Bottleneck points for older Xeon E5-1620 and E5-2960

[Cylon Agent]

What GPUs could I pair with these CPUs and not bottleneck them too badly? That is, I'm technically OK 'bottlenecking' them some, but not to an extent that the upgrade is no longer a good value.  I.e. would pairing them with a 3060 be reasonable, or would I be better off with a used 2060 and more modern Ryzen CPU (of course, then I'd need to factor in a new motherboard and RAM - currently have 64GB in these system)? Also, it looks like I can overclock the 1620 to around 4Ghz...

 

Thanks,

[Action_Johnson]

Get the biggest GPU you can affor

[Radium_Angel]

9 minutes ago, Cylon Agent said:

3060 be reasonable, or would I be better off with a used 2060

Given current GPU prices and availability, you'd be lucky to pair them with a GT 710...

[Cylon Agent]

1 minute ago, Radium_Angel said:

Given current GPU prices and availability, you'd be lucky to pair them with a GT 710...

Let's say I'm willing to wait until... February lol.

[Radium_Angel]

Just now, Cylon Agent said:

Let's say I'm willing to wait until... February lol.

Heh, you and me both brother.

 

As way of reference, I'm running 2xE5-2643 v2 with a GTX 1060 3GB nVidia card, and I feel there is enough power (CPU, not wattage) on the table that going up to a 2070 would be a worthwhile expenditure, but not until prices drop dramatically, given the MSRP of the 3060 is supposed to be 399$, it should drive used 20xx series right into the dirt....again, assuming availability, which isn't something I think we are going to see until Spring of 2021.

[Cylon Agent]

1 hour ago, Radium_Angel said:

... I feel there is enough power (CPU, not wattage) on the table that going up to a 2070 would be a worthwhile expenditure...

I am more curious how you came to this conclusion. For me, and it varies by application or game, I simply noticed relatively low CPU utilization (in optimized games), which I interpret to mean the CPUs still have some life in them. I do wonder about any new or special instruction sets or capabilities I might be missing out on though. Also, I do a lot of video and CG rendering and wonder how that might impact things - that said, both pieces of software (DaVinci and Blender) use GPU compute.

[Radium_Angel]

1 minute ago, Cylon Agent said:

I am more curious how you came to this conclusion. For me, and it varies by application or game, I simply noticed relatively low CPU utilization (in optimized games), which I interpret to mean the CPUs still have some life in them. I do wonder about any new or special instruction sets or capabilities I might be missing out on though. Also, I do a lot of video and CG rendering and wonder how that might impact things - that said, both pieces of software (DaVinci and Blender) use GPU compute.

By watching a lot of videos, since the Chinese starting introducing a ton of dual "x79" motherboards (and single ITX ones as well) there has been renewed interest in cheap workstation-class systems. Much of the benchmark testing using the latest and greatest GPUs and will tell you if the CPU or GPU is the limiting factors. the YT channel "Craft Computing" has some very nice and detailed reviews on these things.

 

Bear in mind the old Ivy Bridge CPUs, as cheap as they are, are a dead end as more and more games are taking advantage of instruction sets that don't exist in those chips (Tech YES City pointed that out in his review of a dual x79 board) so if gaming is your primary interest, you'll need to be careful about how you spend your dollars.

[Cylon Agent]

Thanks @Radium_Angel I actually have 1 of these CPUs in a Chinese X79 motherboard. I bought it on a long shot and, honestly, I was very pleasantly surprised. Lots of PCI express slots, 6 SATA ports (only 2 are 3.0 ....) and popped in 64GB of that inexpensive ECC RAM and and EVO 970 SSD and ... well, I am quite happy minus the GPU performance (1060 on one and a strange mix of Quadro and Tesla on the other). 

 

Really appreciate the reply and the YT recommendations!

[Radium_Angel]

2 minutes ago, Cylon Agent said:

Thanks @Radium_Angel I actually have 1 of these CPUs in a Chinese X79 motherboard. I bought it on a long shot and, honestly, I was very pleasantly surprised. Lots of PCI express slots, 6 SATA ports (only 2 are 3.0 ....) and popped in 64GB of that inexpensive ECC RAM and and EVO 970 SSD and ... well, I am quite happy minus the GPU performance (1060 on one and a strange mix of Quadro and Tesla on the other). 

 

Really appreciate the reply and the YT recommendations!

You are welcome. I love messing with strange hardware and pushing the limits, so when these x79 and x99 systems hit my radar I was highly interested.

There is a Russian fellow, Myconst, that devotes his channel almost exclusively to reviewing these boards and hacking the drivers to do things Nature never intended.

[Action_Johnson]

2 hours ago, Radium_Angel said:

Heh, you and me both brother.

 

As way of reference, I'm running 2xE5-2643 v2 with a GTX 1060 3GB nVidia card, and I feel there is enough power (CPU, not wattage) on the table that going up to a 2070 would be a worthwhile expenditure, but not until prices drop dramatically, given the MSRP of the 3060 is supposed to be 399$, it should drive used 20xx series right into the dirt....again, assuming availability, which isn't something I think we are going to see until Spring of 2021.

I would think running Dual-CPU's for games, would introduce a ton of latency, thus lower framerates? For a CAD or rendering station, sure latency doesn't matter, but for games? Why?

[Radium_Angel]

On 12/11/2020 at 5:48 PM, Action_Johnson said:

Why

On 12/11/2020 at 5:48 PM, Action_Johnson said:

would introduce a ton of latency, thus lower framerates?

That's not been my experience. Yes, some games (apparently GTA V is notorious for this) have no idea what to do with dual CPUs, but all the games I've run through my system (at last count, 46 in my steam library, but of all of them, I think Doom 2016 is the most hardware demanding, so take this with a grain of salt) are fine with it.

 

As to why, because it's something different, not just another Ryzen system. Also, for me at least, maximum performance ins't my main goal in my system.