Xeon vs i7 | Triple Channel with 4 DIMMs

[Blind X]

Hey Everyone,

 

Hope ya all are doing well.

 

So I am going to buy a Dell T3500 in the upcoming days with a Xeon X5687, which I think would perform more or less equal to the 2nd Gen i7 2600. As both of them were released in the same year. Have same 32nm manufacturing and roughly the same clock speeds. The only difference I found is that the Xeon has 12mb Cache instead of 8mb on the i7 but the Xeon lacks AVX instrinstructions.

 

So anybody here who could tell me if which one would be better or whether or not I would be able to see the difference in real world performance.

 

Second and the more important thing is that the motherboard supports 6 RAM slots, therefore Triple Channel. I am going to have 4x4GB = 16GB total RAM @1600MHz. I want to know if it is possible for me to run Triple Channel with 4 RAM sticks?

 

Any help would be highly appreciated.

 

Thanks.

[kelvinhall05]

The Xeon will probably win in multithread but the i7 will win in singlethread.

 

 

As for RAM, is 4 divisible by 3? No. Either you run three sticks (12GB) or spend more money and get 24GB total.

[Electronics Wizardy]

THe 2600 is based off a newer arch, and does a reasonble more per clock these days, Id get the 2600 if you can. 

 

 

[Blind X]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

THe 2600 is based off a newer arch, and does a reasonble more per clock these days, Id get the 2600 if you can. 

 

 

Ohh.. But I just sold the i7 2600 recently and now am purchasing the Xeon System. But the situation is that my i7 with 4gb ram was sold for the same price I am getting the xeon with 16gb.

So is there any difference I would be able to notice, like in gaming or overall responsiveness of the system?

[porina]

It depends on the use case, but I'd think the 2600 would be far better all round. The extra cache and ram channel probably has a smaller impact in most things than the newer architecture in the 2600, along with modern software using AVX that will help too. 

[Blind X]

9 minutes ago, kelvinhall05 said:

As for RAM, is 4 divisible by 3? No. Either you run three sticks (12GB) or spend more money and get 24GB total.

So here is the question. Is it worth it to downgrade to 12GB just to get Triple Channel and higher memory bandwidth or will the difference be to small to be noticed?

[Downkey]

1 minute ago, Blind X said:

So here is the question. Is it worth it to downgrade to 12GB just to get Triple Channel and higher memory bandwidth or will the difference be to small to be noticed?

The difference will be quiet small. Don’t think it was worth it.

[Blind X]

3 minutes ago, porina said:

It depends on the use case, but I'd think the 2600 would be far better all round. The extra cache and ram channel probably has a smaller impact in most things than the newer architecture in the 2600, along with modern software using AVX that will help too. 

Thank you so much for the info..

 

4 minutes ago, Blind X said:

Ohh.. But I just sold the i7 2600 recently and now am purchasing the Xeon System. But the situation is that my i7 with 4gb ram was sold for the same price I am getting the xeon with 16gb.

So is there any difference I would be able to notice, like in gaming or overall responsiveness of the system?

Was this a good deal?

[kelvinhall05]

3 minutes ago, Blind X said:

So here is the question. Is it worth it to downgrade to 12GB just to get Triple Channel and higher memory bandwidth or will the difference be to small to be noticed?

Unless you are doing stuff that you know will greatly benefit from the bandwidth, no, not worth it.

[svmlegacy]

26 minutes ago, Blind X said:

Hey Everyone,

 

Hope ya all are doing well.

 

So I am going to buy a Dell T3500 in the upcoming days with a Xeon X5687, which I think would perform more or less equal to the 2nd Gen i7 2600. As both of them were released in the same year. Have same 32nm manufacturing and roughly the same clock speeds. The only difference I found is that the Xeon has 12mb Cache instead of 8mb on the i7 but the Xeon lacks AVX instrinstructions.

 

So anybody here who could tell me if which one would be better or whether or not I would be able to see the difference in real world performance.

 

Second and the more important thing is that the motherboard supports 6 RAM slots, therefore Triple Channel. I am going to have 4x4GB = 16GB total RAM @1600MHz. I want to know if it is possible for me to run Triple Channel with 4 RAM sticks?

 

Any help would be highly appreciated.

 

Thanks.

There's a pretty big difference between Westmere-EP and Sandy Bridge. Sandy has much better IPC and AVX instructions. Triple channel memory (you can run this with 4 sticks in a flex mode) will not make up for the difference. You also have the capability of running a 6-core chip on the T3500, if you really need the threads.

 

AVX and IPC are the most important differences. It will be noticably slower in anything single core or AVX dependent.

[igormp]

22 minutes ago, Blind X said:

So I am going to buy a Dell T3500 in the upcoming days with a Xeon X5687, which I think would perform more or less equal to the 2nd Gen i7 2600. As both of them were released in the same year. Have same 32nm manufacturing and roughly the same clock speeds. The only difference I found is that the Xeon has 12mb Cache instead of 8mb on the i7 but the Xeon lacks AVX instrinstructions.

That Xeon is a Westmere µArch, same as the i7-970 or 980, and should perform similar to those when it comes to single thread perf.

 

Sandy bridge offers better performance, about ~15% more perf in single thread, while also having AVX (which some stuff do require nowadays).

27 minutes ago, Blind X said:

Second and the more important thing is that the motherboard supports 6 RAM slots, therefore Triple Channel. I am going to have 4x4GB = 16GB total RAM @1600MHz. I want to know if it is possible for me to run Triple Channel with 4 RAM sticks?

Yes, it'll work in flex mode, as in the 12gb of RAM in triple channel will have faster bandwidth and the lone 4gb will be slower. You can also have each pair running in dual-channel as most other platforms.

 

18 minutes ago, kelvinhall05 said:

The Xeon will probably win in multithread but the i7 will win in singlethread.

 

 

As for RAM, is 4 divisible by 3? No. Either you run three sticks (12GB) or spend more money and get 24GB total.

Flex mode is a thing, and those CPUs also support regular dual channel.

[Blind X]

1 minute ago, svmlegacy said:

There's a pretty big difference between Westmere-EP and Sandy Bridge. Sandy has much better IPC and AVX instructions. Triple channel memory (you can run this with 4 sticks in a flex mode) will not make up for the difference. You also have the capability of running a 6-core chip on the T3500, if you really need the threads.

 

AVX and IPC are the most important differences. It will be noticably slower in anything single core or AVX dependent.

Thank you for your input.

 

I am not going to render videos on this pc or anything hardcore. The pc is going to be used for daily web browsing and gaming with occasionally recording my gameplays. 

 

So is there any task here that is AVX dependent and might make me feel like I have an overall slower system than before?

[svmlegacy]

5 minutes ago, Blind X said:

Thank you for your input.

 

I am not going to render videos on this pc or anything hardcore. The pc is going to be used for daily web browsing and gaming with occasionally recording my gameplays. 

 

So is there any task here that is AVX dependent and might make me feel like I have an overall slower system than before?

Windows, web browsers, and a variety of games use AVX if available.

[igormp]

6 minutes ago, Blind X said:

The pc is going to be used for daily web browsing and gaming with occasionally recording my gameplays. 

What software do you use to record your gameplays? If they're software-based, then it likely uses AVX and will be slower without it.

 

Some games and anti cheat software also require AVX, they won't even launch without it.

[Blind X]

I get the idea guys.

 

It seems like the processor would be roughly 15% slower than the i7 but I hope I won't be able to notice it since I am not benchmarking them head to head.

 

As for the RAM, TBVH I don't have any idea about flex mode and how you do that, but for now it seems that its not worth it to downgradr my system to 12GB just for the Triple Channel for my usecase.

 

Am I right?

[igormp]

1 minute ago, Blind X said:

I get the idea guys.

 

It seems like the processor would be roughly 15% slower than the i7 but I hope I won't be able to notice it since I am not benchmarking them head to head.

 

As for the RAM, TBVH I don't have any idea about flex mode and how you do that, but for now it seems that its not worth it to downgradr my system to 12GB just for the Triple Channel for my usecase.

 

Am I right?

You can use all of the 16gb without worries. Leaving those at either flex mode (triple + single channel) or dual channel won't likely matter much and will be way better than running out of ram.

[Blind X]

1 minute ago, igormp said:

What software do you use to record your gameplays? If they're software-based, then it likely uses AVX and will be slower without it.

 

Some games and anti cheat software also require AVX, they won't even launch without it.

OBS and GeForce Experience but I think I would be going with an AMD GPU so GE is not an option.

 

What?? Games won't launch? I play CSGO, DOTA 2, GTA 5, FORZA HORIZON 4, CRYSIS 2, BATTLEIFELD 5 and 1, MINECRAFT XENOVERSE 2, NFS HEAT, TOMB RAIDER, WITCHER 3

[igormp]

Just now, Blind X said:

OBS and GeForce Experience but I think I would be going with an AMD GPU so GE is not an option.

 

What?? Games won't launch? I play CSGO, DOTA 2, GTA 5, FORZA HORIZON 4, CRYSIS 2, BATTLEIFELD 5 and 1, MINECRAFT XENOVERSE 2, NFS HEAT, TOMB RAIDER, WITCHER 3

OBS uses x264 underneath, which uses AVX to speed up things. AMD's encoder is not really good in terms of quality, but it's up to you to try it out and see if it's good enough for you.

 

I don't think any of those games require AVX. The ones I'm aware of are some ubisoft titles, Journey and Star Citizen.

[Blind X]

Thanks alot everyone for your help and precious time.

[kelvinhall05]

54 minutes ago, igormp said:

and those CPUs also support regular dual channel.

But OP was asking about triple channel lmfao

[igormp]

2 hours ago, kelvinhall05 said:

But OP was asking about triple channel lmfao

OP clearly didn't knew about other modes, and you made it look like running in triple channel was his only option when it's not the case.

[kelvinhall05]

1 minute ago, igormp said:

OP clearly didn't knew about other modes, and you made it look like running in triple channel was his only option when it's not the case.

OP seems to have edited their post between when I commented and when you did.

[Blind X]

9 hours ago, kelvinhall05 said:

OP seems to have edited their post between when I commented and when you did.

The post was not edited.