Is Ivy Bridge-E still good now?

[Gerr]

Just built a used Ivy Bridge-EP Xeon system as a VM workstation(10c,64gb) and am impressed with it's performance.  My question is would an Ivy Bridge-E system make for a good used gaming system?  Think about an unlocked & overclocked i7 and quad-channel DDR3-2133.  Might not have the latest USB and/or M.2 slots, but with a good GPU, I think this might make for a very good used gaming system that *might* rival Coffee Lake performance for less money.

 

Thoughts?

[Jurrunio]

If you turn off a few cores to allow higher overclocks on the remaining cores (let's say, 6 cores), then it should rival the Ryzen 5 1600. I dont think Xeons can be overclocked though

[Punk91903]

4 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

If you turn off a few cores to allow higher overclocks on the remaining cores (let's say, 6 cores), then it should rival the Ryzen 5 1600. I dont think Xeons can be overclocked though

Xeons can be overclocked

[Gerr]

I was thinking of more like a E5 1650/1660 v2 or i7 4930K/4960X, all are overclockable HEX core CPU's.  Pair that up with a  4x4GB DDR3-2133 CL9 set of RAM and a good videocard, should at least match Ryzen 5 speeds and might even approach Ryzen 7 or Coffee Lake speeds in games.

 

[Jurrunio]

3 minutes ago, Gerr said:

I was thinking of more like a E5 1650/1660 v2 or i7 4930K/4960X, all are overclockable HEX core CPU's.  Pair that up with a  4x4GB DDR3-2133 CL9 set of RAM and a good videocard, should at least match Ryzen 5 speeds and might even approach Ryzen 7 or Coffee Lake speeds in games.

 

Ryzen 7 and Coffee is too optimistic to reach. It depends on the price.

 

19 minutes ago, Punk91903 said:

Xeons can be overclocked

E5-1620
E5-1650
E5-1660
E5-1620 v2 (uncertain)
E5-1650 v2
E5-1660 v2
E5-1680 v2

 

Only these, out of so many Xeons out there

[Punk91903]

1 minute ago, Jurrunio said:

Ryzen 7 and Coffee is too optimistic to reach. It depends on the price.

 

E5-1620
E5-1650
E5-1660
E5-1620 v2 (uncertain)
E5-1650 v2
E5-1660 v2
E5-1680 v2

 

Only these, out of so many Xeons out there

oh ok

[AshleyAshes]

I have an i7 4930k, it's four years old, and I'm still happy with it.  Overclocked to 4.6ghz, this CPU only comes a BIT short of a brand new i7 8700k and unlike those, this only cost me $250 CAD back in Holiday 2013.  (A friend let me use their Intel Retail Edge account).  More over, while the X79 chipset is only PCIE 2.0, the Ivy Bridge E chips are PCIE 3.0, so the top two 16x PCIE slots are 3.0 and the other 16x mechanical slot is also 8x PCIE 3.0 since they're all plugged into the CPU lanes not the chipset lanes.  I can even flash a modified UEFI onto this mobo and enable NVME support if I want.  I have 32GB of RAM and have recently ordered another 16GB.  I've kept the GPU up to date with a GTX 1080 and overall the system is 'pretty great'.

 

Can I buy something better?  Sure, totally.  But with what this cost me new and how 'pretty great' it still is today, I probably won't upgrade for another year or two.

 

Of course the real question is: What do the parts cost you?  I got a huge discount on the CPU.  I could get a Socket 2011 Mobo for $195 CAD -new- then where as that's what those mobos go for USED on eBay today.  So the question would depend on what you have to pay TODAY to build the system.

[Anjelllo]

i7-2600 user here, it runs games fine. (Paired with gtx 1050ti)

[GloriousPain]

Honestly this is gonna be rather long winded but yes; Ivy-E is still a great platform with many valid reasons why. 

 

1. Sandy Bridge was the last true Generational improvement at least in my opinion; Now before I get attacked by this I mean Sandy vs Westmere/Nehalem was a much bigger improvement than any generation since Sandy-Ivy was marginal, as was Ivy-Haswell and so on... 

 

2. Due to internal things it's performance still keeps up vs Skylake-E, remember we're still on the Tick-Tock of the xLake Family, Kaby/Coffee Lake are just improved versions of skylake; if you wish to see proof Youtube: Level1 Techs Old v. New: Xeon E5-2680 vs. i9-7900X

 

3. Pricing; Honestly you can find E5 v1 and v2 Xeon cpus that are Sandy/Ivy rather cheaply on Ebay, since most server farms have upgraded but they upgrade for power consumption and other reasons nothing too important to a normal consumer.

 

4. DDR3 you can find DDR3 really cheaply right now and X79/Sandy/Ivy-E was the last E platform to support it. Skylake technically did but only normal skylake and even then barely, Haswell/Broadwell did but Broadwell was more of a paper launch. 

 

5. Price-To-Performance is still top tier; If you try you can easily find old E5 v1/v2 Xeons for cheap again since servers updated from them; Also note the e5 16XX v1/v2 chips ARE OVERCLOCKABLE(with X79 Motherboards) this is why x58 chips are still incredibly popular (as you can see by the X58 fanclub here on the LTT forums). Unlike X58 chips though we get Quad Channel still, and the Sandy/Ivy IPC. Next up; Quad Channel DDR3? If you get one of the xeons I just mentioned or some of the cheaper non OC e5 26XX v1/v2, and a motherboard for it you can get Quad Channel kits of DDR3 ECC memory for fractions of normal pricing again because Data Centers quit using them. 

 

You can fairly reliably get a Xeon E5 1650 v2 (ivy-E 6 Core unlocked) OR Xeon E5 2650 v2 (Ivy-E 8Core locked), a Scythe Ninja 4 (or other good aircooler), and Quad Channel 64GB of ECC DDR3 with a heat spreader... EASILY for a sum total of $330 if you're frugal or look extra carefully you can probably find a similar or the same CPU or RAM for even cheaper or just get less RAM and get it very cheaply. Shopping for the motherboard is the hard part, but if you get a lucky x79 motherboard that supports the above setup you could easily get all that for $400-$450 which in comparison is the price of a Coffee Lake i7 and 4GB of DDR4 without a motherboard or cooler. And motherboards can even be gotten relatively easily if you're willing to trust Chinese manufacturers like Beyang/Huanan. I know the small youtuber Craft computing swears by them now. 

[epsilon84]

I own a 3770K, overclocked to 4.5GHz for daily use. It most definitely is still a capable gaming CPU. It won't rival a 8700K for gaming, but depending on your GPU that may not even matter, a GTX 1070 level card for example will show almost no difference between IVB and CFL, whereas a GTX 1080 Ti will probably show a 10 - 20% improvement at the same clocks (at 1080P, 1440P will show a much smaller difference due to GPU limitations).

[chilicheeseburger]

23 minutes ago, epsilon84 said:

I own a 3770K, overclocked to 4.5GHz for daily use. It most definitely is still a capable gaming CPU. It won't rival a 8700K for gaming, but depending on your GPU that may not even matter, a GTX 1070 level card for example will show almost no difference between IVB and CFL, whereas a GTX 1080 Ti will probably show a 10 - 20% improvement at the same clocks (at 1080P, 1440P will show a much smaller difference due to GPU limitations).

Same here but with a 3570k.

Combined with a 1070 it runs everything I throw at it at ultra settings.

If you can get your hands on an Ivy Bridge CPU for a significantly lower price than it's current generation counterpart, go for it. 

[Monstieur]

Finally, the i7-9800X has 44 PCIe lanes for $589, and a soldered heatspreader for overclocking. Everything after Ivy Bridge-E was a ripoff. The PCIe lane count was what made the 4820K & 4930K so great.

[bimmerman]

Look, if X58 is still viable today (with overclocked hex core i7/Xeons) then X79 certainly is.

 

Will you get the same FPS as the new shiny? Of course not. Will it be unplayable? No. Turn off the FPS counter and enjoy!

 

The HEDT platforms make for very long-lived systems due to the number of PCIe lanes. Want dual GPUs without bandwidth limitations? Easy! Want USB3? Boom, PCIe card. NVMe boot/storage? Boom, PCIe. Gigabit/10G? you get the picture. These systems favor versatility and longevity more so than outright FPS.

 

As for your question, with my OC'd X58 Xeon and a 1080ti, I can run just about every game that I care to at 3440x1440 somewhere between high and ultra, well in excess of the 60hz my monitor is capped at. I honestly don't see a reason to upgrade my processor.