More cores vs higher clock?

[H0R53]

My Intel i5 3330 is really good and has exceptional performance for a 3rd gen i5 (Passmark score in sig), but it only has 4 cores.

My Dell Precision has 2x Intel Xeon 5355 processors that kinda suck, but has 8 total cores. It CAN run most games at High or Ultra when paired with my 1050ti SSC, and has 10 more GB of RAM than my current machine (One of two 4gb RAM sticks I had failed).

 

I watched the 'cores vs clockspeed' video on the LTT channel but it didn't really help me decide. I need the RAM the most, but I ran Passmark and the single threaded benchmark really killed the scores. Single threaded isn't as important for DX11 because of the introduction of multithreading into the rendering pipe.

 

Will I see any performance boost over my current setup (in sig) by using this server? My main activities are:

 

Chrome

Fallout 4

Skyrim SE

PCSX2

Dolphin Emulator

Old NFS games (pre 2007)

FRAPS! Lots of FRAPS recording, almost constant which is why I have Seagate Pipeline drives in RAID!

 

What will be better for gaming while recording, 8 cores with more cache or 4 cores with less cache and a higher clockspeed?

 

Something to note: the RAM in the Precision is 667mhz ECC FB-DIMM DDR2. I don't know how much of a difference that will make with FRAPS and gaming.

[Numbafieve]

2 minutes ago, H0R53 said:

My Intel i5 3330 is really good and has exceptional performance for a 3rd gen i5 (Passmark score in sig), but it only has 4 cores.

My Dell Precision has 2x Intel Xeon 5355 processors that kinda suck, but has 8 total cores. It CAN run most games at High or Ultra when paired with my 1050ti SSC, and has 10 more GB of RAM than my current machine (One of two 4gb RAM sticks I had failed).

 

I watched the 'cores vs clockspeed' video on the LTT channel but it didn't really help me decide. I need the RAM the most, but I ran Passmark and the single threaded benchmark really killed the scores. Single threaded isn't as important for DX11 because of the introduction of multithreading into the rendering pipe.

 

Will I see any performance boost over my current setup (in sig) by using this server? My main activities are:

 

Chrome

Fallout 4

Skyrim SE

PCSX2

Dolphin Emulator

Old NFS games (pre 2007)

FRAPS! Lots of FRAPS recording, almost constant which is why I have Seagate Pipeline drives in RAID!

 

What will be better for gaming while recording, 8 cores with more cache or 4 cores with less cache and a higher clockspeed?

 

Something to note: the RAM in the Precision is 667mhz ECC FB-DIMM DDR2. I don't know how much of a difference that will make with FRAPS and gaming.

 

A combo of both would be ideal but it might be best to do the dual CPU machine since you are doing recording as well as gaming.  But since that server is only 2Ghz and is still DDR2 im going to say the i5 is probably best even though it has fewer cores.

 

A possible upgrade would be to get an i7 3770 non K off of ebay or something so you can have some more threads and a higher clock speed.

[Zzyzx]

You'll probably find better performance on your i5. Especially since X5355s is basically 5 generations older. The interlink between two processors also causes some slowdowns.

 

I'd just get back up to 8GB of RAM minimum in your i5 machine. That's pretty much the baseline you're going to want for gaming + streaming/recording.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

2 minutes ago, Zzyzx said:

You'll probably find better performance on your i5. Especially since X5355s is basically 5 generations older.

 

More like 2

 

OP: don't you feel like doing a few tests and seeing for yourself? I know that having the answer here would save you time, but in the other hand, it can't get more accurate that experimenting your exact use case in each

 

 

[H0R53]

4 minutes ago, Zzyzx said:

You'll probably find better performance on your i5. Especially since X5355s is basically 5 generations older. The interlink between two processors also causes some slowdowns.

 

I'd just get back up to 8GB of RAM minimum in your i5 machine. That's pretty much the baseline you're going to want for gaming + streaming/recording.

Dat avatar is niiiiiiice. What is that, a wolf?

 

I'm buying a replacement kit that's 16GB anyway, it's 1600MHz DDR3.

8 minutes ago, Numbafieve said:

But since that server is only 2Ghz and is still DDR2 im going to say the i5 is probably best even though it has fewer cores.

 

A possible upgrade would be to get an i7 3770 non K off of ebay or something so you can have some more threads and a higher clock speed.

It's 2.66Ghz, same as my Q9400.

 

I'm going to upgrade my processor to a Xeon or something relatively soon (within 6 months).

 

Still, would the dual Xeons be better for recording?

[Numbafieve]

Just now, H0R53 said:

Dat avatar is niiiiiiice. What is that, a wolf?

 

I'm buying a replacement kit that's 16GB anyway, it's 1600MHz DDR3.

It's 2.66Ghz, same as my Q9400.

 

I'm going to upgrade my processor to a Xeon or something relatively soon (within 6 months).

 

Still, would the dual Xeons be better for recording?

 

id still say no simply because those low clocks might hinder games and i cant even begin to think of the problems DDR2 might cause

[H0R53]

2 minutes ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

More like 2

 

OP: don't you feel like doing a few tests and seeing for yourself? I know that having the answer here would save you time, but in the other hand, it can't get more accurate that experimenting your exact use case in each

 

 

True, but better safe than sorry. I'm just incredibly conflicted about it.

[H0R53]

Just now, Numbafieve said:

id still say no simply because those low clocks might hinder games and i cant even begin to think of the problems DDR2 might cause

I feel you on the DDR2, would it just be better using it for encoding and FTP like I do now?

[Numbafieve]

Just now, H0R53 said:

I feel you on the DDR2, would it just be better using it for encoding and FTP like I do now?

yah just keep the i5 and maybe someday get an i7 3770 to replace it.  I went from an i5 3450 to a 3770 and saw a very nice performance increase.

[PCIsMasterRace]

3 minutes ago, H0R53 said:

Dat avatar is niiiiiiice. What is that, a wolf?

 

I'm buying a replacement kit that's 16GB anyway, it's 1600MHz DDR3.

It's 2.66Ghz, same as my Q9400.

 

I'm going to upgrade my processor to a Xeon or something relatively soon (within 6 months).

 

Still, would the dual Xeons be better for recording?

Don't forget to factor in IPC differences between generations.

 

[H0R53]

10 minutes ago, Numbafieve said:

went from an i5 3450 to a 3770

Does the AsRock H77M support the 3770?

[Numbafieve]

1 minute ago, H0R53 said:

Does the AsRock H77M support the 3770?

Any socket 1155 board should work with a 3770 so yes. i put one into a crappy pre built and it works

[H0R53]

1 minute ago, Numbafieve said:

Any socket 1155 board should work with a 3770 so yes. i put one into a crappy pre built and it works

I just checked AsRock's site and the page says it does. Cool beans.

[Zzyzx]

24 minutes ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

More like 2

3rd gen Core i -> i5 3330

2nd gen Core i

1st gen Core i

Core2

Core -> Xeon 5355

[SpaceGhostC2C]

1 minute ago, Zzyzx said:

3rd gen Core i -> i5 3330

2nd gen Core i

1st gen Core i

Core2

Core -> Xeon 5355

I thought it was core 2 ^^

(And I never count the 1st green core i as it's like x99 precursor to me ) 

[H0R53]

5 minutes ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

I thought it was core 2 ^^

(And I never count the 1st green core i as it's like x99 precursor to me ) 

A quad-core (2×2) successor of the Woodcrest for DP segment, consisting of two dual-core Woodcrest chips in one package similarly to the dual-core Pentium D branded CPUs (two single-core chips) or the quad-core Kentsfield. All Clovertowns use the LGA 771 package. The Clovertown has been usually implemented with two Woodcrest dies on a multi-chip module, with 8 MB of L2 cache (4 MB per die). Like Woodcrest, lower models use a 1066 MT/s FSB, and higher models use a 1333 MT/s FSB. Intel released Clovertown, product code 80563, on 14 November 2006[19] with models E5310, E5320, E5335, E5345, and X5355, ranging from 1.6 GHz to 2.66 GHz. All models support: MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, Intel 64, bit (an NX bit implementation), Intel VT. The E and X designations are borrowed from Intel's Core 2 model numbering scheme; an ending of −0 implies a 1066 MT/s FSB, and an ending of −5 implies a 1333 MT/s FSB.[18] All models have a TDP of 80 W with the exception of the X5355, which has a TDP of 120 W, and the X5365, which has a TDP of 150 W. A low-voltage version of Clovertown with a TDP of 50 W has a model numbers L5310, L5320 and L5335 (1.6 GHz, 1.86 GHz and 2.0 GHz respectively). The 3.0 GHz X5365 arrived in July 2007, and became available in the Apple Mac Pro[20] on 4 April 2007.[21][22] The X5365 performs up to around 38 GFLOPS in the LINPACK benchmark.

[Zzyzx]

2 minutes ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

I thought it was core 2 ^^

(And I never count the 1st green core i as it's like x99 precursor to me ) 

Makes quite a difference, especially with IPC and such.

You have:

Core (Core) -> Core 2 (Penryn) -> Core i 1 (Nehalem) -> Core i 2 (Westmere) -> Core i 3 (Sandy Bridge)
Nehalem was just Core i7.
Westmere was Core i7 and Core i5.
Sandy Bridge was the first gen to have Core i3 processors.

[H0R53]

2 minutes ago, Zzyzx said:

Makes quite a difference, especially with IPC and such.

You have:

Core (Core) -> Core 2 (Penryn) -> Core i 1 (Nehalem) -> Core i 2 (Westmere) -> Core i 3 (Sandy Bridge)
Nehalem was just Core i7.
Westmere was Core i7 and Core i5.
Sandy Bridge was the first gen to have Core i3 processors.

My 3330 is an Ivy Bridge, right?

[Zzyzx]

1 minute ago, H0R53 said:

My 3330 is an Ivy Bridge, right?

Yes, sorry. I forget that Intel did the numbering a bit odd.

Core (Core) -> Core 2 (Penryn) -> Core i 1st gen (Nehalem) -> Core i 1st gen (Westmere) -> Core i 2rd gen (Sandy Bridge) -> Core i 3rd gen (Ivy Bridge) would be a bit more accurate, I suppose.

The model numbers get weird, for example, with i7s:

i7 920-975 were Nehalem, but i7 970-990X were Westmere.
Westmere is more of a die shrink from 45nm to 32nm than a whole generational leap.

 

And my memory is starting to fail me. Nehalem was Core i7 & Core i5. Westmere was Core i7 & i5 and when Core i3 was introduced. There wasn't an architecture that was just i7. I think it's because the first i7s were socket 1366 while the first Core i5s were socket 1156 even though there were both Nehalems.