Xeon for gaming

[Moress]

So I seen around that certain Xeons are essentially I5 / I7s that are cheaper and without their IGPU. Ive been thinking about picking one up that would be the same as an Haswell I7 in gaming and saving myself a penny in the process since I already have a 970 as well as an R9 280 as a backup if the 970 ever dies so having the Igpu isnt needed even as a backup.

 

If this is true, which Xeons would match the Haswell I5 or I7s in gaming?

[glitchmaster0001]

4 minutes ago, Moress said:

So I seen around that certain Xeons are essentially I5 / I7s that are cheaper and without their IGPU. Ive been thinking about picking one up that would be the same as an Haswell I7 in gaming and saving myself a penny in the process since I already have a 970 as well as an R9 280 as a backup if the 970 ever dies so having the Igpu isnt needed even as a backup.

 

If this is true, which Xeons would match the Haswell I5 or I7s in gaming?

some of them do and just have small things that differ like ECC support or OC support. other than that they preform identical to their i7 counterparts. for example an Xeon E5640 is essentially an i7 920

[Moress]

1 minute ago, glitchmaster0001 said:

some of them do and just have small things that differ like ECC support or OC support. other than that they preform identical to their i7 counterparts. 

Do you know which ones would match the I7 4970k or I5 4690k?

[catzambia]

6 minutes ago, Moress said:

So I seen around that certain Xeons are essentially I5 / I7s that are cheaper and without their IGPU. Ive been thinking about picking one up that would be the same as an Haswell I7 in gaming and saving myself a penny in the process since I already have a 970 as well as an R9 280 as a backup if the 970 ever dies so having the Igpu isnt needed even as a backup.

 

If this is true, which Xeons would match the Haswell I5 or I7s in gaming?

Well, you have to make sure that the xeon is fast enough, and that the games you are playing will actually use more threads. because an 8t xeon@3.0 will perform worse than a 4t i5@ 4.0 in a game that only uses a couple of threads. And since most games only use 4 threads, with no additional performance gains with more threads, you'll likely be better off with a higher clocked i5 or i7.

[HKZeroFive]

2 minutes ago, Moress said:

Do you know which ones would match the I7 4970k or I5 4690k?

Xeons come with the disadvantage of not being able to overclock like the K-series CPUs. The Haswell equivalent would be the Xeon 1231 v3, which is basically the i7 4770 without the iGPU.

[Moress]

2 minutes ago, catzambia said:

Well, you have to make sure that the xeon is fast enough, and that the games you are playing will actually use more threads. because an 8t xeon@3.0 will perform worse than a 4t i5@ 4.0 in a game that only uses a couple of threads. And since most games only use 4 threads, with no additional performance with more threads, you'll likely be better off with a higher clocked i5 or i7.

Im well aware that more cores wont equal more performance in game.

I wasnt aware that xeons matched the I series in IPC. 

Would a Haswell based quad core xeon at 3.5 match a 4690k then?

[The Realist]

Well lets get something clear,i7's are made for raw performance same as i5's,Xeons are produced the same way as i7's expect they are made for power efficiency and i dont recommend a Xeon in a desktop unless 1.you can pick one cheap (Xeon E5-2670,E5-1670) 2.Benefit from the multiple cores

[glitchmaster0001]

5 minutes ago, Moress said:

Do you know which ones would match the I7 4970k or I5 4690k?

i know that a Xeon E5 1650 v3 can OC but they are still expensive. 

[LabRat]

I use a 1230v2 and have no problems gaming.

catzambia........ check your task manager next time you're using your xeon. I wouldn't buy a straight up 4core anymore.

[Electronics Wizardy]

18 minutes ago, Moress said:

Do you know which ones would match the I7 4970k or I5 4690k?

xeon e3 1231 v3

[SteveGrabowski0]

22 minutes ago, The Realist said:

Well lets get something clear,i7's are made for raw performance same as i5's,Xeons are produced the same way as i7's expect they are made for power efficiency and i dont recommend a Xeon in a desktop unless 1.you can pick one cheap (Xeon E5-2670,E5-1670) 2.Benefit from the multiple cores

Haswell Xeon E3s are just locked i5 and i7 marketed as entry level server/workstation processors.

[SteveGrabowski0]

25 minutes ago, Moress said:

Im well aware that more cores wont equal more performance in game.

I wasnt aware that xeons matched the I series in IPC. 

Would a Haswell based quad core xeon at 3.5 match a 4690k then?

An E3-1231v3 at 3.6 GHz isn't going to match an overclocked i5-4690k at say 4.5 GHz unless the game is really dependent on having those 8 threads the E3-1231v3 provides. In a few games like Crysis 3 the E3-1231v3 will probably do better but the overclocked i5 are still usually the best price to performance chips for gaming.

[The Realist]

3 minutes ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

Haswell Xeon E3s are just locked i5 and i7 marketed as entry level server/workstation processors.

You dont get it? Xeon's are not made for Desktops they are made for Workstations and Servers because of there TDP and Power Efficiency! this server has allot of Xeons (around 8K) and they save shit tons on those 20w less than a i7 spends,i would recommend a Xeon if you can get a i7 

 

27 minutes ago, The Realist said:

unless 1.you can pick one cheap (Xeon E5-2670,E5-1670) 2.Benefit from the multiple cores

 

[The Realist]

I would not recommend a Xeon if you can get a i7*

[SteveGrabowski0]

3 minutes ago, The Realist said:

You dont get it? Xeon's are not made for Desktops they are made for Workstations and Servers because of there TDP and Power Efficiency! this server has allot of Xeons (around 8K) and they save shit tons on those 20w less than a i7 spends,i would recommend a Xeon if you can get a i7 

There is a big difference between Xeon E3 vs Xeon E5/E7. The E5/E7 are the ones you're referring to. The Xeon E3 v3 (Haswell) are the same thing as the Haswell i5/i7 with very minor changes like ECC support, 8MB L3 cache on all of them (i5 only has 6MB L3 cache), no IGP on many of them, and 4W lower tdp likely due to binning (mine never drops below the full +2-bin 3.6 GHz quadcore turbo under 100% load in Prime95).

[The Realist]

Those 4W means to them allot more than you think...+ the things that servers/workstations/host machines etc...REALLY REALLY REALLY benefit from all of the cores!

[SteveGrabowski0]

17 minutes ago, The Realist said:

I would not recommend a Xeon if you can get a i7*

The reason the E3-1230v2, E3-1230v3, and E3-1231v3 got popular is because they're i7-3770, i7-4770, and i7-4771 minus 100-200 MHz for $50 cheaper. Intel finally caught on with Skylake and disallowed their use with consumer H and Z series boards after the E3-1231v3 got really popular with people who game and stream. It always gets an honorable mention as a top high end gaming cpu in Tom's Hardware gaming cpu recommendations. What they wrote:

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-cpus,3986.html

You never expected to see a Xeon in our list of recommendations to gamers, did you? Nowadays, Intel's entry-level to mid-range enterprise chips are derived from the same dies as its desktop offerings. That means this Xeon E3-1231v3 is almost identical to the Core i7-4770. Except that it doesn't have integrated graphics, bringing power consumption down a bit. 

The Xeon's price is about $20 higher than the Core i5-4690K. One gives you plenty of headroom to overclock. The other enables Hyper-Threading. Depending on the applications you run in the background while you game (streaming, anyone?), four extra logical cores could be the better choice.

 

[The Realist]

We all know intel made old Xeons perform really well all tho i avoid them unless you find them for cheap and where i live Xeons are expensive like $200 more than i7's since i was in the US but moved back to EU for about 4 years

[The Realist]

My favorite Xeon is the E5-2670 which you can find used for $60 and it has 8 cores and 16 threads,but its a 2011 socket and for 2011 socket mobos are usually really expensive on ebay