A quick one to Xeon users. Is it worth it?

[centurion_08]

Hello.

So the time came when my xeon 1270v2 is shitting itself due to lack of features. That prevents me from playing Alan Wake 2 for example.
Is an upgrade to 2697v3 worth the hussle? I seen them goin for absolute dirt price. They are packed with missing features avx2 to name 1.
Framerate in many games goes above 60 or stays at it. Emulation is prolly a dud but still. Can some users here shed some light on the matter?
Read that people tend to buy some Chinese mobos with ECC/NON ECC ram sticks. How faulty they are in the long run. I got my xeon for almost a pack of smokes and i slapped it on my already in use mobo.

Thank you.

[RONOTHAN##]

2 minutes ago, centurion_08 said:

Is an upgrade to 2697v3 worth the hussle?

If you're just gaming, no. You might have a ton of cores, but games like Alan Wake 2 don't care about core count, they care about single thread performance, and in that regard you can get something like an R5 3600 that will wipe the floor with the 2697v3 in games for about the same amount overall without having to go for sketchy Chinese motherboards. Heck, even an R5 1600 will be better for games than a 2697v3. 

 

If you're doing a production rig or need a ton of PCIe, then sure, a Xeon can make sense, but not as a gaming chip. 

[Zando_]

17 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

but not as a gaming chip. 

Yep. The only ones that were killer value for gaming was seven years ago when Ryzen did not exist, and you could get a cheap 6-8 core chip with an X chipset motherboard and easily overclock to 4.2-4.5Ghz with a competitive IPC at the time. Zen/Zen+ endangered these Xeons, Zen 2 wiped them out. 

 

EDIT: Worth noting that this is in the US market, overseas I know mainstream Ryzen/Intel chips can be much more expensive, even used, thus why these Chinese boards exist to take advantage of mass Xeon selloffs from upgrading datacenters. 

[OhYou_]

its not worth building a hazwell based gaming pc at this point.
get something that is at least kaby lake unless you already own half the hardware like a mobo and ram, then sure get a $10 cpu for it but, buying all the parts to build a pc? Get 8th gen intel or 3rd gen ryzen minimum

[da na]

Xeon is not worth it for just gaming. The low single thread performance just does not stack up well with any modern CPU.

[Pasi123]

Not really worth it unless you already have a X99 board (or want to play around with one), but even then for gaming a 8c/16t Xeon E5-1660v3 or E5-1680v3 would be better because they can be overclocked.