Dual E5-2687w today

[renegate]

Hello guys, i was wondering if a dual E5-2687w v1 workstation was hidding any dangers behind them that i can't see. But to step up the story from the bottom up lets explain what i need this workstation for.

My job requires multiple VM running with a decent ammount of ram on them and my budget is extremely limited. After some digging and some questioning i got to the point that my best shot at this is a dual E5-2687w. The workstation would be used for some casual gaming of course but nothing extrely demanding. The clock speed on the E5-2687w as far as i can see is going to allow it and the price right now is amazing! I can get 2xE5-2687w at 350 euros each!

All in all i want your opinion on this because i saw a video of the OC3D team having it but on release date when the cost was extreme. I think at the price range now this would make an excelent workstation for my budget (2000). If you guy's have any better ideas about a setup with motherboard, ram, cpu that fits that budget please give me a hint because i can't find anything else.

 

[AlienALX]

Hmm I think those CPUs are over priced mate. From what I can tell they are socket 2011, and probably Sandybridge. They are 8 core, 16 thread and seem very similar to the 2670 (link incoming).

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Intel-Xeo...948495?hash=item2ef56b584f:g:LZIAAOSwT5tWNhvt

Which is quite expensive for a 2670. They were selling for around £70 before they roared in popularity due to them working in regular 2011 X79 desktop boards.

However, even at that price of £114 as you can tell it's FAR cheaper than 350 euros each. Far, far cheaper.

So I recommend two of those and then hunt down one of these.

Asrock Rack EP2C602

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4fMl4mkTRs&t=753s

That should cost you far, far less. I don't know what country you are in (please add it in your profile it makes our lives much easier) but the 2670 should be plentiful and you should be able to get the board for around 300 euro.

TBH I reckon you could get there on a thousand Euro, not two.

As for how good Sandy E is? yeah, very good. I have a 2680 V2 8 core ES Ivy chip and it's awesome. For virtual machines and VMware I believe that these days you can actually assign physical cores and set levels of RAM to each machine you are running, so 16 cores would be amazing.

But yeah, do some research on a dual 2670 V1 machine. There are loads of them on Youtube

 

[renegate]

The same build was suggested time and time again by all of the people i talked too. I have researched E5-2670 and also the E5-2690. The think here is that for a mild gaming high clock speed is the matter here.

I originally had the idea of going for the E5-2690 because on turbo-boost it also goes to 3.8Ghz that is exactly the same as the E5-2687w so i wanted to go with it due to the 50 euro differance at the price at that point.

The REAL question i needed answer was. Does it worth having that extra base 200Mhz clock if they turbo boost the same? I could use those 100 euro that now is 200 euro price differance (100 euro on each CPU) for more ram or a better featured motherboard with some 10Gbe NIC on it.

I could also make it with 4 bonded 1 Gbe NIC for now and get the extra network card later if i'm to gain a 5-10% more performance from the 2x E5-2687w. And after searching it again with current prices and a performance analisys that i found relative to gaming and general performance the differance is at 1% so i think that makes things clear.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Performance-Comparison-E5-2690-vs-E5-2687W-143/

 

[AlienALX]

OK firstly those turbo boost speeds you are reading there are not indicative of the full 8 core boost dude. When you look at a Xeon the CPU boost you see is only for one core. It then staggers downwards depending on how many cores you are using. For example, my Xeon I am using is rated for 3.6ghz. However, that is only when one thread is being used. It then goes to 3.5ghz for two cores, 3.4ghz for four cores and 3.2ghz for all 8 IIRC.

I came from a Xeon that would only boost to 2ghz on all 8 cores (but was also Ivybridge). Of course, I have seen massive gains but that is because I have gained 1.2ghz overall. 200mhz on the other hand? won't make that much difference.

I also use mine for gaming and it's been fine. I have it paired with a Fury X and I have had no reason to use my 5820k 4.4ghz rig with a Titan X in it since I upgraded the CPU to 3.2ghz.