FWP: CPU Upgrade Advice

[Kanoe]

In a classic first world problem I had set up a few years ago to upgrade my system around now to some faster CPUs but now I have got here I am wondering whether to can the idea and change platform instead of taking the last upgrade path I have for my current platform and would appreciate some advice.

So the plan started when cheap 6 core X5650 CPUs started flooding the market and I tried a dual X5650 CPU system but couldn't get my GPU to work with it for some unknown reason (might have been drawing too much power from the PCI-E slot) so I shelved that and decided to play the long game.

I picked up a dual socket 2011 motherboard (new, knowing that that was the hard bit to find for the X5650 CPUs, whilst they were still on the market) and a single ES CPU to use whilst I waited for the Xeon E5 v1s to start coming out of servers and become cheap and lo and behold about a year later I picked up 2x E5 2670 chips for £150 for 16 core 32 thread action with the idea being that a couple of years down the line I could then put in some Xeon E5 v2's when they started to come out of servers and become cheap.

Well here we are today and I was about to follow through on the plan and spend £300 - £400 on some v2's when I started to have reservations for the following reasons:

- They keep finding more and more security issues with these old chips and although they do software mitigate them it is at the expense of performance
- All that time ago I was sort of betting that we would see a greater / faster switch to multithreaded applications and games and this hasn't panned out, single core performance still matters and these server chips are slow in single core

So started to think about going to new platform but this carries its own downsides (whether Intel or AMD based):

- Would need a new motherboard
- Would need new RAM (DDR4 vs DDR3 I already have)
- New CPU
- New CPU cooler (or at least try to get a bracket for existing coolers I have)
- It's hard to admit to myself that I got it wrong

So which way should I go Hexites?

Many thanks

[Spreadie]

Wait for Zen 2 to hit and see what that does to your options.

[DanceswithUnix]

Guessing the future is hard

What performance do you actually need in what software?

Zen+ CPUs are quite the bargain atm if you can live with 16 threads in a 2700 or 2700X. The 2600 is £135 on Amazon including a passable Wraith cooler. If part of the attraction of the Xeon was ECC ram, well all the Zen+ CPUs seem to support it (not the APUs) but the ram seems oddly hard to find at sane prices atm. I ended up with non ECC ram, still not happy about that.

Zen2 sounds like it could be quite a monster in floating point and high thread count apps, but I suspect it will be full price and top end parts are expected to be higher TDP than 2700X so waiting for a 570 motherboard might be an idea if you want that sort of spec.

Zen3 will most likely be DDR5 so on a socket AM5, so there isn't much of a long term upgrade path.

[Kanoe]

Mostly used for Handbrake, Games, Coding and general use (browsing, office etc.)

Not overly fussed about ECC ram support, I never actually bothered on the current rig as i used the RAM i already had on previous system and added some sticks of the same stuff.

In terms of AMD build I just did a budget-ish upgrade for the wife, getting a cheap first gen Ryzen with a X470 mobo knowing that she could later go to Zen 2 if she wanted in a couple of years.

As you say this is most likely the last gen CPUs for AM4 although possibly not a deal breaker as with any Intel build its likely to have limited upgrade path too as they love to change socket everyday of the week.

[DanceswithUnix]

For coding the 2600X is pretty awesome. However I found dropping to a 2200G actually wasn't that bad, there is enough in my build cycle like linking and git cloning that can't make use of more than 4 threads that a similar top clock speed means I don't really lose out. I still don't get enough time to go put the kettle on for a full from scratch clean & build.

For Gaming, the 2600X was awesome, and even this close to Zen-2 I'm still twitching over the buy button on Amazon at £175 as the 2200G doesn't quite cut it in Elite Dangerous (certainly not in VR).

For handbrake, Zen2 should be devastatingly fast. Twice the peak SSE/AVX throughput and more cores available compared to Zen+ which isn't a slouch.

As for the future of AM4, AMD have a habit of doing a refresh release like they did with Zen+, so there might be a small bump in the future.

So sounds to me like you really want Zen2 and at the high end that might mean on a 570 motherboard, but depending on budget a 2700X or 2600X would do you. Do you have a budget in mind?

[Kanoe]

Well budget was originally £300-400 but this will probably be extended by £100 or so to account for new RAM and motherboard

[DanceswithUnix]

Well budget was originally £300-400 but this will probably be extended by £100 or so to account for new RAM and motherboard

Well my last upgrade (Asus 470 Pro MB, 2600X, 16GB of 3200 DDR4) was £450 and prices must have come down at least £50 since then. But if you can wait, rumours are Zen2 will have 6 cores for the i3 competitor

[Xlucine]

A decent B450 + 16 GB of 3200 DDR4 is <£200, for £400 you can get 8 cores (2700) nowadays. Still worth waiting till monday to see what's announced first, of course

[Millennium]

Oh I don't know...........

With Zen 7nm reaching it seems upto 5.1 GHz (perhaps on 8 threads of 32, 16 cores and 2 threads each, btw what's up with storage caching ? ) with a stated and likely accurate TDP (knowing AMD) of 135 watts I am just going to keep my Ryzen 1700 @ 3.9ghz clocks, 16 threads.

I think we need to wait ao oue while while for OS and software threading challenges to be resolved. I am tempted by a 4.9ghz 16 thread Ryzen just not for now. The process technology is new and this stuff is not easy for either a team of 36 or 159 is.

Certainly seems to be Ryzen at home, just like the old days of Opteron and X2 with the newer x64 or AMD64 windows versions.

[Shi01]

Nice post and nice information too. I read your post.

[Kanoe]

Update: I went for 2x Intel Xeon E5 2667v2 in the end as the prices were quite cheap and then got 128GB of ECC RDIMM DDR3 PC-14900 and the memory bandwidth is ridiculous. This will keep me happy for a few more years, even if the total system power draw at idle is near 200W and under load is 600+, whooops.

[rob4001]

Update: I went for 2x Intel Xeon E5 2667v2 in the end as the prices were quite cheap and then got 128GB of ECC RDIMM DDR3 PC-14900 and the memory bandwidth is ridiculous. This will keep me happy for a few more years, even if the total system power draw at idle is near 200W and under load is 600+, whooops.

Nice.How is the gaming on it?

[Kanoe]

Nice.How is the gaming on it?

Fine, i think the single core boost speed of 4GHz really helps in the older games and in the newer games the cores spread the load nicely. Running at 4k means the GPU tops out way before the CPUs limit anything.

[DanceswithUnix]

Nice.How is the gaming on it?

"Warm" I should imagine

That is one heck of a system.

[Xlucine]

Update: I went for 2x Intel Xeon E5 2667v2 in the end as the prices were quite cheap and then got 128GB of ECC RDIMM DDR3 PC-14900 and the memory bandwidth is ridiculous. This will keep me happy for a few more years, even if the total system power draw at idle is near 200W and under load is 600+, whooops.

Why bother with the 240 GB SSD? You can install games entirely to RAM!

[DanceswithUnix]

Why bother with the 240 GB SSD? You can install games entirely to RAM!

With 128GB of ram, 240GB is about right for swap