Question for the Intel folks...

[An0maly_76]

I'm typically an AMD guy, but I'm curious, I see quite a few Intel folks on a shoestring using older Xeons as opposed to a platform upgrade. Now, this is understandable in most scenario, as I've seen a few that were 6C or 8C, maybe even some more than that. But in perusing some info on a board I'm using for a couple budget builds, I ran across mention of support for Xeon, something I didn't think was normal for a single-socket board. Looking them up, the top tier option was a 4C / 8T at 3.70 - 4.10 Ghz, a smidge faster than the i7-2600 going into one of these builds.

 

Searching for these on Amazon and eBay prompted some outrageous prices of $180-$200. So I'm curious. Why? Were these Xeons hyperthreading before it was cool or something? Does EEC buffering make that big of a difference? You can pick up an i7-2600 all day long for $25-$40. So what reason would anyone have for paying that kind of money for a seemingly similar processor just because of a name?

[Needfuldoer]

ECC support is basically the only notable difference between the E3 Xeons and regular i5s and i7s. (The integrated graphics are slightly faster on Xeons, but that just means it's a potato with racing stripes.) Desktop CPUs just sell in far greater numbers than low-end workstation CPUs.

 

The E5s are where the fun is. Once you step up to LGA1356 and LGA2011, you get more PCIe lanes, triple- and quad-channel registered ECC RAM support, multi-processor support, and dramatically higher core counts.

[An0maly_76]

3 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

ECC support is basically the only notable difference between the E3 Xeons and regular i5s and i7s. (The integrated graphics are slightly faster on Xeons, but that just means it's a potato with racing stripes.) Desktop CPUs just sell in far greater numbers than low-end workstation CPUs.

 

The E5s are where the fun is. Once you step up to LGA1356 and LGA2011, you get more PCIe lanes, triple- and quad-channel registered ECC RAM support, multi-processor support, and dramatically higher core counts.

 

So an LGA1155 Xeon isn't really any better than an i7-2600 or i7-3770?

[Needfuldoer]

1 hour ago, An0maly_76 said:

So an LGA1155 Xeon isn't really any better than an i7-2600 or i7-3770?

Not by enough to justify the price premium (in my opinion), no.

 

E3 Xeons might have slightly higher stock clocks, but their instruction sets and cache are identical. (And a 3770k can probably beat them with a mild overclock anyway.) They're all quad core Ivy Bridge chips.

 

If you need more performance than an i7 3770 has to give, it's time to upgrade platforms.

 

[An0maly_76]

Just now, Needfuldoer said:

Not by enough to justify the price premium (in my opinion), no.

 

E3 Xeons might have slightly higher stock clocks, but their instruction sets and cache are identical. (And a 3770k can probably beat them with a mild overclock anyway.) They're all quad core Ivy Bridge chips.

 

If you need more performance than an i7 3770 has to give, it's time to upgrade platforms.

 

I figured as much looking at the specs. Seemed like they just slapped a catchy name on a glorified 2600K and I was wondering why.

 

You said the fun is in the E5's, I know of some servers with E5606 coming available. Are those the ones you're talking about, or do you mean the Ex-xxxx vx series?

Edited October 28, 2022 by An0maly_76
Revised, more info

[Needfuldoer]

13 minutes ago, An0maly_76 said:

You said the fun is in the E5's, I know of some servers with E5606 coming available. Are those the ones you're talking about, or do you mean the Ex-xxxx vx series?

The E56xx chips are Nehalem, and the E5606 specifically is a pokey quad core without hyperthreading. 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Xeon_processors_(Nehalem-based)

 

You want the E5-24xx or E5-26xx series. v0 is Sandy Bridge, v2 is Ivy Bridge, v3 is Haswell, v4 is Broadwell. (There are no E5-24xx v3s or v4s because Intel realized there was virtually no market for a midsize workstation CPU with 2/3 the features of the big server socket.)

 

I wouldn't bother with anything older than Sandy Bridge. The performance isn't worth the power consumption.

[Sarra]

I upgraded from an i5 4440 to a Xeon E3 1280V3. No ECC support, but it was the same performance as a 4790, and a third of the price at the time. It gave me another year with that machine before it was just too slow, and I had to upgrade.

[An0maly_76]

9 hours ago, Needfuldoer said:

I wouldn't bother with anything older than Sandy Bridge. The performance isn't worth the power consumption.

 

Oh, I'm not, by far. Was informed of a possible flipper deal yesterday that turned out to be LGA775. My current projects are out of necessity, and necessity is the mother of invention.

 

See, the Lenovo M71E bombed as a media NAS, but trashing a running i7-2600 machine and loose i3-2100 processor someone could use seemed a waste. YouTube videos show either can be a budget gamer and some kids would be thrilled to have these. New retail is insane these days for what you get, not to mention undoable for some parents this Christmas, so I figured, I can help myself and help others get more for their money.

 

My GTX1650 was a no-start, because Lenovo limited the H61 I have to a GTX1060 max. So the 2600 is getting a GTX1050ti, the 2100 a GTX750ti (both 4GB EVGA SC cards). But needing a second board, $30 in header adapters to recase a $30 board didn't make sense with $40 DH77EB boards on eBay. After this, I'll never see Lenovos as anything more than donors for CPU, memory and storage.

 

DH77EB QVL shows some Xeon support, hence the question. I thought a no-markup future Xeon upgrade offer might help sell the lower-spec machine, but with an LGA1155 board, seems like an i7-2600(K) makes more sense, since the Xeon options offer only slightly higher clock speeds with the same core / thread count. And even some of those spec (or require) 1600 RAM that seems only supported by 3rd-gen and later.

Edited October 28, 2022 by An0maly_76
Revised, more info

[freeagent]

Back in the day of LGA775 and 1366 Xeons ran cooler and usually clocked better with less voltage. But even on 1366 they were a cut down version of i7.