What is better than a single xeon well
your answer would probably be
two Xeons, and well of course you would be
right i mean it's always better to have
more xeons, but in today's video we're
going to take a look at the value proposition
of going with a setup like this and that
is in this case we've got
two x 56 72 xeons
now these come in at around ten dollars
and they're a four core eight
thread variant of the very popular first
generation westmere xeons now in the
past i've covered things like the x-5670
the x-5650 which is six core 12 thread
and they're overclockable and they
represent great value if you can find an
overclocking motherboard
however in today's video we're going to
look at a dual socketed motherboard
where they can accept two of these xeons
and you can put them together
and get eight core 16 threads and at the
face value
8 core 16 threads for 20 does sound like
fantastic value
but we do have to keep in mind that this
is first generation
and the lack of avx and avx-2
instruction sets
plus in a lot of cases the lack of usb 3
and certain other features
does make this less appealing especially
in 2021.
also considering its sheer age there is
a lot to talk about
if you want to go down this route and
you guys have been requesting that i
take a look
at the dual first gen xeons for quite a
while
so let's get into it see what numbers we
can pull in games
and then we'll talk about the value
proposition right here
today's video is sponsored by cyberghost
vbn they're a world leading virtual
private network provider with over 36
million users i use cyberghostvpn to
hide my ip address and encrypt my
connection especially if i'm out
on a public wi-fi network but it's not
just that cyberghostvpn is an expert of
unblocking
geo-restricted content on any country
you travel to
basically i can watch that movie that is
on netflix usa but not showing in
australia betting on xero
also cyber goes vpn gives you unlimited
access to 7000 servers in 90 countries
they also have apps for all operating
systems and one subscription can protect
up to seven devices at the same time
so you can share it with family and
friends now's the perfect time to get it
because i have an 84
discount for a three year plan waiting
for you click the link in the
description and get a complete digital
privacy
links in description below so the first
thing you want to do when you get a dual
xeon system like this put together is
you're probably going to want to tune
the system as best can be tuned but
this is where the problem happens with
motherboards like
the server grade motherboards in this
case we're using a super micro
motherboard
and you're really limited to not only an
older kind of bios where it's
not even uefi but you've got the only
option here is really to
overclock the memory in this case we put
it on
1333 megahertz which is we're using ddr3
ecc registered memory and that's one of
the big benefits of using these older
systems though
is that you can use cheaper memory that
wouldn't work
on consumer grade boards say for
instance a h61 motherboard just won't
support ddr3 ecc registered memory but
we're locking this 1333 megahertz speed
as well as
dropping the qpi frequency down here to
4.8 and the reason we're doing that is
to take some of the heat
off that northbridge heatsink if we're
running this higher then you can
overheat this chipset
because we're running two higher clocked
xeons because most of these server grade
motherboards
were only designed to run a lower
clocked xeon and in turn that would put
less strain on the heatsink itself
though after we've done those two things
we can now get over to windows
and finally run some benchmarks now
going on into the gaming numbers with
our gtx 980 where we recently did the
ryzen 1 3100 build with a gtx 980 as
well
and in fortnite we do lose out a bit of
fps here
to the ryzen 33100 and that's only four
cores eight threads so
this is more limited to the single
threaded side in fortnight believe it or
not
and this is causing us to lose a bit of
fps though
it's nothing to be ashamed about getting
over a hundred fps and this is on
competitive settings with the epic view
distance and low settings
so this plays really well on this pc
still it's just of course
you will be losing a bit of fps if
you're not going with a newer cpu with
better single thread performance or of
course
you're not overclocking the cpu in this
case we can't
however let's move over now to cs go
where the fps here was surprisingly a
lot better than it was in fortnite
where in the previous video when we did
the ryzen 3 3100 we actually tested the
same map and we used the same settings
and we're getting very similar fps on
this
dual xeon x 5672 setup
so that is some good news scoring over
150 average fps though
one thing i will note is that the one
percent and point one percent lows
especially on this pc in particular
they aren't that accurate in that as
soon as we hit the f5 key to start
benchmarking
in pretty much any title that we tested
here today the uh one percent and
pointless
lows drop really low but after that the
one percent lows do tend to pick up a
little bit and it
is relatively at least in csgo and
fortnight for what it's worth
a smooth experience now moving over now
to call of duty cold war black ops
this is playing this game at 1080p 100
render resolution
and it's on a blend of low and medium
settings the game itself this time
around configured the settings
automatically
and when i started playing it on these
settings it actually gave us around 70
fps i mean changing some graphic
settings around and lowering them down
you might be able to get
a bit more fps squeeze a little bit more
out of this thing but for what it's
worth i was really impressed
with the visual quality for what we're
getting on this game at 1080p
and of course it was very playable on
these cpus the eight core 16 threads but
what we can see is
at least in the three titles so far and
actually the next tile is just going to
be just as bad
that the 16 threads isn't being
perfectly utilized i believe we
were utilizing that a bit better then we
could get some higher fps though
onto cyberpunk this game scoring around
40 average fps
just like it did on the ryzen 3 3100
setup this is pretty much gpu bound
cyberpunk being
one of the worst games in terms of its
graphics demand and that it's just
so hungry for the gpu power in this case
the gtx 980 can deliver it at 1080p
low settings but if that is something
that you want to just step outside and
do some jumping jacks to
then by all means please go do some
jumping jacks but 40 fps it's a little
bit under
i do like to get 60 fps or more if i can
even if i'm changing the settings to not
so desirable graphic fidelity at low but
in this case we've already pretty much
lowered the settings as low as they can
go so good old cyberpunk still
running pretty poorly even on mediocre
rigs like we're not even going
into that potato level and this thing
still can't put out the fps so now just
finished up our cinebench benchmark
here in r23 and the dual xeon scored
5618 points
this will make for surprisingly a decent
1080p
video editing rig especially since we do
have 24 gigabytes of ram
installed in this pc though
after running that cinebench score
you're probably wondering like what's
the go here that looked pretty good
especially for the price and
yes it is pretty good for that price but
one thing to keep in mind is that we've
had to install
a fan here over that heatsink which is
pretty much because we're running two
cpus right now
this heatsink does get very hot and
because it's a server kind of build
we do want to make sure we've got this
fan cooling that heatsink because
if we don't we actually it can actually
overheat and turn the system off and
that's not good especially while you're
gaming or doing productivity tasks
you don't want this to happen i believe
this is the reason why a lot of people
do sand i've actually this is the third
x58
server motherboard people have sent in
to me here where one of them i had to
wash and two others
i guess people just tried using them and
they just didn't work properly for them
in this case we've got this working
where it's working properly with a fan
directly flowing
air over the northbridge heatsink right
here which is sort of
right under the gravis guard so in a
difficult location but
you can get the job done and you will
get some very good performance
as we're seeing here with the cinebench
score now in terms of power consumption
that
is a bit of a minus on a setup like this
where
i'll show you guys the idle power
consumption numbers as well
as the power consumption numbers while
we're running cinebench and also
while we're gaming in call of duty so
now coming back to the talking head
what we can see with those results is
that yes this thing can still play games
in 2021 and in fact
if you find something like this on a
local deals hunt
or you find a server motherboard for
very cheap and
no one wants to use that thing anymore
like for instance
i got a server rack given to me in the
parts on and i utilize that to get some
very good price performance
if you can get something like that where
it's a local deal or someone just
sells it off for a ridiculously low
price then of course you can get some
amazing price performance
never look past the used market for
getting a good deal
but what we're going to look at right
now is of course the market rates online
which is a very important part
and the two zeons themselves by
themselves ten dollars
i think that's always going to be a good
option for someone especially
who just wants to play say cs go
fortnight a bit of league of legends
but when we look at the two of these in
the fact that we've got to put them on
an expensive motherboard where the
prices that i checked for these
motherboards
are around a hundred dollars each so if
we've got the hundred dollar motherboard
then we've got the two coolers that
we're gonna put on top which are twenty
dollars each then we've got the two cpus
this now brings us to around 140 usd
and honestly at this price i would
recommend some other choices
and that's either going with first
generation ryzen or of course going with
one of my very popular favorites right
now
and that is the x99 xeons off aliexpress
my favorite being the 2678 v3 that's a
12 core 24 thread that will set you back
a little bit more dollars
in the grand scheme of things but if we
look at the 8 core for example you can
pick these up very cheap
and get a motherboard as well as ram and
fit that out
for pretty much the same price as this
and that will give you eight core 16
threads
and not only that you'll have avx and
avx2 instruction sets
on top of that and since using the
northbridge configuration on these
chipsets
they then had higher multipliers on the
cpus even in idle and of course 45 and
32 nanometer chips aren't as efficient
as their smaller brethren
though the final obstacles as i would
call it with a setup like this
is that you do need two cpu coolers so
you will be spending extra money on
coolers and also you might need an
eatx case which could set you back more
money
and of course the fact that you've got
to remove more heat from the case than
you traditionally otherwise would
so you might need more case fans and of
course a bigger power supply
because you're now going to feed two
cpus power as opposed to one
so in this case we did get away with
using a 650 watt power supply
it was absolutely fine but say for
instance we wanted to step it up to two
6 core 12 threaded xeons
to make 12 cause 24 threads in total
then i'd suggest going with an even
bigger power supply
especially if we're using a more power
hungry gpu like a 980 ti for example
though when all the dust is settled and
the sun is shining down brightly
on these first generation xeons it
doesn't
take away from the fact that these
things can still play games
and if you do pick them up cheap enough
and you do have a bit of time on your
hands
and you do have some of the parts lying
around to fix yourself up a system
and you just want to play games then
something like this will definitely be
able to entertain you
even in 2021 but one more thing not to
forget and i'll say it again like we
said in the gaming benchmarks
is if you do go with a setup with two
cpus
in this case especially if it's first
generation do put a fan
over that chipset heatsink because
it did in this case overheat without
that fan
and i have used the setup like this in
the past and it has overheated without
the fan as well so
would definitely recommend getting that
fan over there but other than that i'm
pretty happy with this pc it's not loud
at all and it does get up and boogie
still i think that's the most important
thing
anyways with that aside if you guys
enjoyed today's video then be sure to
hit that like button and let us know in
the comments section below
what you think of going with two zeons
like this do you share the same thoughts
as me
do you think it's just not an option at
all even if you pick it up
cheap enough love reading your thoughts
and opinions as always just like this
question of the day here which comes
from tamiya zevadov and they ask
you're going to win against whole
country governments like russia
they bought 60 million dollars of gpus
from from nvidia last week
and many other countries so to answer
this one it's tricky right it comes off
the back of the video we did
where we spoke about the rtx 3060 and
the
implementation of what nvidia is doing
with the algorithms to essentially nerf
or drop the hashing rates of the rtx
3060 to make it
less desirable for cryptocurrency miners
now russia buying up 60 million dollars
worth of gpus
in a week i mean that's what a lot of
corporations are doing they're just
buying up all these graphics cards and
making money
and that's what cryptocurrencies
introduced it's introduced this new
wave of demand because people want to
make profit
and of course the rtx 30 series
especially the 3060 ti
being the most desirable in terms of
power efficiency versus profit
they're going to be wanting to buy them
up so we've got this extra demand coming
in one thing i know is that
the hashing rate and the profitability
of a 30 60 at its current price
point versus a 30 60 ti is a lot less
desirable for miners but when we look at
the difference in gaming
numbers it's a lot less than that
difference in cryptocurrency hashing
rates
so that's definitely going to help
gamers in that sense
and lastly one thing to say about this
whole situation a lot of people are
criticizing nvidia now
for doing this and look i know like
don't get me wrong i'm the first guy
that will tell you and i've been telling
people this for years these are
corporations they don't care about you
but one thing i will say is they do care
about your business
and business from gamers is continual
as opposed to cryptocurrency miners
which isn't nvidia knows that
so they're going to want to try to take
care of the gamers before the
cryptocurrency minus
and so i feel like what they've done
with this 360 drop in hashing
rates is actually a good thing though at
the end of the day it's a very touchy
subject and
the fact that people are getting very
emotional about it and they're getting
heated up in the comments means that is
there a lot of frustration around this
subject
and i feel like there's the
cryptocurrency thing in general is not
it just it's one of those things that's
not solving anything in the world at all
it's just creating more problems than
it's fixing that's what i feel like
cryptocurrency is doing
and of course the most important thing
is i feel like cryptocurrency and
especially the speculation going into it
is definitely a band-aid from all the
governments
going crazy on the printer on the
printer
and of course i feel like it's a
band-aid for the real problem and that's
the government's just printing out money
like rates that they've never done
before
so all this mayhem that we're seeing
i feel like there's a better solution at
the core and i feel like you've got to
fix the core
problem rather than try to band-aid it
good question of the day
thanks for that one anyway guys if you
stayed this far and you're enjoying that
tech yes content
i'm going to be getting it back on to
xeons and use parts hunts and more
positive stuff because
this whole crypto situation when i talk
about it it does
just bring me down it's nothing to be
positive about i think
anyway if you stayed this far and joined
that techies content be sure to hit that
sub button ring that bell
and i'll catch you in another tech video
very soon
peace out for now bye
[Music]
you