Is there better option than i7-6950X ?

[lukx]

Thanks for input. Interesting. So now it would be good to know if 6950X performance over 6900k is big enough to be worth 700$ .

[Moriah]

Just check corona benchmark for CPU speeds... Xeons are way superior for rendering/sims, i7 6950X is a waste of money in my opinion, unless you really need that fast single core performance. For the same money you can get a used dual xeon with 50+ threads.

[joconnell]

Dual setups are bad for sims. There's so much memory involved in them and when you've to transfer that across a bus from one cpu to another it gets really inefficient. You're not going to get double the sim speed from a dual cpu machine unfortunately, maybe 20 - 40% in things like fume / naiad.

[lukx]

oh good to know. So after looking at corona bench it's between i7-6900k - 2 minutes and 2x E5-2630 - 1m 20sec. I'll be honest it would be good to have some power for gaming also

[joconnell]

I'd love a small form factor machine that takes 64gb of ram and a 1070 / 1080, seems like it's always the motherboard only having 2 ram slots that gets me though. Would love something portable!

[lukx]

I'd love a small form factor machine that takes 64gb of ram and a 1070 / 1080, seems like it's always the motherboard only having 2 ram slots that gets me though. Would love something portable!

John you mean for Xeon build or i7? For i7 there is nice micro board: https://www.asus.com/pl/Motherboards/X99M_WS/

[joconnell]

Very interesting, will search into this so!

[lukx]

John what rig you're rocking right now?

[joconnell]

Dual xeon hp's in work with some kind of geforce 9xx and an i7 at home in a huuuuuge case that I don't need

[Moriah]

Hey john do you know of any sims benchmark where you can see the difference between i7 and xeons? As far as i know the most important thing when doing sims is disk velocity, then memory bandwidth, then only CPU speed. Coming from an i7 6850k and now using 2x e5-2683 v3 i notice a huge increase in rendering and sims. Just not sure if it is as a greater in crease in sims as in rendering.

For example:

i7 6950X (1500€) - Let's OC it to 3.8 - 3.8*10 (Cores) = 38 ghz
2x Xeon E5 2683-v3 (800€ both used) - OC to 2.6 - 2.6*28(Cores) = 72.8 ghz

Also lukx my single core speed is at 2.6ghz and games are fine If you play more recent games that use as much cores as possible even better.

[joconnell]

I don't know of any benchmarks, it's based on our experience of two large jobs - the fx guys who're far better versed in this stuff preferred the higher clocked single xeons to the duals for their work.

[lukx]

one more thing worries me regarding Xeons... aren't max viewports heavily dependent on cpu? So if I will have 2.20Ghz Xeon it will be pain in bigger scenes ?

[hubmer3]

Hey john do you know of any sims benchmark where you can see the difference between i7 and xeons? As far as i know the most important thing when doing sims is disk velocity, then memory bandwidth, then only CPU speed. Coming from an i7 6850k and now using 2x e5-2683 v3 i notice a huge increase in rendering and sims. Just not sure if it is as a greater in crease in sims as in rendering.

For example:

i7 6950X (1500€) - Let's OC it to 3.8 - 3.8*10 (Cores) = 38 ghz
2x Xeon E5 2683-v3 (800€ both used) - OC to 2.6 - 2.6*28(Cores) = 72.8 ghz

Also lukx my single core speed is at 2.6ghz and games are fine If you play more recent games that use as much cores as possible even better.

Your single core speed should be 3 Ghz without OC and with 3.165

[Alex_M]

I'm planning to upgrade some time this year from my 3-year old i7 4930k and I'm trying to figure out which CPU is better. My picks so far are E5-2679 v4 and i7 6950x. Any suggestions which is better and why? I know one of the advantages of the xeon is that I would be able to add another one on the same PC in a few years time if more performance is needed, thus saving space, but other than that? For example, which one is faster, does the 2 times larger L3 cache of the xeon make any difference in rendering/daily work etc. etc.?

If my math is right, the xeon is 20 cores x 3.30Ghz = 66 Ghz while the i7 is 10 cores x 3.50 Ghz = 35 Ghz. So without overclocking any of them, the Xeon should be 2 times faster? And if I overclock 6950x to 4.40 Ghz the xeon would still be 50% faster?

My main concern with the xeon is the single core performance. If I overclock the 6950x to 4.40 Ghz it will be 30-35% faster in single-threaded tasks, am I right?

Any thoughts are appreciated.

[Sbrusse]

You are absolutely right.
I don't think the cache changes anything, it's all about Ghtz IMHO