Is X58 worth it right now?

[zmetek]

3 minutes ago, kelvinhall05 said:

In short, big companies like Dell and HP will want the latest and greatest in their servers, so they'll sell their X99 CPUs for dirt cheap, so there will be lots to choose from for not a lot of money (compared to the performance they give; they might still cost a pretty penny).

And is that already happening or do we have to wait for them to decide on if they should sell them? Also, the cost of an 5820k and a X99 MOBO is just slightly bigger than R5 1600 and a B350 MOBO, which one delivers more performance? (considering I could overclock both).

[Vode]

35 minutes ago, zmetek said:

Yeah, I still see it as an viable option, but I am getting somewhat more convinced on getting X99, I will wait on the reply from that guy which is supposed to convince me and I'll see.

It all depends on the price.

 

If you can get X99 for a good price  and you can afford to spend more it‘s the better option than X58.

 

But you really need to get a good price with X99 since Ryzen becomes a viable alternative, and that with warranty. Don‘t forget the R7 1600 is 200 bucks so 200 is not a great price for an over 2 year old used 6-core CPU. R7 1600 and the 5820k pretty much trade blows depending on workload. Also you can get very good Ryzen motherboards for 100-150 bucks Just keep that in mind.

[zmetek]

14 minutes ago, Vode said:

It all depends on the price.

 

If you can get X99 for a good price  and you can afford to spend more it‘s the better option than X58.

 

But you really need to get a good price with X99 since Ryzen becomes a viable alternative, and that with warranty. Don‘t forget the R7 1600 is 200 bucks so 200 is not a great price for an over 2 year old used 6-core CPU. R7 1600 and the 5820k pretty much trade blows depending on workload. Also you can get very good Ryzen motherboards for 100-150 bucks Just keep that in mind.

Ok, maybe I need to approach this from another perspective, which naturally brings another question: How long do you think a X58 system could last (with an overclocked X5670/5680)?

Now I am getting less hyped for X99, it is more expensive, has no upgrade path and warranty, unless the CPUs become supercheap like soemone stated earlier I don't think it's viable at all.

 

EDIT: Another question, is it worth it to get those no name X58 boards for ebay? They're dirt cheap, but god knows what they do or don't support.

[Ground]

Another issue with x99 and Ryzen are the RAM prices - 16 GB of DDR4 are easily 150$, while DDR3 can be had for much less (24 GB go on ebay for about 100)

 

nobody can tell you how long an x58 Xeon will last now, but I wouldn’t recommend anyone spending more than 170$ on board+CPU now - it just really old hardware. While its behind in IPC, a 6 core xeon at ~4.2 GHz is comparable to a 3770 in Singlecore performance and to a 6700 in multicore (maybe a bit faster here). 

 

Also - I don’t think anyone should be buying an x5680+ now - they don’t overclock better than the others and are much more expensive. Only place where they might make some sense would be dual socket systems. If you want the best of the best for a single CPU system get a w 3680 - cheaper than the x5680 and it has the benefit of being unlocked...

[Vode]

20 minutes ago, zmetek said:

Ok, maybe I need to approach this from another perspective, which naturally brings another question: How long do you think a X58 system could last (with an overclocked X5670/5680)?

Now I am getting less hyped for X99, it is more expensive, has no upgrade path and warranty, unless the CPUs become supercheap like soemone stated earlier I don't think it's viable at all.

 

EDIT: Another question, is it worth it to get those no name X58 boards for ebay? They're dirt cheap, but god knows what they do or don't support.

As an X99 owner myself I think it‘s a bad situation on the used market.

 

The platform is very good in a vacuum. Very reliable because of 2 years of updates. Good performance for years to come, NvMe and DDR4. IPC on the CPUs is decent, similar to Ryzen.

 

But you won‘t find good deals most likely since the people who bought X99 paid a lot of money for it. 400-1000 bucks for the CPU and motherboards were expensive as well. So people are either just gonna keep using their stuff (like me) or are not willing to sell ultra cheap.

 

I honestly think the Ryzen 5 1600 and a good B350 or X370 board is the way to go right now if you want the most bang for the buck, great performance and a reliable system that will last you quite some time.

 

I also have a X58 PC I‘m happy with but wouldn‘t recommend it as a main system. While it‘s fun to tinker with and good if you REALLY can‘t afford to spend more it‘s getting a bit long in the tooth and compared to Ryzen it‘s still not that great of a deal, mostly because of the expensive X58 motherboards. 

 

I wouldn‘t trust the Chinese knockoff X58 mobos on Ebay, because you never know if the 32nm Xeons (only reason for X58) work and you got no reputable manufacturer like Asus or Gigabyte to get BIOS updates or compatability lists from.

[zmetek]

I just found a branded dual socket MOBO for $90 on eBay, I know dual CPUs bring a lot of problems, don't scale well etc. and that those boards don't support overclocking.. but I am kinda feeling the geek in me screaming DUAL XEONS. That would be $180 for dual gloriness, I should calm down.

 

On a more serious note tho, I still think I'll go for it if I find a good deal on a good motherboard and maybe update to the 9th gen or even the 10th gen later (or to whatever AMD brings in that time).

 

Also 3770 single core performance sounds good enough to me, and better than 6700 multithreaded sounds even better.

 

LAST UPDATE: I just found out people in my contry are quite stupid and give away branded  X58 boards with SATA III and USB 3.0 for like $110 max and even that's more than what it actually usually sells, so I am gonna go for that and a X5670. Getting it to possibly to 4.2+GHz (I read that is fairly easy and most of these chips usually go up to 4.4GHz) and pairing it with a 1070/80, that should be absolutely no bottleneck... thanks all of you and sorry for me being the stupid one and not looking to the local market first.

[Anthony_K]

I had a couple pieces of info for people using X58 mobo's.  Intel is not updating the Microcode for specter for the W3690 Xeon.  They are updating Microcode for X5690 which is compatible with X58.  I have also had great success using a M.2 RAID card from StarTech to increase disk performance.  The PEXM2SAT3422 has a ROM bios and is bootable. By striping two low cost 500GB M2 sata cards I can get over 800 MB/s read and write, measured with Crystal Disk.