Dual-socket Motherboards for gaming!?!?

[Jukebox461]

Is there any validity to the idea of putting multiple gaming-spec CPUs in a dual-socket board? I get that the main purpose of these boards is to provide space for (what I will leave as) "Other" computing needs, but why can't I build a gaming PC with 2 x i7-7700k? And would it actually be any better than say, a cold meat pie and a 750ti?

[shadowbyte]

oh boy here we go

good luck finding a board that supports dual LGA 1151 processors

afaik, dual socket boards are for stuff like LGA 2011 and 2011-3.

however, there are some older board for LGA 1366 and 775.

tbh, it's not worth it at all for just gaming

[Enderman]

1) those CPUs do not support multi-CPU configurations

 

2) adding more CPUs does not give any benefit for gaming

 

3) those multi-CPU motherboards are for servers

[Electronics Wizardy]

Dual socket won't be any faster, and normally slower as there are longer latencys and multiple numa nodes. Some games won't even launch

 

You also needs xeons(or server cpu's) and the boards are very expensive.

[shadowbyte]

Just now, Enderman said:

1) those CPUs do not support multi-CPU configurations

 

2) adding more CPUs does not give any benefit for gaming

 

3) those multi-CPU motherboards are for servers

or some workstations

[PCGuy_5960]

3 minutes ago, shadowbyte said:

however, there are some older board for LGA 1366 and 775.

LGA 771*

[shadowbyte]

Just now, PCGuy_5960 said:

LGA 771*

ah, close enough

I did the LGA 771 xeon mod once, and got a bit confused lmao

 

[PCGuy_5960]

1 minute ago, shadowbyte said:

ah, close enough

I did the LGA 771 xeon mod once, and got a bit confused lmao

Now you can get CPUs that are pre-modded to fit on LGA 775 motherboards (on aliexpress) 

[shadowbyte]

Just now, PCGuy_5960 said:

Now you can get CPUs that are pre-modded to fit on LGA 775 motherboards on aliexpress

wow

that's fantastic

can you also get pre-modded boards?

[PCGuy_5960]

1 minute ago, shadowbyte said:

wow

that's fantastic

can you also get pre-modded boards?

They have even drilled holes on the CPU so that it can fit into LGA775 motherboards without having to cut anything

[Jukebox461]

7 minutes ago, shadowbyte said:

tbh, it's not worth it at all for just gaming

Can you explain why? Is it a cost/benefit analysis? Too much hassle? You personally don't like the idea? You've posted 2 very negative and less-than helpful responses on posts of mine just now, I'm wondering if you have any information you have available to support your poo-poo-ing?

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, Jukebox461 said:

Can you explain why? Is it a cost/benefit analysis? Too much hassle? You personally don't like the idea? You've posted 2 very negative and less-than helpful responses on posts of mine just now, I'm wondering if you have any information you have available to support your poo-poo-ing?

games won't use all the cores, and normally the cpus are clocked lower, and games like high clock speed. Also you have numa nodes and higher latencys that will slow programs down that can't use all the cores

[shadowbyte]

3 minutes ago, Jukebox461 said:

Can you explain why? Is it a cost/benefit analysis? Too much hassle? You personally don't like the idea? You've posted 2 very negative and less-than helpful responses on posts of mine just now, I'm wondering if you have any information you have available to support your poo-poo-ing?

whoa chill 

Have you looked at any pricing for dual socket stuff? Boards aren't cheap, and the Xeon processors that fit aren't cheap either. Not to mention ECC RAM. For gaming, you want fewer, faster cores, something that the large core count and low clock speed of a Xeon won't provide. The highest I'd personally go for gaming is X99, with something like a 5820k or 6800k, which is what I personally did. Thanks to overclocking, the chip at 4 ish ghz has enough speed for single threaded stuff like gaming, as well as multi-threaded stuff, like video encoding, but most of that is offloaded to the GPU anyway. 

Addressing my negative responses, your original topics haven't been, shall we say, the most intelligent of questions.

thanks!

[MedievalMatt]

In my experience, its always going to be better to buy a single higher performing X rather than multiple lower performing Ys.  This is true in general (there are always exceptions) with CPUs, and GPUs.  if you have two cheaper (an likely older) quad cores for 8 threads, likely the architecture will be less effective/efficient and your either going to be pouring money away in power or losing out on performance over a single newer and therefore pricier 8-core CPU.  Also bear in mind that you need to spend 2X whatever the older CPU costs for a second one.  so unless they are less than half what youd pay for a single solution, your still losing money.

 

At the end of the day, do what you want.  These days the performance difference is probably 5 - 10% which is pretty negligible.  But it will be there.  you sacrifice A TON of practicality by using a dual socket motherboard as most cases wont fit them without modding.

 

Edit - Spelling

Edited February 26, 2017 by MedievalMatt

[Jukebox461]

Just now, shadowbyte said:

whoa chill 

Have you looked at any pricing for dual socket stuff? Boards aren't cheap, and the Xeon processors that fit aren't cheap either. Not to mention ECC RAM. For gaming, you want fewer, faster cores, something that the large core count and low clock speed of a Xeon won't provide. The highest I'd personally go for gaming is X99, with something like a 5820k or 6800k, which is what I personally did. Thanks to overclocking, the chip at 4 ish ghz has enough speed for single threaded stuff like gaming, as well as multi-threaded stuff, like video encoding, but most of that is offloaded to the GPU anyway. 

Addressing my negative responses, your original topics haven't been, shall we say, the most intelligent of questions.

thanks!

There are only unintelligent answers. Do you really think this guy would release videos if everyone knew everything already? If you have one look on the channel, we have things like 4 x TITAN X Ps in the one build, gaming on dual-Xeons for kicks... you really think I hadn't considered the futility of this idea? That's what this show is all about! We get a whole chunk of awesome, informative entertainment and then there's these intermittent bursts of megalomania like "The Compensator", just to see what it's like. That was the nature of my question. Just to see what it would be like. You've not only failed to help in any way, but you're evidently a prat.

[shadowbyte]

Just now, Jukebox461 said:

There are only unintelligent answers. Do you really think this guy would release videos if everyone knew everything already? If you have one look on the channel, we have things like 4 x TITAN X Ps in the one build, gaming on dual-Xeons for kicks... you really think I hadn't considered the futility of this idea? That's what this show is all about! We get a whole chunk of awesome, informative entertainment and then there's these intermittent bursts of megalomania like "The Compensator", just to see what it's like. That was the nature of my question. Just to see what it would be like. You've not only failed to help in any way, but you're evidently a prat.

please explain why we're suddenly talking about Linus here. If you'd considered the futility of this idea so thoroughly, then why even bother to write up this post with such minimal effort? The videos LMG makes are overkill, but overkill makes for good entertainment and spectacle. 

I disagree with the jab at my unhelpfulness. I think based on my karma on this forum, I do know what I'm talking about. 

And finally, I may be a prat, I will not deny that, but at least I think for more than a millisecond before expressing my thoughts.

[Mira Yurizaki]

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/1358

 

It's one thing, but AnandTech has done some gaming benchmarks on Xeons (the link I provided is for GTAV). While the 10C/20T processor does have the lowest % under 60FPS, the i7-6700K isn't far off. They're both within a 1% difference. If you switch it to average FPS, they're both within 0.20 FPS.

 

So considering you're spending at least five times the cost for a meager 1% gaming performance (though only in this example), going for a dual processor board, negating any latency issues with IPC, is a satisfying a curiosity at best.

[Drak3]

4 minutes ago, Jukebox461 said:

Can you explain why? Is it a cost/benefit analysis? Too much hassle? You personally don't like the idea? You've posted 2 very negative and less-than helpful responses on posts of mine just now, I'm wondering if you have any information you have available to support your poo-poo-ing?

Most games favor high single core performance, and don't leverage more than 4 cores. Some new games leverage more than 4, but there's almost no benefit of using more than 6 currently. We're moving to where quadcores lacking Hyperthreading/SMT are starting to bottleneck higher end cards at 1080p, but that's more to do with how HTT can be leveraged to optimize how resources are allocated.

 

You've also got to deal with the clock speeds of most Xeons being lower than consumer Core i products, not to mention i7 extremes and K SKU Core i can overclock (without modification to the BIOS or CPU microcode) to widen that performance gap, and consumer Core i products (quadcore i7's, i5's, and i3's) currently have slightly higher per clock performance (approximately 3% improvement).

 

Outside of using a kernel virtual machine to put multiple users at the same time, like UnRAID, using high core count Xeons over any Core i for gaming is shooting one's self in the foot. It's just too expensive, and when a CPU bound game demands single core performance, Xeons can't keep up.

[Mira Yurizaki]

Also, Amdahl's Law is a real mean mistress.

[purple_rider]

48 minutes ago, Jukebox461 said:

Can you explain why? Is it a cost/benefit analysis? Too much hassle? You personally don't like the idea? You've posted 2 very negative and less-than helpful responses on posts of mine just now, I'm wondering if you have any information you have available to support your poo-poo-ing?

A 7700K will not be able to run in a dual socket motherboard. None of the consumer chips can. You would need to buy something from the Xeon E5 26xx or above.

[Jukebox461]

3 hours ago, shadowbyte said:

please explain why we're suddenly talking about Linus here. If you'd considered the futility of this idea so thoroughly, then why even bother to write up this post with such minimal effort? The videos LMG makes are overkill, but overkill makes for good entertainment and spectacle. 

I disagree with the jab at my unhelpfulness. I think based on my karma on this forum, I do know what I'm talking about. 

And finally, I may be a prat, I will not deny that, but at least I think for more than a millisecond before expressing my thoughts.

Because this is the LTT forum. If I actually wanted to research this I would have used google. I think you've missed the whole point here? Forum discussions are excellent sport. Thinking your an educator just makes you look like a prat. I already have computer science education from a reputable and recognised training organisation. I came to the forums for a discussion with peers.

[shadowbyte]

Just now, Jukebox461 said:

Because this is the LTT forum. If I actually wanted to research this I would have used google. I think you've missed the whole point here? Forum discussions are excellent sport. Thinking your an educator just makes you look like a prat. I already have computer science education from a reputable and recognised training organisation. I came to the forums for a discussion with peers.

ah, alright

i'm down for discussion, but i'm not too hot on all out argument

man, why don't we stop arguing and just discuss like sane people