU's compare to i7 in general, but even the lowest one of them almost beats X58 xeons and i7's

 

[Zando_]

20 minutes ago, MaratM said:

Today I was testing my office pc.

It is 9400F CPU with 16GB of 3200CL16 RAM and GTX 670 (temperary GPU) all running on Asus z170i Pro Gaming (YES it is possible) with intiel box cooler (temp CPU cooler)

All settings in BIOS on auto exept XMP.

Run Cinebench R15 on it - 960 points, all 6 cores run at 3.9gHz

To get the same score on x58 I had to put a massive cooler and run it at 4.2-4.3 gHz with fans at the full blast.

 

You might ask why I'm writing it here?

I think it is time to give up X58, unless you got the motherboard to start with. 

I was thinking that i5's are not good CPU's compare to i7 in general, but even the lowest one of them almost beats X58 xeons and i7's

 

Yeah, the new i5s punch well above their weight, I have an i5 8400 and it's pretty damn impressive. X58 has pretty much lost it's value proposition now (especially with 1st gen ryzen being cheap and RAM prices being low af right now), it's moving into the HEDT OC enthusiast niche, with the plus it can still run most games and such decently. 

[Ground]

Picking up 1366 for a daily hasn't been a good idea for at least half a year now, basically since DDR4 prices started dropping. Ryzen 1xxx series has been quite cheap for quite a while now...

 

I'm not quite sure yet, but I could imagine x99 with Reg ECC and Xeons could get interesting once the first gen of DDR4 servers get decommissioned.

[Zando_]

3 minutes ago, Ground said:

Picking up 1366 for a daily hasn't been a good idea for at least half a year now, basically since DDR4 prices started dropping. Ryzen 1xxx series has been quite cheap for quite a while now...

 

I'm not quite sure yet, but I could imagine x99 with Reg ECC and Xeons could get interesting once the first gen of DDR4 servers get decommissioned.

If you get it on sale it's not too bad either. I got my 5820K (standard 6c/12t Intel boye, run mine at 4.4-4.5Ghz) for $160 and my X99 Classified on sale for only $99. Have 32GB RAM in quad channel but you can go for just 16GB and it's a good chunk cheaper, total package probably costs around the same as a high end X58 mobo/RAM/CPU setup, it performs a lot better, and you keep that saxy HEDT setup. 

[DilbertOfTheHood]

So I recently purchased a Xeon W3690 to drop into my X58. I want to OC it to 4.0GHz bit I can't get it past 3.6 without it crashing (BSOD and/or crash to black). It also will crash and restart at least once before getting to bios.  I'm upping my CPU Voltage in Bios, but HW Monitor won't read past 1.24v. 

 

I need some advice on how to get a stable OC to 4.0GHz.

 

 

[bimmerman]

7 minutes ago, DilbertOfTheHood said:

So I recently purchased a Xeon W3690 to drop into my X58. I want to OC it to 4.0GHz bit I can't get it past 3.6 without it crashing (BSOD and/or crash to black). It also will crash and restart at least once before getting to bios.  I'm upping my CPU Voltage in Bios, but HW Monitor won't read past 1.24v. 

 

I need some advice on how to get a stable OC to 4.0GHz.

 

 

First-- what motherboard, what cooler, what and how much ram, how many watts is your psu?

 

Second-- there are two primary knobs to tweak with X58. Cpu Vcore (and multiplier) and QPI voltages and speeds. You have an unlocked chip so QPI tinkering (via BCLK) isn't as necessary, but can help stabilize multipliers. Most X58 motherboards will do 200+ BCLK.

 

Take some screenshots of your bios settings for voltages and multipliers. Hard to say what's going wrong otherwise. Also, search this thread for posts I've made linking OC guides.

[DilbertOfTheHood]

2 minutes ago, bimmerman said:

First-- what motherboard, what cooler, what and how much ram, how many watts is your psu?

 

Second-- there are two primary knobs to tweak with X58. Cpu Vcore (and multiplier) and QPI voltages and speeds. You have an unlocked chip so QPI tinkering (via BCLK) isn't as necessary, but can help stabilize multipliers. Most X58 motherboards will do 200+ BCLK.

 

Take some screenshots of your bios settings for voltages and multipliers. Hard to say what's going wrong otherwise. Also, search this thread for posts I've made linking OC guides.

ASRock X58 Deluxe (bios 3.0, latest) 

CPU cooler is Sythe Katana 3

12gb ram

750w PSU by Corsair

 

As far as the QPI, I'm completely ignorant of those settings. I've been working mostly with BCLK frequency, Multipliers, and CPU Voltage. 

 

When I get home I'll take a screen shot or two of my bios. I'll also try to scan the backlog of posts in this thread. 

 

Additional system Specs are in my signature. 

[Intelfreak]

For those that want to stick with X58 a while longer, but only have a I7/Xeon quad-core. Yes i will highly reccommend to get a cheap 6 core xeon. There really is a noticable difference when they first are overclock. I took the upgrade path from a I7 920 running 4.4 GHz at its end time i had it to an I7 980X. It whas totally worfh it.

 

But i do also agreed with other people here. X58 is past its best days. For gamming its still desent, but games are beginning to beat up poor old X58. Metro Exodus and Far Cry New Dawn made me deisde that it whas time to move on from X58 some time next year (i cant really afford a new pc right now).

 

Some compared I7 and Xeon quad vs. 6 core Xeons. I can share what my system score with an I7 920 and my current I7 980X. 6 core xeon will score the same as my I7 6 core at the same settings. All throw some of the benchmark does benefit from higher clock memory as well as high uncore clock.

 

I7 920 oc to around 4.3 to 4.4 GHz

 

I7 980X a mix of stock CPU, 4.4 GHz and my bench settings means oc to around 4.7 GHz

 

two game benchmark. Far Cry 5 and the latest Tom Raider game.

[panther420]

yo what's up everyone. i haven't posted in this thread for about a year now and an upgrade I just did to my lga1366 server reminded me of the thread here - another X5650 to pop in with an extra 24GB ram costing me only ~$50 for both the CPU and RAM. That gives me a total of 12 cores and 24 threads with 48GB RAM. More than enough to run several VMs on ESXi. It seems like Ryzen, LGA2011 and to an extent LGA1356 are all the rage nowadays for budget gamers but I argue that LGA1366 has its place for some applications, like a server. It's certainly better than most of the cheap AWS instances for the stuff I run on it so I'm thoroughly enjoying LGA1366 and plan to keep it kicking around, powering NAS and compute tasks, for as long as I can. peace out 

[DilbertOfTheHood]

On 6/27/2019 at 2:22 PM, bimmerman said:

First-- what motherboard, what cooler, what and how much ram, how many watts is your psu?

 

Second-- there are two primary knobs to tweak with X58. Cpu Vcore (and multiplier) and QPI voltages and speeds. You have an unlocked chip so QPI tinkering (via BCLK) isn't as necessary, but can help stabilize multipliers. Most X58 motherboards will do 200+ BCLK.

 

Take some screenshots of your bios settings for voltages and multipliers. Hard to say what's going wrong otherwise. Also, search this thread for posts I've made linking OC guides.

[DilbertOfTheHood]

On 6/27/2019 at 2:22 PM, bimmerman said:

First-- what motherboard, what cooler, what and how much ram, how many watts is your psu?

 

Second-- there are two primary knobs to tweak with X58. Cpu Vcore (and multiplier) and QPI voltages and speeds. You have an unlocked chip so QPI tinkering (via BCLK) isn't as necessary, but can help stabilize multipliers. Most X58 motherboards will do 200+ BCLK.

 

Take some screenshots of your bios settings for voltages and multipliers. Hard to say what's going wrong otherwise. Also, search this thread for posts I've made linking OC guides.

As you can see if the other picture, I think my problem is with the RAM. One stick doesn't like to show up. I can take it out and re seat it on the Motherboard and I may work for a time, but when I restart my computer it crashes and starts again with that same DIM missing. 

 

I've tested and that stick seems to be the culprit I think.  It certainly won't work at the 1330 speed it was made for. But even with that stick removed I have crashing problems. 

[bimmerman]

@DilbertOfTheHood I'm not super familiar with your bios settings, but I think your DRAM voltage is too low-- mine wants either 1.5 or 1.65 depending on which brand of memory I use. Your sticks probably say on them what their XMP profile timings and desired voltage is. However, before doing that, I'd swap sticks to see if it's the sticks themselves or a specific slot or the IMC on the chip. Also go down to 3 sticks that seem to work well, then play swap the stick. The IMCs of these chips don't always like to be fully populated-- I get a stick missing error if I try to OC the memory above 2000mhz (1600 is the XMP). The IMC benefits from additional CPU/VTT voltage or whatever the applicable setting is in bios.

 

Otherwise, I'd up your QPI speed if you can, as that is the speed between CPU and Chipset. More faster more better, especially if you won't be raising it via BCLK tweaking.

 

Hopefully someone with more direct experience with your motherboard can chime in-- if you haven't, can you pull up and link the motherboard manual? That should explain better how to tweak stuff.

 

 

GENERAL X58 OVERCLOCKING INFORMATION FOLLOWS

 

 

This is my bios, which has different names for things. But, here's the gist of what does what. If you don't have a multiplier you probably have a frequency knob to tweak. The voltages here are what I needed to stabilize a 4.7GHz OC. I noticed zero performance difference from 4.5GHz, so decided to leave the voltage where it was for safety margin.

 

Multipliers/Frequencies:

CPU Clock Ratio: Multiplier. CPU Freq = Max Mult * BCLK

QPI clock ratio: defines speed of communication link between CPU and Chipset, and other things. Set to be ~2x Uncore, either in ratio or frequency form depending on the knob you have available. QPI Freq = Mult * BCLK.

Uncore: set to roughly double your memory multiplier or frequency. This is the most critical for snappy performance on X58, as the uncore does all the behind the scenes stuff in the chip (cache speeds, transfer speeds, etc). It starts going haywire around 4000 MHz. Uncore Freq = Mult * BCLK.

BCLK: speed that the CPU communicates with stuff like memory controller and uncore. This is how you speed up uncore most directly. Everything is a function of this.

Memory multiplier: Mem Frequency = Mem Mult * BCLK.

XMP: if you want, also lets you tweak stuff for memory timing.

 

TL;DR, everything is a function of BCLK and a multiplier. You may or may not be able to explicitly define the multiplier, but if you can define or set a frequency, you're doing the exact same thing. That is why fast BCLK is better than high CPU multiplier, all else equal-- BCLK speeds up clocks/sec, CPU mult only speeds up calcs per clock.

 

Don't tweak anything else unless you really understand what's doing what. I don't, so I don't mess with the other settings.

 

 

Voltages:

Load line calibration: can help stabilize crazy OCs by limiting voltage and current fluctuations. Do some google.

CPU Vcore: stabilizes multiplier-based CPU Frequency OC. <-- don't exceed 1.4 V as a general rule.

QPI/VTT Voltage: Stabilizes BCLK OC and associated bits (Uncore, QPI, Memory Controller frequency) <-- this is the key knob, don't exceed 1.35 V as a general rule.

CPU PLL: can stabilize OCs, don't mess with it unless you're going for all the GHz.

PCIE: don't mess with it unless you tweak PCIe frequency, which you shouldn't.

QPI PLL: same; don't mess with it at reasonable OC levels, but can stabilize at high speeds.

IOH/ICH stuff:  This is the chipset voltage. More can stabilize, likely is NOT needed.

DRAM Voltage: this is the voltage for your RAMs. Set to whatever the kit expects, tweak if you're going for high memory OCs and you've hit the QPI/VTT voltage wall. <-- this is the third knob you need to tweak

 

Super TLDR

Frequency knobs to tweak: read the above, it's not simple. Frequency = Multiplier * BCLK.

Voltage knobs to tweak: QPI/VTT up to 1.35 (for BCLK, IMC, Uncore, QPI), CPU Vcore up to 1.4 (for CPU Mult), DRAM to 1.5 or 1.65 or whatever your kit says (for DRAM).