So... Is X58 Still The Budget King?

[bmichaels556]

For a while, a ton of people were building Xeon X5600-series systems. I believe Tech YES City started the trend. Me? I ended up going with a Dell T7500 Workstation, and swapped in X5675's for the old E-series Xeons that came with it, upgraded to 24GB of RAM, and put in a USB 3.0 PCIe card for good measure. The result? A $250 gaming and productivity rig that matches or beats a Ryzen 1700 at stock speeds, and that doesn't bottleneck most games with an RX 480, with the exception of the ones that only use one or two threads. Other than that? ~90%+ GPU utilization in most games. Not too shabby! It uses some more power, and is limited in some other ways. But price to performance? It was IMPOSSIBLE to beat last year, especially if you were willing to forgo overclocking support in favor of a dual socket 24 thread monster workstation.

 

But I have to wonder. While these things have come down in price, it seems like the Sandy Bridge stuff is starting be in. Is there a newer Sandy Bridge Xeon that seems to be the new "budget king"? I guess any of the lower core higher clocked CPU's would be fine for gaming, relatively speaking. But me? I'm really looking at the whole package. A high core count processor that performs well enough in games, but also presents a serious value proposition in multi-core performance compared to newer mainstream desktop processors.

 

Anyone?  

[RollinLower]

you could maybe look at a E5 2680, it clocks up to 3,5 Ghz singlecore or 3,0Ghz on all 8 of em. and they are pretty cheap, better value for money than a 2690 imo

if you can get a good deal on maybe one of those chinese huanan boards you can have a pretty hefty workstation for a relatively cheap price.

if you don't want to go for something chinese and potentially sketchy though, X79 or C602 boards still don't come cheap.

[Fasauceome]

16 minutes ago, bmichaels556 said:

X5675

 

16 minutes ago, bmichaels556 said:

matches or beats a Ryzen 1700

Not super sure about that one, on the single threaded front

[aisle9]

No, first-gen Ryzen is. The price/performance on first-gen Ryzen CPUs is batshit crazy and you can land 16GB of DDR4 for $50 on the used market. Consider that X58 boards still cost north of $100, there's no comparison anymore. Ditto that for X79, even the old reliable Ivy Bridge/Haswell i5 combos. If you're building an entry-level system today, there's absolutely nothing out there worth considering aside from first-gen Ryzen imo.

[bmichaels556]

Just now, aisle9 said:

No, first-gen Ryzen is. The price/performance on first-gen Ryzen CPUs is batshit crazy and you can land 16GB of DDR4 for $50 on the used market. Consider that X58 boards still cost north of $100, there's no comparison anymore. Ditto that for X79, even the old reliable Ivy Bridge/Haswell i5 combos. If you're building an entry-level system today, there's absolutely nothing out there worth considering aside from first-gen Ryzen imo.

Does seem pretty crazy, those Ryzen 1st gen prices. Maybe I dump this dual socket guy and almost pay for a whole system with a 1700 and 16GB RAM. Not a bad option, all things considered. Plus, it'll look a lot prettier. 

[bmichaels556]

6 minutes ago, fasauceome said:

 

Not super sure about that one, on the single threaded front

Definitely not... But since it does well in most games without a huge bottleneck on the GPU, I just kind of accept it. The other weak point is having to upgrade to SATA3 and USB 3 using PCIe cards. Not ideal ha. So yeah, definitely some downsides, but all things considered, I never felt it had any dealbreakers or major weak points. 

 

It all depends on what you're looking for though. A lot of people would be disgusted by lack of native SATA3 and USB 3, but overall, I was willing to accept somewhat gimped SSD performance and having to add it in. But I would totally understand the criticism by those who would want to avoid the hassle, even if doing the upgrades themselves was no big deal. 

[aisle9]

Just now, bmichaels556 said:

Does seem pretty crazy, those Ryzen 1st gen prices. Maybe I dump this dual socket guy and almost pay for a whole system with a 1700 and 16GB RAM. Not a bad option, all things considered. Plus, it'll look a lot prettier. 

I would. I remained an X58 devotee to the end. My favorite PC ever, an HP Elite 170f, was an i7-920 system. I can't even justify X58 in the age of Ryzen anymore. I get what Phil and the Yes Man are up to with X79 Xeons, but I don't see it anymore. Not with first-gen Ryzen, first-gen AM4 boards and DDR4 where they are.

[bmichaels556]

16 minutes ago, RollinLower said:

you could maybe look at a E5 2680, it clocks up to 3,5 Ghz singlecore or 3,0Ghz on all 8 of em. and they are pretty cheap, better value for money than a 2690 imo

if you can get a good deal on maybe one of those chinese huanan boards you can have a pretty hefty workstation for a relatively cheap price.

if you don't want to go for something chinese and potentially sketchy though, X79 or C602 boards still don't come cheap.

That... Actually seems like a real powerhouse. Seriously... And it looks like the single-threaded performance is significantly better as well. 

 

I was looking at them prior, but saw a low base clock compared to the X5675 and figured the passmark scores were lying, not realizing they'd all boost to 3Ghz. I guess with the benefit of being a newer architecture..

[Zando_]

35 minutes ago, fasauceome said:

 

Not super sure about that one, on the single threaded front

Doesn't beat it on either front. A 4.5Ghz X5675 can get pretty close to a stock R5 1600 in CB15, not gonna touch a 1700X. 

 

EDIT: ah, just noticed you're running a dual CPU rig. Will beat the 1700 in multicore for sure, but you're also running 4 more cores and 8 more threads to do that. Gaming perf will likely be much worse, most games don't scale much past 6 cores. 

 

32 minutes ago, aisle9 said:

No, first-gen Ryzen is. The price/performance on first-gen Ryzen CPUs is batshit crazy and you can land 16GB of DDR4 for $50 on the used market. Consider that X58 boards still cost north of $100, there's no comparison anymore. Ditto that for X79, even the old reliable Ivy Bridge/Haswell i5 combos. If you're building an entry-level system today, there's absolutely nothing out there worth considering aside from first-gen Ryzen imo.

^^^ Yep. X58 is finally showing it's age, though it's had a very good run. It's still the budget king if you're an OC enthusiast, the CPUs are cheap, RAM is cheap, overclocking is engaging and satisfying, and the Xeons take a lot of voltage and have a heck ton of headroom depending on your cooling. If it's gaming performance you're after, 1st gen Ryzen is definitely the better deal, but overclocking on Ryzen was pretty boring and there's not much headroom, so it depends on what you do with your PC. Basically X58 has fallen back into the HEDT OC enthusiasts niche, similar to LGA775 rigs, just it can still run games decently and still be useful for everyday stuff. 

[Fasauceome]

1 minute ago, Zando Bob said:

Doesn't beat it on either front. A 4.5Ghz X5675 can get pretty close to a stock R5 1600 in CB15, not gonna touch a 1700X. 

It is a dual socket system though.