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Old 6 core Xeons still good value in a world of used Ryzen's?

Soldato
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10 Oct 2012
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Denmark
* YesTechCity built a reputation on reviewing and recommending old Xeons and he has stuck to that format to this day, tho oddly he no longer compares the CPU's he recommends to any alternatives.
*

And i always found it odd that apparently reputable tech journalists like YesTechCity always failed to mention the cost and difficulty of getting boards for those cheap Xeons.

I have a problem with that guy. The last VA monitor i bought was the 32 inch viewsonix 1440p 144hz, was touted by him to the best and so so so so fast and with no other real reviews of the monitor I thought I would take the risk. Not surprisingly the monitor turned out to be one big blurry mess no matter the overdrive settings or the hz set. It was even a lot worse than the asus mx34vq i've had previously. This plus other videos with him saying things where that " wait a minute that cant be right " thought pops up.
 
Caporegime
OP
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ARC-L1, Stanton System
I have a problem with that guy. The last VA monitor i bought was the 32 inch viewsonix 1440p 144hz, was touted by him to the best and so so so so fast and with no other real reviews of the monitor I thought I would take the risk. Not surprisingly the monitor turned out to be one big blurry mess no matter the overdrive settings or the hz set. It was even a lot worse than the asus mx34vq i've had previously. This plus other videos with him saying things where that " wait a minute that cant be right " thought pops up.


Well at this point its pretty obvious Steve's video was aimed at this guy.

He use a stock 2600 vs a stock Xeon e5-2420 v2 Both these CPU's are 6 core 12 thread, his argument was that if you're on a budget you're using lower end GPU's, i completely agree, but he also said the Xeon would not bettleneck lower end GPU's, he used a GTX 1650 and an RX 570.

I do agree that if you're on a very tight budget an old Xeon is a good place to look, IF you can find compatible boards which he as usual fails to talk about the fact that this is not easy, but then he pairs the CPU with a GTX 1650 and RX 570 and says the Xeon will not bottleneck these GPU's.

Then it comes to the testing result's, here he completely ignored the 1% lows, which is your minimum FPS, says nothing at all about that, he pulls away the graph and talks about the 90 FPS average, about how you're going to be completely satisfied with that, i don't know about you but i couldn't live with 34 FPS, best not say anything about that....

1WkVCd7.png

And then there's this.... CS:GO is the worst game of all for Ryzen, its very old and have never been optimized for Ryzen, so the graph below to me just shows the reality of the vast difference between an IvyBridge Xeon and Ryzen, this is way more than clock speed.
The 2600, which is not a highly clocked CPU is twice as fast as the Xeon, in CS:GO.

QtZyn9B.png

After all this he turned round and said "sure, if you get a high end GPU the Ryzen 2600 will be better, but the Xeon will balance out the results on Budget GPU's" As if that's what his results showed.


 
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Caporegime
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24 Dec 2005
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Autonomy
False economy..if you have an x 58 mobo lying around then by all means have some fun with it...but really what’s the point buying this stuff used anymore....

Power, heat...drivers...etc...just buy a Ryzen 2600 lol
 
Soldato
Joined
28 May 2007
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18,257
will be selling my X58 Guerilla G1, x5670 and 24gb 1600Mhz Kingston Genesis to get new Ryzen. can't be bothered to feed Intel anymore.
Trusty old system, still plenty of punch, but too much mess with drivers on Win 10.

Had your monies worth out of that, but yeah Windows can be a royal PITA.
 
Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
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Sheffield
Still rocking a X58 / x5650 CPU system here, using a Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 that I purchased on the 26th May 2009 from here

That's a decade.

Madness

Managed to get 24GB of Hyper X RAM fairly cheap, added a USB3 PCI-E card

The only thing I wished it had was SATA3......
 
Soldato
Joined
13 Jun 2009
Posts
6,847
Still rocking a X58 / x5650 CPU system here, using a Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 that I purchased on the 26th May 2009 from here

That's a decade.

Madness

Managed to get 24GB of Hyper X RAM fairly cheap, added a USB3 PCI-E card

The only thing I wished it had was SATA3......
My rig is also 10 years old now, although the only parts that haven't changed are the motherboard, CPU cooler, and PSU. I think 10 years is a decent innings and I'd like to play with something new...any boost in performance is mostly a luxury at this point.
 
Soldato
Joined
18 Mar 2010
Posts
4,084
Im very happy with my 5670, as with the chaps above i have been able to keep my computer going for nearly 10yrs,with a couple of cheap upgradrs, which is crazy!

I don't plan on upgrading until after the next gen consoles come out. At the moment my system can run all modern games fine. I figure that if i upgrade after the consoles come out i will be able to make sure I'm several steps ahead of them. It's kind of like a phone, the longer you wait to upgrade, the better tech you will get.
 
Soldato
Joined
31 Oct 2002
Posts
9,861
No point arguing with those who still use x58 systems and claim they don’t limit GPU’s, best to let them enjoy and move on.

For example, it used to annoy me that my grandparents still use a
Black and white tv. Or those who wash by hand instead of using a washing machine.

Even if there are faster, better options out there, that aren’t that much more expensive, some will always stick to their old stuff out of principle.
 
Soldato
Joined
13 Jun 2009
Posts
6,847
No point arguing with those who still use x58 systems and claim they don’t limit GPU’s, best to let them enjoy and move on.

For example, it used to annoy me that my grandparents still use a
Black and white tv. Or those who wash by hand instead of using a washing machine.

Even if there are faster, better options out there, that aren’t that much more expensive, some will always stick to their old stuff out of principle.
Sorry? I don't pretend like my CPU isn't a bottleneck is certain circumstances. But at 1440p plenty of games work perfectly fine, 99% GPU utilisation and all. Upgrading is expensive and is barely worth it now, let alone over the last 10 years.

The Xeons being talked about in the OP are not X58 overclockable ones, FYI.
 
Soldato
Joined
18 Mar 2010
Posts
4,084
No point arguing with those who still use x58 systems and claim they don’t limit GPU’s, best to let them enjoy and move on.

For example, it used to annoy me that my grandparents still use a
Black and white tv. Or those who wash by hand instead of using a washing machine.

Even if there are faster, better options out there, that aren’t that much more expensive, some will always stick to their old stuff out of principle.

After selling my i7 930 the x5670 was a £30 upgrade. I got a cooler, faster chip with 2 more cores. There isn't any other upgrade that would have been remotely comparable in price. I game at 1440p and i am not held back by the cpu.

Obviously with a newer setup i might get a few more fps, and some quality of life features (uefi bios, etc), but i can play everything i want at decent settings and paying out for a full upgrade has never seemed worthwhile.

The base standard for AAA games had been set by consoles with dreadful cpu's, so it skylight be surprising that we can more than keep up with our ancient hexes.
 
Associate
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14 Sep 2014
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Co. Durham
The base standard for AAA games had been set by consoles with dreadful cpu's, so it skylight be surprising that we can more than keep up with our ancient hexes.
I think you'll see a similar situation when the new consoles drop, rumours are 8 core ryzen gen3 but I'd bet my house on them being fairly low clocked, circa 2ghz.
 
Caporegime
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Cornwall
That youtube vid is as bad as the ones you are criticising. Hes not reviewing the 3.3 - 3.6Ghz X5860 you mention (less than £30 showing on completed listings, £41 buy it now). Hes reviewing 2.2 - 2.7 Ghz Xeons on a mobo that cant overclock.

If he'd have spent £20 more on the X5860 he wouldn't have anything to moan about.

Also its not a £32 difference. He quickly glossed over the fact the xeon pricing included 16gb, but only 8Gb memory for the Ryzen pricing.
This whole forum - and the GPU section - is rendered virtually useless these days because the most active posters are cheerleaders for company X or Y.

It's harder and harder to find neutral posters - I think many have given up when 99% of the content is people plugging their favourite pet company and shouting each other down.

It's sad, really. How these people can become so attached to a faceless corporation.
 
Associate
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UK
The Xeons being talked about in the OP are not X58 overclockable ones, FYI.
This is the critical point. Old Xeons are only good value for gaming if you can overclock them to offset the low single-core performance. The locked Sandy Bridge / Ivy Bridge Xeons just aren't as good for gaming as the unlocked Westmere chips on X58.

I have an X5660 @ 4.5GHz in one of my systems, paid £35 for the chip and got the mobo for free. It's a very nice chip that does a good job of keeping up with a GTX 1070, although the power use at 4.5GHz is a bit hilarious. Would I buy one today? Only if it was really cheap or I had a pile of DDR3 to use with it. Used Ryzen 1600s and DDR4 memory are cheap enough to be a viable alternative now.
 
Caporegime
OP
Joined
17 Mar 2012
Posts
47,632
Location
ARC-L1, Stanton System
No point arguing with those who still use x58 systems and claim they don’t limit GPU’s, best to let them enjoy and move on.

For example, it used to annoy me that my grandparents still use a
Black and white tv. Or those who wash by hand instead of using a washing machine.

Even if there are faster, better options out there, that aren’t that much more expensive, some will always stick to their old stuff out of principle.

Just to be clear, i'm not making any argument for or against, tho i will say those X5650 are good chip's and IMO plenty capable.

My issue is with some reviewers building a cashcow channel on pushing some older Xeon CPU's as something they are not.

:)
 
Associate
Joined
22 Feb 2016
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84
Location
Yateley
What problems have you had?

Glad to say I have no issues running my rig with Windows 10 at all.

Just silly USB 3.0, keeps annoying me. After new Windows patch have to delete some drivers and reinstall.
Once drivers reinstalled it's running with no issues. At 4.2Ghz, it doesnt get any hotter than 60 (Eisbaer LT360).
Saying that, it's probably time to move on and upgrade.
 
Caporegime
Joined
26 Dec 2003
Posts
25,666
It depends on your usage, for gaming and general computer use Ryzen has probably made the cheap Ebay Xeon's redundant now but if you want to build a workstation or server Xeon's support ECC memory which is a must really, also most consumer Ryzen chips are boosted/clocked to the very limits of the silicon and with a high voltage, so they aren't going to be as reliable 24/7 hence why AMD have a different product range for server. Xeon's should be compared to Epyc and Opteron really.
 
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