Gaming on a Xeon E5-2687Wv2 vs. E5-1680v2 vs. new build + E5-2697

zandor

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I've been thinking about upgrading the CPU in my old rig for a while (socket 2011, i7-3820, 64GB ram) but couldn't make up my mind between an 8 or 12 core Xeon. The 12 core E5-2697 is clocked lower but would be a little better for work stuff. Then yesterday I tried the Newegg shuffle for the first time and oops they let me buy an EVGA 3060Ti XC for $480+tax&shipping so 3060Ti incoming. My main rig is all up to date with a 3090, etc. so don't worry about that. The catch is my main rig is in my home office with the big 43" 4k screen, etc. and all my work stuff, and this work from home thing has me not wanting to be in my home office sometimes so I'm thinking it's time to get a second machine ready to run my single player RPGs and strategy games. I'm posting this from my old socket 2011 rig. Target is 60FPS@1440p. If I upgraded my 60Hz screen I'd get one with FreeSync/G-Sync support and would probably be ok with 50FPS...

How do these old 8 core Xeons (E5-2687Wv2, E5-1680v2) do running recent games, particularly single player RPGs? I'm just looking for 60FPS or so at 1440p. Assume DLSS is on for Cyberpunk, etc.
 
Id grab the e5 2687w v2. It has plenty of multithread performance and modern chips are beginning to pull away from lga 2011 ones in single core by quite abit. The higher clock will aid that as much as possible.

The 2690 v2 is still, however, a capable chip. I see it for around $60 cheaper. What's your budget for this build? At a certain point it may be worthwhile to just go to a new build on a new motherboard.
 
Id grab the e5 2687w v2. It has plenty of multithread performance and modern chips are beginning to pull away from lga 2011 ones in single core by quite abit. The higher clock will aid that as much as possible.

The 2690 v2 is still, however, a capable chip. I see it for around $60 cheaper. What's your budget for this build? At a certain point it may be worthwhile to just go to a new build on a new motherboard.
Budget? Hmm... $120-$1500 not including the 3060Ti? I know that's probably a totally non-helpful answer but that's my range. I have a "half of a desk" HEDT build I did last fall with a 3090 in it that can run whatever, so this one doesn't need to be able to run everything, but I would like to be able to play current RPGs and strategy games away from my home office. Call me crazy if you want but sometimes I just want to get out of my office where my main rig, 4k screen, etc. are since I'm pretty much stuck in there 9-5 M-F. If I can string my old 2011/64GB setup along as a second rig for another year or two as a secondary gaming rig with a used server pull proc from some recycler for $120-200 that's what I'll do. If I need to run out and buy a 5800X or whatever, board, ram, case, PSU, etc. I can do that too.
 
Budget? Hmm... $120-$1500 not including the 3060Ti? I know that's probably a totally non-helpful answer but that's my range. I have a "half of a desk" HEDT build I did last fall with a 3090 in it that can run whatever, so this one doesn't need to be able to run everything, but I would like to be able to play current RPGs and strategy games away from my home office. Call me crazy if you want but sometimes I just want to get out of my office where my main rig, 4k screen, etc. are since I'm pretty much stuck in there 9-5 M-F. If I can string my old 2011/64GB setup along as a second rig for another year or two as a secondary gaming rig with a used server pull proc from some recycler for $120-200 that's what I'll do. If I need to run out and buy a 5800X or whatever, board, ram, case, PSU, etc. I can do that too.
Anything past a e5 2670 v1 should do reasonably decent in modern titles. Those could be found for $13 or the 2670 v2 for $35. How much do you see yourself using this computer and for how much longer? The 2687w v2 would be the best if you feel like throwing another $60-100 at the pc compared to the cheaper lga 2011 alternatives. These pcs also do remain relivent for any decently multithreaded programs (and games) and should continue to do so into the future. Do you have any issues with your current chip? how much more profermance would you be looking for? you may gain ~%20 max single core performance in ideal scenarios with a 2687w v2 and multi thread abit more.
 
Anything past a e5 2670 v1 should do reasonably decent in modern titles. Those could be found for $13 or the 2670 v2 for $35. How much do you see yourself using this computer and for how much longer? The 2687w v2 would be the best if you feel like throwing another $60-100 at the pc compared to the cheaper lga 2011 alternatives. These pcs also do remain relivent for any decently multithreaded programs (and games) and should continue to do so into the future. Do you have any issues with your current chip? how much more profermance would you be looking for? you may gain ~%20 max single core performance in ideal scenarios with a 2687w v2 and multi thread abit more.
Sounds like the E5-2687v2 or 1680v2 should work. Anything v1 is a no-go though, no matter how cheap it is. Sandy Bridge Xeons aren't on the supported list for my board. It supports Sandy Bridge i7s, but the Xeon support was added later and they only added support for Ivy Bridge.

With 8+ cores, 64GB of ram and multiple 8x & 16x PCI-e slots for 10gig NICs, storage controllers, etc. it'll be useful as a test machine for programming stuff and general screwing around for a number of years, so it's not going anywhere for a while even if I do a new build. If I don't put an 8-core 2687Wv2 or 1680v2 in it and do a new build I'll get a 12-core 2697v2 for my old rig. The 12-core has slower clocks so it would be worse for gaming, but 12 cores would be a bit better for a test machine. 12 cores isn't enough better to go spending $1000+ (not including the vid card) on a new build though.

I suppose I'm kind of jumping the gun with this thread since I'm going to try the 3060Ti with the i7-3820 before I buy anything. If that runs current games ok I'll just get one of those two 8-core Xeons.
 
You know that the single core performance on these is completely crippled right? That a Ryzen5 5600X would eat two maxed-out Ivy Bridge E5s for breakfast in gaming, right? (i mean sure you can game and compile six kernels at once, slowly)
 
You know that the single core performance on these is completely crippled right? That a Ryzen5 5600X would eat two maxed-out Ivy Bridge E5s for breakfast in gaming, right? (i mean sure you can game and compile six kernels at once, slowly)
It's not that bad, stock for stock one Zen3 core is worth two Ivy Bridge cores, and half of that advantage comes from the fact that desktop Zen3 boosts to nearly 5GHz. Outside of pathological games (I've seen stuff which gets very confused when you have too many sockets) Ivy Bridge-E will do fine if you aren't going for crazy high refresh rates.
My vote is for a 2680V2. It's 80%+ of the top CPU on that socket for $50, and lets you stretch your 64GB of DDR3 for a few more years (plus you don't have to tear down the whole rig!) You could also swap for a server-style 2011 board, which will let you use RDIMMs - that's where the original socket 2011 really shines, you can get 128GB of DDR3 RDIMMs for roughly $1/GB versus $500 for that much DDR4.
 
I'm not going for crazy FPS. 60 is basically my target. I've got an i9 + 3090 build I did late last year that'll run whatever. This box isn't my main rig anymore, plus my gaming mostly consists of RPGs and strategy games. So no, I don't need the fastest. If a 5600X can do 120fps I only need half that.
 
I would get the 1680V2 and overclock it to 4.2+ GHz.
After checking my board's supported CPUs, alas that's not on the list. Not sure why. I ordered an E5-2687W V2. $150, not too bad. It should be here middle of next week, though my thermal paste might take longer and I can't swap chips without paste. I'm going to feel a little guilty pulling my CPU cooler off since it hasn't been on there 10 years yet. That Arctic Ceramique 2 or something like that has been on there since April 2012, and temps are still ok. I wonder how crunchy that stuff is at this point. Guess I'll find out in a week or two.
 
The 3060Ti showed up last week, so I played with it a little and ran a couple tests before swapping chips. Got the CPU yesterday, but of course my paste didn't show up until today. So far performance between my i7-3820 and the used E5-2687Wv2 is a smidge slower on single thread stuff to quite a bit better with the i7. I had a mild overclock on the 3820, but i7-3820s are semi-locked and you can't raise the multiplier over 43x, so they max out at 4.3GHz. Mine would do that easily on all cores. The Xeon at stock clocks maxes out at 4.0, and turbos to 3.6 on all cores. I'll have to play with the Xeon a bit. At the very least I can probably get it to sit at 3.6 all core, but for now it's bone stock. Ivy Bridge is mostly a die shrink of Sandy Bridge, but the Xeon has 25MB of cache compared to 10MB on the i7-3820. I'm assuming the minor IPC improvements and larger cache makes the difference between the two in single thread loads smaller than the raw clock speed difference would suggest. It's working out pretty much how I hoped it would. Not good enough for online pew-pew in recent shiny stuff, but it looks like it fixed Shadow of the Tomb Raider (may still need to fiddle with graphics settings a bit, but it's much better) and Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition is running just as well as it did with the old proc. I'm still at the beginning of the game, and FPS is hanging out in the low 80s most of the time with the settings nearly cranked all the way up and DLSS on quality at 1440p. I'm guessing Metro E^3 is GPU limited. Google says there are more CPU intensive parts later in the game, but I haven't really gotten into Metro due to being busy with The Outer Worlds.

I may be going senile. When I pulled the heatsink off that old i7-3820 the paste looked like I'd spread it all over the proc and looked like Arctic Silver. Arctic Silver is gray, Ceramique is white. Does this stuff change color over 9+ years, or did I use Arctic Silver and forget what I used? Whatever it was, it wasn't really crunchy.
 
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I've been thinking about upgrading the CPU in my old rig for a while (socket 2011, i7-3820, 64GB ram) but couldn't make up my mind between an 8 or 12 core Xeon. The 12 core E5-2697 is clocked lower but would be a little better for work stuff. Then yesterday I tried the Newegg shuffle for the first time and oops they let me buy an EVGA 3060Ti XC for $480+tax&shipping so 3060Ti incoming. My main rig is all up to date with a 3090, etc. so don't worry about that. The catch is my main rig is in my home office with the big 43" 4k screen, etc. and all my work stuff, and this work from home thing has me not wanting to be in my home office sometimes so I'm thinking it's time to get a second machine ready to run my single player RPGs and strategy games. I'm posting this from my old socket 2011 rig. Target is 60FPS@1440p. If I upgraded my 60Hz screen I'd get one with FreeSync/G-Sync support and would probably be ok with 50FPS...

How do these old 8 core Xeons (E5-2687Wv2, E5-1680v2) do running recent games, particularly single player RPGs? I'm just looking for 60FPS or so at 1440p. Assume DLSS is on for Cyberpunk, etc.
I would go with the 1680v2 and here is why, the 2687Wv2 is a locked chip since the 2 in 2687 means it’s meant for a dual processor system IE no multiplier or base strap overclocking because both processors must sync at all times and intel can’t garauntee sync with overclocking so they lock the feature out. It will only do base clock overclocking on a 2011 motherboard which means 5% performance boost at maximum. Today’s games do like more cores but more important still is clock frequency. With the 1680v2 it’s semi unlocked which means you can overclocking to a 43x multiplier and also use the base straps to increase the base clock to 110, 125, 150 MHz. So using a base strap of 125mhz and a 37x multiplier you get 4.626ghz which is attainable on a 1680v2, if you can get 38 or 39x with 125mhz base strap stable without overheating or going above 1.35v vcore then even better! The all core frequency on the 2687W v2 (3.7-3.8ghz if I remember correctly) will be a big hinderance in games. Go with the 1680 v2 if you want something that’ll last
 
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