Intel Xeon for gaming

[poparaadnan]

I don't really know why some ppl think Xeons are not for gaming. I am about to get e3 1241v3 with Mobo and 32 GB of RAM (pretty sweet deal I couldn't resist) and I'm hearing from some of my friends that I'm making a mistake. In reality e3 1241v3 performs almost equally as i7 4970 (non K) plus it doesn't have iGPU and therefore has a lower tdp. My point is, don't take all suggestions when deciding what to buy. Do your own research first.

 

[ashram]

It's a 2014 CPU, which is the only issue I can find. Besides that, considering gaming is a combo of CPU and GPU, adding a nice video card and the system is capable of some sweet, sweet gaming. A few people hear XEON and think business use only, but they are great CPUs, and older variants can be found cheap.

to be honest, I just upgraded my system, which handled most games fine.... from a core 2 duo @4.17Ghz (overclocked)

the only reason I did was 1: adding a newer video card was a waste (cpu/memory bottleneck) and 2: wanted to start working with 4K video

 

[poparaadnan]

Being a 2014 does not have to be a "bad thing". I mean, I have i7 860 CPU that handles even newer titles but it definitely shows its age.

 

[Josiah23]

I'm pretty sure you can game on a Xeon CPU, they can defiantly handle the load of a newer title game. I never had a chance to use a Xeon CPU but I would like to try one out and compare it to the 4th Gen i7 and 4th Gen i5 on both my Systems.

 

[poparaadnan]

I cannot wait for the January xD I have everything else set up and just waiting for the CPU+Mobo+ram. Everyone I ask about this particular xeon is telling me that I made the right choice. We'll see soon enough haha

 

[digitaldd]

There's nothing wrong with this in fact back in the day I had a friend who would buy low end Dell Xeon servers and add soundcard, video card and upgrade the RAM/HDD and he'd have a capable gaming system for a very reasonable price. It wasn't until Dell started speccing their low end servers with Celerons and used lower quality PSUs that it became difficult to accomplish what he had done for years.

Get a decent workstation motherboard with at least one full PCIe x16 slot for your video card and it should work out. bear in mind many workstation boards may not have full PCIe x16 slots (they may be only x8).

 

[poparaadnan]

The board is intel dh87mc. It's not the top of the line but it was dirt cheap. Where I come from getting this kind of combo (xeon, motherboard and 32 GB of HyperX black ram) for less than $400 is unheard of.

 

[badelhas]

I don't really know why some ppl think Xeons are not for gaming. I am about to get e3 1241v3 with Mobo and 32 GB of RAM (pretty sweet deal I couldn't resist) and I'm hearing from some of my friends that I'm making a mistake. In reality e3 1241v3 performs almost equally as i7 4970 (non K) plus it doesn't have iGPU and therefore has a lower tdp. My point is, don't take all suggestions when deciding what to buy. Do your own research first.

I think you'll be fine. I mean, I use the 2011 Intel i5 2500k (overclocked to 4.4ghz) and it's still great.

Cheers

 

[poparaadnan]

That's still a great CPU! I was thinking of getting that one or i7 2600k just because they are dirt cheap now but this xeon deal was not something I could refuse. Anyways in 5-6 days it'll be here xD cant wait

 

[Hard PC Gamer]

I did several tests with various types of Xeon v2, v3 and v4 and all have done as well as the i7 and in some cases even better. On this YouTube channel you have all the test videos I've done:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2yey6oHayymi96_O1uUWeA

 

[poparaadnan]

I did several tests with various types of Xeon v2, v3 and v4 and all have done as well as the i7 and in some cases even better. On this YouTube channel you have all the test videos I've done:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2yey6oHayymi96_O1uUWeA

Thanks! I will check them out for sure!

 

[badelhas]

I did several tests with various types of Xeon v2, v3 and v4 and all have done as well as the i7 and in some cases even better. On this YouTube channel you have all the test videos I've done:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2yey6oHayymi96_O1uUWeA

Thanks for the tip. Which one do you recommend in terms of value/performance?

Cheers

 

[DavidinCT]

I don't really know why some ppl think Xeons are not for gaming. I am about to get e3 1241v3 with Mobo and 32 GB of RAM (pretty sweet deal I couldn't resist) and I'm hearing from some of my friends that I'm making a mistake. In reality e3 1241v3 performs almost equally as i7 4970 (non K) plus it doesn't have iGPU and therefore has a lower tdp. My point is, don't take all suggestions when deciding what to buy. Do your own research first.

I guess depending on how hard core you want to get with it. If your pared with a really good video card, it should hold up pretty well. Price and performance should be well up close to modern PCs.

The only thing I would worry about is the rest of the PC, the CPU requires a chipset to run, as that is a older chipset, you might not be able to get fast bus speeds and maybe even no USB 3.0, or SATA III and might be limited to SATA II. That is the only thing I could think of.

I had a CORE2QUAD @ 3ghz (q9650) for the longest time, even when I had the ITCH to swap it out, the benchmarks for a i5, or even a mid i7 (quad core CPUS) where really not much fully better. I was looking at spending $1200 for a minor improvement. When i finally did it, I made sure I got a system I could grow with...M2 slots, USB 3.1 and 3.0, plenty of PCIe slots, over clocking, etc. Sure the CPU is faster but, the bus speed is almost double the old one, the memory is 10X faster, even the SATA ports are v3 (6gb/s) as the old one was SATA 2 (3gb/s).

It made a difference, that is the ONLY real bottle neck I could think of going to a little older Xeon CPU. Otherwise, I would be tempted to do the same thing by the numers, it looks like it could keep up with alot of CPUS of today.

 

[badelhas]

I guess depending on how hard core you want to get with it. If your pared with a really good video card, it should hold up pretty well. Price and performance should be well up close to modern PCs.

The only thing I would worry about is the rest of the PC, the CPU requires a chipset to run, as that is a older chipset, you might not be able to get fast bus speeds and maybe even no USB 3.0, or SATA III and might be limited to SATA II. That is the only thing I could think of.

I had a CORE2QUAD @ 3ghz (q9650) for the longest time, even when I had the ITCH to swap it out, the benchmarks for a i5, or even a mid i7 (quad core CPUS) where really not much fully better. I was looking at spending $1200 for a minor improvement. When i finally did it, I made sure I got a system I could grow with...M2 slots, USB 3.1 and 3.0, plenty of PCIe slots, over clocking, etc. Sure the CPU is faster but, the bus speed is almost double the old one, the memory is 10X faster, even the SATA ports are v3 (6gb/s) as the old one was SATA 2 (3gb/s).

It made a difference, that is the ONLY real bottle neck I could think of going to a little older Xeon CPU. Otherwise, I would be tempted to do the same thing by the numers, it looks like it could keep up with alot of CPUS of today.

I agree. Intel has not been evolving much in terms of performance. This happens since 2011 and the lack of true competition is to blame. I still own the i5 2500k overclocked to 4.4ghz and its still more than enough for everything.

 

[Hard PC Gamer]

Thanks for the tip. Which one do you recommend in terms of value/performance?

Cheers

I always recommend Xeon for its stability and reliability and currently the prices are very attractive compared to the i7 X99 platform. And also serves for everything: Games and work. Xeon E5 provides a truly complete PC.

 

[Hard PC Gamer]

My new video. Battlefield™ 1 DX12 ULTRA with E5-2686 V3 18 Core 2.0Ghz base clock. Many quad core i5/i7 users are complaining of high CPU usage resulting in low GPU usage (bottleneck). Here the proof that a Xeon maintains GPU usage at 99-100% with high FPS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTzsJf35HyU

 

[badelhas]

My new video. Battlefield™ 1 DX12 ULTRA with E5-2686 V3 18 Core 2.0Ghz base clock. Many quad core i5/i7 users are complaining of high CPU usage resulting in low GPU usage (bottleneck). Here the proof that a Xeon maintains GPU usage at 99-100% with high FPS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTzsJf35HyU

That´s a great video indeed, thanks for sharing!
What about current version Xeons?

Cheers

 

[poparaadnan]

Today I added another awesome piece of hardware to my new rig: crucial mx300 1TB SSD

 

[Hard PC Gamer]

New video: Xeon 2686v3 overclocked@3600Mhz on all 18 core!

 

[SMARTGEORGIAN]

My E5440 isn't loading 100% (just 55%) in game while recording or gaming, so I got law FPS. Thats why RX 550 is loading just 25%. Do you know any patches or some tricks how to increase CPU loading for better GPU usage. See video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Nuacy7goxM&list=PLcIR6Tt4jWvjzjGb_tTaC5vJXUs87wVUz