I want to create Server based Gaming Rig

[Frick]

3.3Ghz today is pretty sucky. If you're into gaming.


EVGA should make a 2011 Classified, with focus on overclocking. Perfect you guys like this.

 

[Vineet Reddy]

As I have seen the posts the big problem and drawback of my project is Xeon processors and I need i7 for best gaming experience I hope Supermicro launches the board that is compatible with R3 2011 chip-set that could support i7 5960X in near future then I can still hope that this project will work. Lets hope that they launch their new series of boards soon.

 

[Aquinus]

As I have seen the posts the big problem and drawback of my project is Xeon processors and I need i7 for best gaming experience I hope Supermicro launches the board that is compatible with R3 2011 chip-set that could support i7 5960X in near future then I can still hope that this project will work. Lets hope that they launch their new series of boards soon.

Not going to happen as most 2P and 4P motherboards call for registered DRAM which is almost always ECC, something i7s can't do because their IMCs don't support it. You would be better off going with Xeons with fewer cores and high clocks. That would be your only bet for having a machine that does gaming alright but still gives you more cores for other tasks. You're not going to get an optimal gaming machine by trying to go with a 2P or 4P system though.

Dual E5-2643 v3s might be an okay middle-ground. 3.7Ghz boost is enough for games but, you still get 2x 6c/12t (12c/24t) out of it though with the option to get Xeons with more cores down the road. The E5-2667 V3 has slightly slower clocks (3.6Ghz boost,) but could get you up to 2x 8c/16t (16c/32t,) but that's probably about as far as you would want to go without destroying your gaming experience. Either way, Xeons are a sub-optimal choice for gaming, the only reason you should consider doing something like this is because there is something else you do often that needs those cores, otherwise it's just a waste.

 

[Vineet Reddy]

Yes Aquinus you are correct, then I will have to go with E7-8891 v2(3.2GHz with boost 3.7GHz). Thank you for informing me about i7's incompatibility with ECC RAM I did not know that.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

Not going to happen as most 2P and 4P motherboards call for registered DRAM which is almost always ECC, something i7s can't do because their IMCs don't support it. You would be better off going with Xeons with fewer cores and high clocks. That would be your only bet for having a machine that does gaming alright but still gives you more cores for other tasks. You're not going to get an optimal gaming machine by trying to go with a 2P or 4P system though.

Dual E5-2643 v3s might be an okay middle-ground. 3.7Ghz boost is enough for games but, you still get 2x 6c/12t (12c/24t) out of it though with the option to get Xeons with more cores down the road. The E5-2667 V3 has slightly slower clocks (3.6Ghz boost,) but could get you up to 2x 8c/16t (16c/32t,) but that's probably about as far as you would want to go without destroying your gaming experience. Either way, Xeons are a sub-optimal choice for gaming, the only reason you should consider doing something like this is because there is something else you do often that needs those cores, otherwise it's just a waste.

Not to mention you can't run multiple i7 chips in one system. They do not have the part on the chip to allow multiple CPUs to run together.

 

[MIRTAZAPINE]

True i7 don't have the connection lanes to communicate with other cpu. So for i7 you are limited by just one cpu.

I think you should wait for the broadwell-e update for the 6950x cpu. It have 10 cores/20 thread and you can overclock it. With a good cooler like maybe the nh d15 or water cooling you might be able to push the 10 cores to 4.4GHz. With that you would have the high clock speed in games and at the same time a large number of cores if you use for application which needed them.

Ecc ram is also slower than non-Ecc ram. Ecc ram have to go through extra error checking which makes it slower. This will pull down your speed in games. The largest capacity non Ecc ram that I know of is the 16GB corsair dominator Rams.

 

[n-ster]

Honestly, if you want a cool system, instead of going super crazy on the hardware, be creative. Maybe have 2 systems in one case like the Phanteks thing lets you do or do water cooling or something.

You can spend money, that's okay, but spend money on something that'll actually be better. Buy the best NVMe SSD, Be Quiet! Dark Power Pro 11 PSU, some crazy 250-500$ case, 1000+$ monitors, Top of the line X99 motherboard, 5960x, 100+$ keyboard and mouse, 300$+ headphones/DAC/AMPs, 500$+ chair/desk

 

[Aquinus]

Ecc ram is also slower than non-Ecc ram. Ecc ram have to go through extra error checking which makes it slower.

At the speeds memory runs at and how big and fast CPU cache is, ECC and buffering only tends to add a single cycle of latency as ECC and buffering will happen at the same time, not a huge impact. All in all, that isn't a reason to consider this in my opinion. I could run my memory at DDR3-1600 and I wouldn't know the difference. The biggest hurdle is latency when one CPU needs to access memory on another CPU, so you have the latency introduced by QPI as well which makes a much bigger impact.

Yes Aquinus you are correct, then I will have to go with E7-8891 v2(3.2GHz with boost 3.7GHz).

E7 v2s are IVB-EX CPUs aren't they? The E5 v3s are going to be better clock for clock as well. I would stop obsessing about the E7s, they're not going to give you a better experience and you'll only be blowing away more money. As I said before:

Dual E5-2643 v3s might be an okay middle-ground. 3.7Ghz boost is enough for games but, you still get 2x 6c/12t (12c/24t) out of it though with the option to get Xeons with more cores down the road. The E5-2667 V3 has slightly slower clocks (3.6Ghz boost,) but could get you up to 2x 8c/16t (16c/32t,) but that's probably about as far as you would want to go without destroying your gaming experience. Either way, Xeons are a sub-optimal choice for gaming, the only reason you should consider doing something like this is because there is something else you do often that needs those cores, otherwise it's just a waste.

 

[Vineet Reddy]

True i7 don't have the connection lanes to communicate with other cpu. So for i7 you are limited by just one cpu.

I think you should wait for the broadwell-e update for the 6950x cpu. It have 10 cores/20 thread and you can overclock it. With a good cooler like maybe the nh d15 or water cooling you might be able to push the 10 cores to 4.4GHz. With that you would have the high clock speed in games and at the same time a large number of cores if you use for application which needed them.

Ecc ram is also slower than non-Ecc ram. Ecc ram have to go through extra error checking which makes it slower. This will pull down your speed in games. The largest capacity non Ecc ram that I know of is the 16GB corsair dominator Rams.

Thank you for the info. If that is the case then I will wait for broadwell-e CPU's are launched. And have heard that HBM GPU's will launch in next year which are way better than the present GDDR5 GPU's.

 

[Nokiron]

Thank you for the info. If that is the case then I will wait for broadwell-e CPU's are launched. And have heard that HBM GPU's will launch in next year which are way better than the present GDDR5 GPU's.

Don't worry about the Xeon prefix, a E7 is not necessarily better than an E5 for example. That prefix is related to enterprise features, which you absolutely will not need.

This is a simplified explanation:

• The first number represents the maximum amount of processors in a configuration. For example, the E7-8890 V3 supports up to 8 CPUs in a system.
• The second number represents the socket type, with different features. E7 has better memory scalability for example.
• The last two digits is an arbitrary SKU-number.

If you truly want 18 cores, you would not benefit one bit choosing an E7-8890 v3 over an E5-2699 v3. You will actually get better perfomance using 2699 v3 over the E7.

The world of Xeons is not a very intuitive place for someone that isn't spending their days working with them.

 

[Vineet Reddy]

Don't worry about the Xeon prefix, a E7 is not necessarily better than an E5 for example. That prefix is related to enterprise features, which you absolutely will not need.

This is a simplified explanation:

• The first number represents the maximum amount of processors in a configuration. For example, the E7-8890 V3 supports up to 8 CPUs in a system.
• The second number represents the socket type, with different features. E7 has better memory scalability for example.
• The last two digits is an arbitrary SKU-number.

If you truly want 18 cores, you would not benefit one bit choosing an E7-8890 v3 over an E5-2699 v3. You will actually get better perfomance using 2699 v3 over the E7.

The world of Xeons is not a very intuitive place for someone that isn't spending their days working with them.

Thank you for the information. I want some Xeons(10 cores or more will be fine) that hits near 4GHz boost speed. Please quote some. Or should I wait till Xeon broadwell-e CPU's are out.

 

[Vineet Reddy]

Does performance of having SLI or Crossfire depend on number of CPU cores. I have heard from many sites that transferring data between multiple GPU's at same time is hard for CPU's with less number of cores which negates the performance improvement achieved by SLI. They say having more cores do give better performance with SLI and Crossfire as transfer of data can be handled better if distributed among different cores than stressing on limited cores.

 

[Frick]

Thank you for the information. I want some Xeons(10 cores or more will be fine) that hits near 4GHz boost speed. Please quote some. Or should I wait till Xeon broadwell-e CPU's are out.

I can't find anyone. There are Xeons that boost up to 3.9Ghz, but they don't support mutliple CPU's.

 

[Vineet Reddy]

I can't find anyone. There are Xeons that boost up to 3.9Ghz, but they don't support mutliple CPU's.

Then I will have wait till broadwell-e is out.

 

[Nokiron]

Thank you for the information. I want some Xeons(10 cores or more will be fine) that hits near 4GHz boost speed. Please quote some. Or should I wait till Xeon broadwell-e CPU's are out.

It might be worth it to wait for Broadwell. But you will probably not find a Xeon boosting that high and having support for more than one processor in the same system.
And remember that the highest boost level does not apply on heavily multithreaded tasks.

The best model you will find today from the top of my head is the E5-2687W v3.