- Over a week ago here at the channel
we tested the X5660 which is a $20 Xeon back from 2010.
It's very good value for money,
it has six cores, 12 threads,
and you can overclock it on a decent X58 Motherboard.
Now we tested that against the 9900K
and I'll put the video up here
if you haven't seen it already,
where we coupled it with an RTX 2080 Ti
and there was quite difference
but the RTX 2080 Ti is a very expensive graphics card.
It's out of reach for a lot of people
and the $20 Xeon when it comes down to it
really shouldn't be couple with a graphics card
that costs over $1200,
so today we're gonna be sort of making things
more realistic and pairing this Xeon
with an RTX 2070 and then comparing it
against the 9900K but also comparing it
against the Ryzen 5 2600 which is pretty much
the best value for money CPU you can get
in the new price performance sector.
And, on top of then, we're gonna be doing two tests
on the Ryzen chip, practically no overclocks
out of the box and then tweaking the CPU
to four gigahertz and also throwing
in some 3600 megahertz memory.
So what are we waiting for?
Let the games begin.
(electronic music)
Welcome back to Tech Yes City
and we here have seven different games tested
on these CPUs, both across 1080p and 1440p Ultra Settings.
Now we have tuned the Xeon, the X5660, to 4.5 gigahertz.
We've even given it some mediocre memory
which I believe represents a great sweet spot
for someone buying this use combination,
as for the Ryzen 5 2600,
we're using that with two different sets of memory,
some budget stuff from Kingston,
and then some G. Skill more expensive stuff
with 3600 megahertz XMP profiles.
We're testing this on an X370 Motherboard,
and then for the Intel that's clocked at 5 gigahertz,
but that's got much more expensive gear.
And, as for the graphics card,
we're using the RTX 2070 from AORUS,
which comes overclocked out of the factory,
it's one of the best 2070s you can get out there.
But it does command a slight premium,
but that being said,
let's pull up the first results here.
Far Cry 5 which is very single threaded dependent.
It loves that single core, high clocks and good IPC.
And what we can see here at 1080p
is the 9900K coming out on top,
but also, the Ryzen 5 2600 does benefit
a lot from those memory overclocks
and also that four gigahertz speeds.
When you don't have these tweaks applied,
it's actually coming very close the Xeon.
So the out of the box speeds for the Ryzen 5 2600
goes to around about 3.7 to 3.75 gigahertz,
so we can see that even tweaking your gear out of the box
does make a big difference.
Moving over to 1440p shows a bigger gap
than 1080p with the Ryzen 5 versus the Xeon,
and of course, the 9900K coming out on top.
But there really isn't a whole lot of difference
here at 1440p, it's not really nothing to write home about.
The graphics card is pretty much getting maxed
on all these configurations here.
Move over to Dota 2, very competitive multi-player title,
here at 1080p Ultra Settings,
we had the Xeon actually beating out the Ryzen 5 2600
with its sort of out of the box configuration.
But then when we moved over
with tweaking on the Ryzen 5 2600,
pretty much evened the playing field out.
9900K, of course, coming out well ahead
of all these other three setups here
that we had going on.
And then move over to 1440p,
showed pretty much the exact same story
and so the graphics card wasn't really being stressed
at both 1080p or 1440p Ultra Settings in this title.
Move over to CS GO, this is a game
that, again, loves high FPS,
and so we are testing those Ultra Settings
through, not to stress the GPU, but also stress the CPU,
especially when it comes to things like shadows,
and what we had at 1080p here
was 315 FPS versus 297 FPS average at 1080p.
And then, of course, when we applied those tweaks
to the Ryzen CPU, it was coming out ahead of the Xeon's.
Of course, the 9900K beating everything as it should
since it does command a much bigger premium
than these other two configurations here.
1440p was a similar story, however,
the gap was closing big time with the RTX 2070.
And onto another competitive multi-player title here,
Overwatch, we saw at 1080p Ultra Settings,
that the Xeon was just slightly beating the Ryzen 5 2600
out of the box, but, again, once we applied those tweaks,
Ryzen 5 2600 started boosting well ahead.
The 9900K, as expected, coming ahead
of everything at this resolution.
Stepping things up to 1440p,
saw a similar scenario as 1080p in this particular title,
with the Ryzen 5 2600 interestingly enough,
even with the stock settings,
just pulling a little bit ahead,
then the tweak configurations coming actually
close to that of the 9900K.
And next up we have Black Ops 4,
here is a title that needs both a good GPU and a good CPU.
In the previous test, we saw a massive difference
between the 9900K and the six core Xeon here,
but with the RTX 2070 things are starting
to level out a bit more.
Those differences aren't so pronounced.
And so at 1080p, you can see that the Ryzen 5 2600
came a bit ahead of the Xeon in this title
and then when it was tweaked it came out
with a bigger gap, closing in on that of the 9900K
which means that this title is pretty well optimized
across all those cores and threads.
And stepping things up to 1440p,
saw that gap close ever so more
between Ryzen and the 9900K,
the Xeon in this title was falling quite a bit behind
even at 1440p and now next up
we got Battlefield V, a special request,
as is the next title from Mr. Hardware Unboxed,
we saw here at 1080p that the Ryzen 5 2600
even when it was untweaked,
was scoring very well compared to the Xeon,
it was actually scoring very close to the 9900K.
And then when we tweaked it,
we literally saw no difference in average FPS
versus the untweaked Ryzen 5 2600
which was very interesting,
I haven't seen a result like this before,
needless to say, so this was a very good result
for all of these configurations at 1440p
which is kind of like a good spot
where I guess a lot of people would want to be
if they're using an RTX 2070.
And now move on to Hitman 2,
the results were kind of similar to Battlefield V,
except the Ryzen 5 2600 did benefit a lot
from being tweaked and then the 9900K
was out ahead of everything.
The Xeon still did pretty well,
when we look at those total FPS figures,
they're still very solid,
I mean I don't know how much FPS you need
in this title in particular,
but this is well over 120,
so it will be great for 120 hertz gamers.
Stepping things up to 1440p,
we saw very good FPS numbers from all three configurations
as well, with the gap closing
to pretty much that of nothing.
This was surprisingly, actually,
a pretty well optimized title on PC,
I started playing, I'm like it's actually pretty smooth,
at least on all these three configurations here.
And now here we are with conclusion time.
And the $20 Xeon, it did really well
when you couple it with an RTX 2070,
I think this is still, even in 2018,
a great sweet spot for this CPU.
Of course, if you're gonna go for a cheap Xeon like this
and you're got that Motherboard,
for instance, the X58 Motherboard that I had here.
Someone gave it to me because it had no Heatsinks
on the Northbridge and the Southbridge.
And that caused it to overheat.
But once we fixed that up,
we got some cheap memory in there,
we had a combo that is very good value for money.
And that's the whole purpose of X58,
it represents really good value for money
and so if you get a used graphics card,
like a GTX 1080 Ti, or if you get a used 1070 for example,
you're not gonna be seeing a whole lot of difference
between this old CPU,
providing you overclock it and tweak it,
compared to that of the latest and greatest
Ryzen 5 2600 or even the 9900K.
However, once we do start getting into things
like RTX 2080 Ti's,
then the differences do become more apparent.
Of course the Ryzen 5 2600 is a phenomenal value
for money chip, especially if you're buying new parts
and you want those warranties,
as we saw with the performance figures,
especially at 1440p, it was coming very close
to the 9900K a lot of the time.
And when we tweaked it,
we got even more performance out of it,
but I think it was important to note
that tweaking is very important for Ryzen 5,
if you don't tweak it, in some of the cases,
it was losing to the Xeon,
so the old school Xeon is no joke.
When I seem to go around to different videos
and different comment sections,
people seem to either love it or they seem to hate it
and the people that hate it seem to think
that it's really outdated, it's just done,
and maybe I should make a different video
addressing those concerns, 'cause what we saw here today
was a very good outlook for the little Xeon,
especially coming in with its price point,
of course, as you're heard in the past,
those X58 Motherboards are getting rarer
and rarer to come by.
But a lot of the times when you pick up them up in deals,
people can throw them out essentially with their i7 920,
and that's where you're going to extract the value
out of these little Xeons.
Where it all comes down to all three setups here
that I displayed here today,
all have their purpose.
9900K is for the person who just wants
the absolute best, doesn't care about price.
The Ryzen 5 2600 is for that person
who wants to maybe get a sort of mid to high range
graphics card like a 2070,
and get all new parts and get some good value for money.
And then the Xeon is for that person
who just absolutely loves tweaking,
they don't mind buying used parts
and they want the absolute best price performance.
And I hope that sums everything up for you guys.
And if you enjoyed this video,
then be sure to hit that Like button.
Also, let us know in the comments section below
which of these three setups do you like the best and why.
Love reading your thoughts and opinions as always,
and I'll catch you on another Tech Video very soon.
Peace out for now, bye.
(fast electronic music)