XEON vs. i7 again - TESTING INTERIOR SCENE

[3LP]

Yes because I compared dual processor rigs. If you look at the processor column, it's written 2
And price are for dual rigs as well.

I would never go for xeons if they aren't in dual rigs, that's the only way they are attractive, otherwise i7 are way better

Stan

[auke]

Kinda missed that . But you are then correct indeed . Don't agree i7's are always better for single cpu rigs though, in some cases xeon equivalents to the core version cpu's can be cheaper. They also support ECC memory which is important in some workflows. Big drawback is giving up the easy overclocking compared to an i5 or i7 K chip of course.

[3LP]

Agree that sometimes xeons can be cheaper, but for low end xeons, and when up add up all tge costs of the rig, usually bang for buck is lower than with i7s

Intel announced today that they will block the compatibility between low end xeons and cheap customers motherboard to avoid being able to build cheaper rigs with single xeons

Stan

[kosso_olli]

Has anyone here built a PC with dual i7 5960x? Would be interesting to see how they perform against two Xeons.

[3LP]

Yes few ppl have.
A 5960x OC at 4.4 does 1min 30 sec for this benchmark
Pretty cool compared to dual xeons

Stan

[auke]

Has anyone here built a PC with dual i7 5960x? Would be interesting to see how they perform against two Xeons.

You can't place 2 i7 CPU's in 1 system. Xeon 2xxx and 4xxx are the only CPU's intel makes with multi cpu support. It is possible to overclock a single 5960x to give some very impressive results as 3LP states though. In case you don't need ECC memory for anything you are doing on your system it might actually be cheaper to buy multiple 5960x systems and overclock them than to buy an high-end dual Xeon system with the same computational performance.

[3LP]

Well done!
I missed the main info in the question

Stan

[Morbid Angel]

Has anyone here built a PC with dual i7 5960x? Would be interesting to see how they perform against two Xeons.

most likely a highly clocked single core in i7 will outperform any xeon counter part. Therefore its expected to be better not just in rendering but in single thread ops. Good on all counts. If, you can get it to OC to that and keep it stable.

[auke]

most likely a highly clocked single core in i7 will outperform any xeon counter part. Therefore its expected to be better not just in rendering but in single thread ops. Good on all counts. If, you can get it to OC to that and keep it stable.

For single core performance yes, it will outperform any xeon chip, but multicore, definatly not. Have a look at the more extreme xeon chips with 14+ cores like the Xeon E5-2699 V3. The cost/performance ratio is a lot worse than with the i7 though. Also (extreme) overclocking cpu's is fine for games as they rarely push the cpu to its limits you should be alot more conservative with cpu's which are running at full power 24/7 for rendering. Higher temperatures and especially increased core voltages (needed to keep the system stable) speed up cpu degradation.

[viscorbel]

So with the new beta build that can use more than 64 threads:
2x e5-2696v3
44.8s Embree ON

[vlado]

So with the new beta build that can use more than 64 threads:
2x e5-2696v3
44.8s Embree ON

What is the result with just 64 threads?

Best regards,
Vlado

[viscorbel]

With 64 threads I had to turn off hyperthreading to get 100% cpu usage. Otherwise vray uses only one cpu.

With HT off, the result is 1m 2s

So it's about 25% faster now

What is the result with just 64 threads?

Best regards,
Vlado

[Streetwise]

I just added a used HP Z600 x2 Xeon 5670 box to the farm. Supposedly each x5670 chip has 6 cores and 12 threads. Yet the task manager is only showing 12 processes and not 24 like I was expecting to see. Is that right?

[3LP]

So with the new beta build that can use more than 64 threads: 2x e5-2696v3 44.8s Embree ON

Right, in theory I thought you should had 38sec at the benchmark, but I guess the loading time is getting in the way.

I guess a longer benchmark would make more sense to demonstrate that

Stan

[Streetwise]

I just added a used HP Z600 x2 Xeon 5670 box to the farm. Supposedly each x5670 chip has 6 cores and 12 threads. Yet the task manager is only showing 12 processes and not 24 like I was expecting to see. Is that right?

Turns out that hyperthreading was disabled in the system bios. The odd thing is though, that enabling it shaved off a whooping 5 minutes on a 2hr render. That doesn't make much sense.