X5675, W3690, i7-3770 GTX 980 Bottleneck

[Cbanter]

Hey guys, I have been doing research for weeks upon weeks on processors and gpus. I am planning to build up my first PC and get into pc gaming on a budget, while also using the pc for everyday use and video and audio editing. I am buying a used Dell T7500 with an Xeon X5675, 32gb ram, 500gb ssd, 2tb hdd, and a Quadro FX5800 gpu for $100 tomorrow morning. I got one heck of a deal, I believe! I also just bought a used GTX 980 for $70. After researching benchmarks, I did a "can my pc run it" and a bottleneck calculator on PC Builds. Seems that with the x5675 and the gtx 980 I am getting a 20% bottleneck score, which supposedly is not good at all. I then changed the cpu to an i7-3770, as I have an hp 6300 with that chip in it, and the bottleneck went down to practically nothing and the overall FPS on average was like 30+ FPS more than on the x5675. 

 

So, my question is this, is it worth spending the money on just an unlocked multiplier cpu like a W3690, so I can just increase the multipliers, as I can't overclock on the stock boards, keep the x5675 and run with it, or build up a computer around the i7-3770? 

 

My goal here is the get the best value and performance pc that I can get. I want to keep costs down as low as I can. Thanks. 

[GDRRiley]

so "bootleneck" calculators are a bunch of BS.

it comes down to games, programs and whatever else you want to do.

your 6 core will be faster than a 3700 in any multithreaded program.

a 3770 maybe better if all you play is games from 2014 and back but newer ones with a few stupid exceptions (far cry) run much better on the 6 cores.

[Cbanter]

Oh, well dang, that's really great to know! I seem to have caught the pc building bug and I only just started! Thanks for the advice. I may still get an Xeon W processor at some point.

[LawPhoenix]

I am running x5675 with 980ti & there is no sign of bottleneck so u will be fine too.

[LawPhoenix]

10 hours ago, Cbanter said:

I may still get an Xeon W processor at some point.

x5690 is only around 3% faster than x5675 so https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Xeon-X5690-vs-Intel-Xeon-W3690/m16752vsm9677 

my suggestion is u really don't need to go for w3690 from x5675.

[GDRRiley]

24 minutes ago, Cbanter said:

Oh, well dang, that's really great to know! I seem to have caught the pc building bug and I only just started! Thanks for the advice. I may still get an Xeon W processor at some point.

quote people or tag them @Cbanter.

welcome to the forums read this if you haven't

 

[Cbanter]

Thank you all for the help so far. 

 

I got my computer all setup properly and now with the gtx 980 installed. 

 

Next question. The system has 24gb ram, all 6 dimms containing 4gb ram. Is it worth another $50-$60 to get 6 8gb ram or even $20 to upgrade to a total of 32gb with 2 8gb? Will I notice a difference at all while running really anything? Thanks. 

[bimmerman]

4 minutes ago, Cbanter said:

Thank you all for the help so far. 

 

I got my computer all setup properly and now with the gtx 980 installed. 

 

Next question. The system has 24gb ram, all 6 dimms containing 4gb ram. Is it worth another $50-$60 to get 6 8gb ram or even $20 to upgrade to a total of 32gb with 2 8gb? Will I notice a difference at all while running really anything? Thanks. 

Depends on what you're doing but likely no. I have 24 GB on my X5675 machine and barely use half of it.

[Cbanter]

50 minutes ago, bimmerman said:

Depends on what you're doing but likely no. I have 24 GB on my X5675 machine and barely use half of it.

Thank you. Good answer. Maybe I'll go for a w3680 and have some fun getting it over clocked a bit with the multipliers. Might upgrade the heatsink to a radiator type, as mine is just the aluminum one. Not sure it really needs it though. I just enjoy tinkering and upgrading. 

[Ragnarsdad]

It is definitely worth upgrading the heatsink on the T7500. There are two you can look at, the U016F, this can be found for 15-20 from china. The other option is the U042F, this is the biggest and best but usually harder to find and more expensive. If i recall correctly the aluminium heatsink was only supposed to be used for CPUs up to 65w although i could be wrong on that. I have had about 10 of these machines, i usually use them to run BOINC and then sell them on. I found with the U402F heatisnk i was able to run an X5670 at full load on a 24/7 basis with no temp issues.

 

One option that works on the T7500, T5500 and T3500 is to install the U016F heatsink and purchase a couple of 80mm case fans and a cheap fan controller, cost me less than £5 on ebay. then ziptie the fans to the heatsink and power then through the fan controller. Please note that the motherboard fan headers use a proprietary 5 pin dell connector.

 

The T7500 is a great machine, i presume you dont have the 2nd CPU daughterboard, these can be found on ebay and allow you to add a second CPU and a further 6 sticks of Ram, quite useful if you need it however if you are running windows you have to run the professional version to use the 2nd CPU. the dell website has the service manual that details a full strip down of the machine in a step by step manner. there is also a memory installation guide as you can fit a total of 196GB into it but you have to know what you are doing. I found pretty much any ECC 1333mhz worked, i have also in the past installed ECC 1600mhz when it was cheaper, it did work but ran at 1333

 

it does support SLI but only for Quadro cards.

 

The PSU is 1100w silver rated although i once had one that was platinum rated, not sure how that happened.

 

as well as the onboard raid one of the options at new was a dell PERC 6i raid controller to run SAS drives, you will find clips in the machine above the expansion card brackets for routing the PERC cables as well as a clip on the heatsink shroud to store the perc card battery.

 

The biggest thing to remember is if you bought that machine in 2009 with 12Gb ram, a quadro FX3800 and two W5580 quad core Xeons it would have set you back $12,000 US

 

10 years later and you get it for 100.

 

 

 

 

 

[ZzLy]

On 2/29/2020 at 6:26 AM, Cbanter said:

Hey guys, I have been doing research for weeks upon weeks on processors and gpus. I am planning to build up my first PC and get into pc gaming on a budget, while also using the pc for everyday use and video and audio editing. I am buying a used Dell T7500 with an Xeon X5675, 32gb ram, 500gb ssd, 2tb hdd, and a Quadro FX5800 gpu for $100 tomorrow morning. I got one heck of a deal, I believe! I also just bought a used GTX 980 for $70. After researching benchmarks, I did a "can my pc run it" and a bottleneck calculator on PC Builds. Seems that with the x5675 and the gtx 980 I am getting a 20% bottleneck score, which supposedly is not good at all. I then changed the cpu to an i7-3770, as I have an hp 6300 with that chip in it, and the bottleneck went down to practically nothing and the overall FPS on average was like 30+ FPS more than on the x5675. 

 

So, my question is this, is it worth spending the money on just an unlocked multiplier cpu like a W3690, so I can just increase the multipliers, as I can't overclock on the stock boards, keep the x5675 and run with it, or build up a computer around the i7-3770? 

 

My goal here is the get the best value and performance pc that I can get. I want to keep costs down as low as I can. Thanks. 

You certainly get two amazing deals, props to that. The X5675 is a sixcore part so it will do better in video editing and other such multithreaded applications, but the lower clock speed however means it will be slower in games that don't need 6 cores. The X56-- xeons are overclockable tho, and the X5675 specifically is known for people getting high clocks, so it might ne binned. People have easily gotten 4GHz on the X5675 with a good motherboard, however I doubt that your Dell OEM motherboard will support overclocking. I'm not sure what kind of conclusion I can pull from this, but good luck with your build.

[Cbanter]

Thank you guys. Yes, I've looked into the other two radiator options. May have to pick one up. 

 

So, I'm still really tempted to at least pick up two 8gb ram sticks, as that is a valid configuration, to upgrade a bit. Maybe it does nothing, but for $17!? Heck, for another $33 I could have a total of 48gb ram! Not sure I'll ever need it but... It's fun. Haha! 

 

I think to unlock the potential of the the gtx 980 I should at least get a xeon w3680 so that I can boost the multipliers some. 

 

Also, no, the dell does not support bios overclocking. 

[Ragnarsdad]

Don't forget to keep your sticks to sets of three to maximise the triple channel ram, every boost helps

 

[Cbanter]

17 minutes ago, Ragnarsdad said:

Don't forget to keep your sticks to sets of three to maximise the triple channel ram, every boost helps

 

Very confusing, since the dell t7500 service manual says the supported configuration is two 8gb sticks and 4 4gb sticks. The next level up is all 8gb sticks for a total of 48gb ram.

 

Are you saying that using three 8gb sticks is fine? 

[Ragnarsdad]

Yup, i have one running three 8GB sticks right now, just make sur eyou put then in the right slot. most computers use dual channel, some high end use quad channel however, socket 1366 uses triple channel so it is always best to ensure you have either three or all 6 of the ram slots filled. for best performance stick with matching sticks but if you cant afford or obtain matching sticks you are still better off having 3 or 6 slots filled with mismatched sticks. remember that the ram will operate at the lowest speed stick you have. 

 

Three 8Gb sticks would be fine and give you 24GB, you could then, if you wanted at a later date get another three to up it to 48.

 

I have seen a few systems with the daughterboard maxed out to 196gb of ram but that was for a chap who was running lots of virtual machines.

 

BTW, if you haven't already, check to make sure you have the latest bios installed, i had issues upgrading the CPU on one of mine and it was all down to a BIOS issue.

[bimmerman]

Also, on RAM-- the Xeons are officially stated to only work with 24GB of unbuffered RAM (e.g., your standard consumer stuff). ECC ram is where the capacity limits are much much higher.

 

Also, some boards (EVGA SR-2, for instance) just don't like lots of RAM regardless of ECC or not. It's a bit of a crapshoot, but if you're using a dual Xeon-intended board and not an i7-intended board, likely will be fine.

 

Also, feel free to check out the Xeon HEDT thread here. Lots of folks running LGA1366 and newer doing hoodrat stuff. e.g., @Zando Bob, myself, others.

[Zando_]

14 hours ago, bimmerman said:

Depends on what you're doing but likely no. I have 24 GB on my X5675 machine and barely use half of it.

^^ Same here, I just have 24GB because I started with a 2x8GB kit and wanted to add a matching DIMM for triple channel. 

6 minutes ago, bimmerman said:

Also, on RAM-- the Xeons are officially stated to only work with 24GB of unbuffered RAM (e.g., your standard consumer stuff). ECC ram is where the capacity limits are much much higher.

Officially yes, though they work fine with 8GB DIMMs. I haven't tried running 6 8GB DIMMs for a total of 48GB though . 

7 minutes ago, bimmerman said:

Also, some boards (EVGA SR-2, for instance) just don't like lots of RAM regardless of ECC or not. It's a bit of a crapshoot, but if you're using a dual Xeon-intended board and not an i7-intended board, likely will be fine.

I've seen a bunch of lads run 48GB (so 24GB per CPU), but yeah not a lot more. Probably because most lads are OCers lol, what are we gonna do with all that RAM? SR-2 is also a funky board overall though, it'll pull wacky stuff but gets away with it because no other board can compare

8 minutes ago, bimmerman said:

Also, feel free to check out the Xeon HEDT thread here. Lots of folks running LGA1366 and newer doing hoodrat stuff. e.g., @Zando Bob, myself, others.

Yos! I'll slap the link here for ez clicks, but it's in my sig too:

 

[bimmerman]

Just now, Zando Bob said:

Officially yes, though they work fine with 8GB DIMMs. I haven't tried running 6 8GB DIMMs for a total of 48GB though . 

 

I've seen a bunch of lads run 48GB (so 24GB per CPU), but yeah not a lot more. Probably because most lads are OCers lol, what are we gonna do with all that RAM? SR-2 is also a funky board overall though, it'll pull wacky stuff but gets away with it because no other board can compare

 

Yea, the SR-2 is a weird beast. I have 48GB in mine and it works fine, but folks seem to have a hell of a time going with 8GB dimms-- there's a thread titled 'SR-2 96GB secret sauce' on evga's forums with...opinions in it. Weird board is weird.

[Cbanter]

7 hours ago, Ragnarsdad said:

Yup, i have one running three 8GB sticks right now, just make sur eyou put then in the right slot. most computers use dual channel, some high end use quad channel however, socket 1366 uses triple channel so it is always best to ensure you have either three or all 6 of the ram slots filled. for best performance stick with matching sticks but if you cant afford or obtain matching sticks you are still better off having 3 or 6 slots filled with mismatched sticks. remember that the ram will operate at the lowest speed stick you have. 

 

Three 8Gb sticks would be fine and give you 24GB, you could then, if you wanted at a later date get another three to up it to 48.

 

I have seen a few systems with the daughterboard maxed out to 196gb of ram but that was for a chap who was running lots of virtual machines.

 

BTW, if you haven't already, check to make sure you have the latest bios installed, i had issues upgrading the CPU on one of mine and it was all down to a BIOS issue.

What I meant was is 3 8gb sticks and 3 4gb sticks OK, as per the manual it for some reason only shows two 8gb sticks with 4 4gb sticks approved. I'm really wondering if it's worth upgrading at all though. I don't do a tone of things all at once. 

 

Also, I don't have the riser board. The guy I bought it from said he should have it somewhere, so maybe I'll get it. 

 

And, I definitely will check that section of the forums out. Thanks! 

[bimmerman]

if you don't need more RAM, I'd funnel that money into something else unless the $20ish is immaterial. In which case why not?

[Cbanter]

I gotcha. I appreciate the advice. 

 

OK, so back to the cpu. 

 

If I switch to a w3680 and bump the multipliers, what kind of bump in performance overall will I notice over the x5675? 

[Zando_]

4 minutes ago, Cbanter said:

I gotcha. I appreciate the advice. 

 

OK, so back to the cpu. 

 

If I switch to a w3680 and bump the multipliers, what kind of bump in performance overall will I notice over the x5675? 

Does your board let you bump the multis? I don't know that 5520 lets you do that, other than on the SR-2 which is a purpose-built OCing board with some fuckery by EVGA. And what clock are you thinking you'll hit? 

[Cbanter]

39 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

Does your board let you bump the multis? I don't know that 5520 lets you do that, other than on the SR-2 which is a purpose-built OCing board with some fuckery by EVGA. And what clock are you thinking you'll hit? 

Intel extreme tuning or throttlestop will work. 4ghz is easily attainable and sustainable from what I see. 

 

The videos I have seen comparing stock vs overclock show a nice boost for sure. 

[Zando_]

14 minutes ago, Cbanter said:

Intel extreme tuning or throttlestop will work. 4ghz is easily attainable and sustainable from what I see. 

 

The videos I have seen comparing stock vs overclock show a nice boost for sure. 

It should be, these chips come into their own around 4-4.2, most can do higher if you have the board/cooler to push them. Does XTU/Throttlestop also let you mess with the uncore clocks? That's also a big part of making X58 chips snappier. I've only OCed on X58 boards built for OCing so I haven't used any of these software utilities lol. 

[Cbanter]

37 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

It should be, these chips come into their own around 4-4.2, most can do higher if you have the board/cooler to push them. Does XTU/Throttlestop also let you mess with the uncore clocks? That's also a big part of making X58 chips snappier. I've only OCed on X58 boards built for OCing so I haven't used any of these software utilities lol. 

No, I don't believe so. I think it's only for turbo. I could be wrong. I messed around with it on my laptop for fun with an i7-4710hq and it allows you to do a decent bit.