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Is anyone here using a x5698-model Xeon processor (currently Intel's fastest chip ever, at 4.4GHz)?
I just installed two x5698 Xeon chips this weekend on a new computer (using a dual-processor config) -- if I am remembering correctly, the x5698 is not sold in Intel's consumer retail product line, but rather is targeted at larger businesses and enterprises. They can also be very expensive, but I was able to buy 2 in used cond., for way below the brand-new retail market price and by buying over e-bay.
This x5698 dual-processor config is very, very *fast*, from what I have played around so far with it -- the new computer I installed them in is hands-down and by far and way the fastest computer I have ever bought, with lightning-fast and practically instant response time. Just curious, other than the expensive cost factor, does anyone know why Intel does not market these chips, for regular, every-day power users, who want more raw processing power strength, or have have resource-demanding applications installed? Surely there potentially could be a market for regular consumers, especially for hard-core techies who love cutting-edge and advanced IT technologies?
Is anyone else here either currently using the chip, or may have them installed in an enterprise business environment, or know someone else who has them? If so, would love to hear more about your experiences with using the x5698 Xeon please? Thank you!
The Xeon processors are intended for servers so you won't see a lot of people using them in desktop environments. From what I have read, they are only dual core so in a desktop environment with multithreaded applications and concurrent processing; they would most likely be slower than the current i7's. I'm not a gamer but I bet if you ran one of the high end multithreaded games on it, an i7 would probably eat the Xeon's lunch.
As already pointed out, Xeon is a server CPU so most people don't use them on the desktop. My experience with them (especially the X series) is that they require much more power, and produce much more heat than their desktop equivalents.
That particular CPU is a Westmere (now a couple of generations old), and was a limited run OEM model that was custom overclocked by Intel. It only has 2 of the 6 cores unlocked. It is blazing fast (4.4 GHZ), if your MB can actually support it.
For single threaded apps, on a machine that is carefully setup, it will probably scream. But I'd be willing to bet that in most traditional server environments the standard Xeons (Westmere or Sandy Bridge) will perform better overall due to the additional 4 or 6 cores, along with the other SB enhancements (cache, etc).
On the desktop, with lots of processes running, I'd bet my money on an Ivy Bridge i7 for overall performance. The 3770k IB generally matches or outperforms the stock x5690 that the x5698 is based on.
The Xeon processors are intended for servers so you won't see a lot of people using them in desktop environments. From what I have read, they are only dual core so in a desktop environment with multithreaded applications and concurrent processing; they would most likely be slower than the current i7's. I'm not a gamer but I bet if you ran one of the high end multithreaded games on it, an i7 would probably eat the Xeon's lunch.
(Referring to bolded portion above.) Sorry, I don't mean to sound dumb or anything like that, but I am unfortunately not super-familiar with hardware and processor engineering specs (I am much more familiar with software). Just curious, could you please elaborate a little more on how server chips differ exactly, from desktop chips? Also, aren't Xeons technically able to be used as workstation chips, in addition to server chips? I had thought the whole point of a workstation was just that it was a beefed-up, more powerful version of a desktop PC?
As already pointed out, Xeon is a server CPU so most people don't use them on the desktop. My experience with them (especially the X series) is that they require much more power, and produce much more heat than their desktop equivalents.
That particular CPU is a Westmere (now a couple of generations old), and was a limited run OEM model that was custom overclocked by Intel. It only has 2 of the 6 cores unlocked. It is blazing fast (4.4 GHZ), if your MB can actually support it.
For single threaded apps, on a machine that is carefully setup, it will probably scream. But I'd be willing to bet that in most traditional server environments the standard Xeons (Westmere or Sandy Bridge) will perform better overall due to the additional 4 or 6 cores, along with the other SB enhancements (cache, etc).
On the desktop, with lots of processes running, I'd bet my money on an Ivy Bridge i7 for overall performance. The 3770k IB generally matches or outperforms the stock x5690 that the x5698 is based on.
I have 2 high-powered, 1110W heat sinks with an 89% energy-efficiency rating installed in my PC case, in order to ensure that the minimum possible amount of heat and power are generated. The chips are installed inside of an HP z800 workstation PC, which can pack up to a maximum of 192 GB RAM (I have 16 GB currently installed). The PC has Windows Server installed and is intended as a test/eval/training box for various server apps, including SharePoint Server, SQL Server, etc.
Also just curious, does it make any difference in terms of the performance of the x5698 chips that I have two installed, side-by-side? Performance improvement-wise, as far as vs. a single x5698 chip, I mean? So far the PC has been running exponentially fast -- I have never owned a faster PC than this one, so far to date anyway. I am extremely pleased and impressed with the speed and performance of it, after having played around for several days now. It completely blows away the performance of prevous Harperton-series Xeon 3.0GHz setup I had running on my previous PC gear, before the one with the x5698 chips installed.
I don't really have much knowledge about the Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge chips yet, so while they could indeed perhaps be even faster than the x5698, I haven't really had a chance to research them yet. Is the reason the Sandy and Ivy Bridges may be be faster even though that have a lower max clock speed than the x5698's 4.4GHz clockrate the same reason why the Pentium 4 3.8Ghz chips of about 10 years ago were slower than Core chips running around 2 GHz or there abouts, since the Core chips were more efficient all-around overall?
Last edited by Phoenix2017; 12-16-2012 at 10:31 PM..
I don't really have much knowledge about the Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge chips yet, so while they could indeed perhaps be even faster than the x5698, I haven't really had a chance to research them yet. Is the reason the Sandy and Ivy Bridges may be be faster even though that have a lower max clock speed than the x5698's 4.4GHz clockrate the same reason why the Pentium 4 3.8Ghz chips of about 10 years ago were slower than Core chips running around 2 GHz or there abouts, since the Core chips were more efficient all-around overall?
You are on the right track to understanding it here ^^^.
The reason the multicore chips are faster than a single core or dual core is because of their architecture. With multicore chips, processes can be broken up into multiple threads and processed concurrently instead of sitting and waiting on locking and unlocking for access to a single processor. Another big reason newer chips are faster is because they have built in dedicated L3 cache whereas prior chips had shared cache and before that didn't even have L3 on board at all so caching was done by swapping on and off the hard disc.
Server chips are designed and configured for streamlined data storage and retrieval with small amounts of processing as compared to a desktop or workstation. That is why they less "cores" (processors) but higher clock speeds. However, you will start seeing new processor chips with multiple cores in the future because a lot of research is going into faster, multithreaded server applications for areas such as real time databases.
Yeah, I read a while ago that there is no benefit to run dual processor setups, for most people. AFAIK they are now just a hold-over from when processors couldn't have more than 1 core on them.
Now that we have multi-core setups on 1 chip, they have, as mentioned above, become more efficient.
I'd be willing to guess that with that much processing power, even if it surpassed a single multi-core processor, that the bottleneck would be the hard drive.
So for anything other than heavy server (business apps) stuff, or very very heavy graphics creation, these kinds of setups are overkill.
Yeah, I read a while ago that there is no benefit to run dual processor setups, for most people. AFAIK they are now just a hold-over from when processors couldn't have more than 1 core on them.
Now that we have multi-core setups on 1 chip, they have, as mentioned above, become more efficient.
I'd be willing to guess that with that much processing power, even if it surpassed a single multi-core processor, that the bottleneck would be the hard drive.
So for anything other than heavy server (business apps) stuff, or very very heavy graphics creation, these kinds of setups are overkill.
Depends on what you are doing... I run 11 PC's at home, mostly quad-core or dual quad-core. I run SETI 24/7, and have for years (far into the quadrillion flop range over that time). There is no such thing as too much computational power. Hard drive doesn't really get involved much, as everything is in main memory. The only thing I don't like is that the electric company loves me. Just wish now I was back at work, where I had exclusive access to over 500 PC's.
I agree that dual-processors are a hold-over from the past. Memory has gotten so cheap, that usually the limiting item is the motherboard, for capacity.
That thing is basically a highly-overclocked i3 with a huge cache, nothing spectacular.
It won't perform that differently from an i3, but since i3s can't overclock at all, it's kinda worth it if you can get it really cheap, and all you do is play games.
I got one for fun, and it excels at games, but that's about it.
The low number of cores shows its limitations in heavily threaded tasks like video rendering.
It's more of a gimmick than anything, really...
That thing is basically a highly-overclocked i3 with a huge cache, nothing spectacular.
It won't perform that differently from an i3, but since i3s can't overclock at all, it's kinda worth it if you can get it really cheap, and all you do is play games.
I got one for fun, and it excels at games, but that's about it.
The low number of cores shows its limitations in heavily threaded tasks like video rendering.
It's more of a gimmick than anything, really...
Very fascinating....my own personal experience with using a dual-processor config of two 4.4GHz x5698 chips installed side-by-side has been rather different than what you had described as your experience above, not 100% sure why though exactly? I use a Core i7 at work at the office, and there is simply no comparison in terms of my home computer with the Xeon x5698 chips at home -- the x5698 workstation has performed exponentially faster for me and has delivered super-fast response time. (I also have 16 GB RAM installed, if that makes a difference perhaps? My motherboard can take up to a total max of 192 GB RAM.)
Is it possible that your motherboard might not be fully-compatible with the Xeon x5698, and thus may be giving you reduced performance? I thought I read somewhere when I researched the Xeon x5698 that it was only fully-compatible with certain motherboards (I researched more about it after reading Post #3 in this thread, by the earlier poster who had kindly mentioned the cited motherboard limitation). However since I admittedly know a lot more about software than hardware, I admit that I could certainly be incorrect on that count...
ETA: I thought the Intel Xeon and Core i7 chips shared a similar engineering lineage and architecture standards -- wouldn't that seem to indicate that Xeon processors are much closer cousins to i7's, than i3's? Also the Xeon x5698 was originally marketed by Intel as a high-end OEM server chip I believe, for use in HP and Dell servers that can cost over $10k?
Last edited by Phoenix2017; 07-11-2013 at 04:47 PM..
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I use a Core i7 at work at the office, and there is simply no comparison in terms of my home computer with the Xeon x5698 chips at home -- the x5698 workstation has performed exponentially faster for me and has delivered super-fast response time. (I also have 16 GB RAM installed, if that makes a difference perhaps? My motherboard can take up to a total max of 192 GB RAM.) 
