Overclocking a Xeon ?

[WhiteBear]

Hi, can you overclock the Xeon E5-2650, anyone have any experience with this chip ?

[EuroFight]

From my experience Xeons are locked multipliers thus they can only be overclocked by increasing the FSB frequency.

[WhiteBear]

Overclocking the FSB mostly doesn't offer anything over 400 Mhz, essentially only over clocking a 3.2 Ghz ship to 3.6 Ghz, from my knowledge, unless anyone cares to correct my knowledge ?

Edited February 28, 2014 by WhiteBear

[EuroFight]

Usually you hit the limit with other components before you hit the CPU limit, but nonetheless for a chip with locked multiplier you don't have much choice. For overclocking. Xeons, being server/enterprise chips have inherently locked multipliers.

[DanTheGamer11]

All I know is that you can force the turbocore to always be on, don't know much about ocing tho

 

http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t=1069193

Edited February 28, 2014 by DanTheGamer11

[cchalogamer]

You could force turbo as mentioned and with most X79 boards get a 2011 Xeon to run all the cores @ max turbo frequency but if you're a bit creative you may have more options.

 

While the multiplier is locked up it's NOT locked downward.  So increasing the BLCK strap and dropping (or even keeping the multiplier the same) you may have good results, just be aware that some boards even if they support the adjustments may not like certain settings and could limit the OC.

 

Personally unless I really needed the extra cores I would stick with an i7 just for the higher single threaded performance, however the draw of a high core count I can certainly understand. 

 

Of course all this depends on getting a board that both HAS the OC adjustments you need AND the microcode for the Xeon you want.  Be sure to double check BIOS support if you take the dive and try it.

[WhiteBear]

I have an i7 now that is OC to 4 Ghz, I'm trying to justify if it's worth it, maybe someone can offer a bit more feed back.  I would only gain 2 extra cores if that tells you the amount of cores I have presently, is it worth it ?

Edited March 1, 2014 by WhiteBear

[cchalogamer]

Depends on what you do with the PC.  If you play games and mostly day to day stuff then I see NO reason to "upgrade" you might even see lower performance if you did.  Actually it's hard to justify the entire X79 platform compared to Haswell from a "buying today" standpoint unless Tri SLI/Crossfire is in order, then the extra PCI-E lanes are nice but for MOST games a Haswell i7 can meet or beat the Ivy Bridge-E.

 

Now if you do things like video editing or other heavily threaded tasks then more cores could be a big improvement assuming you don't have to give up clock speed to get them. Considering you're @ 4.0 now I would focus on getting that higher as most 2011 i7s are good for at least 4.3+ 

[WhiteBear]

cchalogamer - I'm not a gamer with that taken into consideration, would you recommend as you said to push the CPU to 4.3+ rather then upgrade to more cores ? This is the thing I'm weighting between for a while

[cchalogamer]

Again it's going to depend on what you DO use the PC for.  In an average week what apps do you use? And if you open task manager (good use for a second monitor) are you actually using all the cores you have now running those apps?  Really hard to answer without knowing how you use the PC.  I'm one of those crazy in between folks. One week I'll be encoding videos on everything I have for my contract work, and the next week I'm relaxing playing games.  The same main rig in my signature gets used for both and I find the 4930K to be a good balance while being faster than the 4770K/3570K for the rendering but not giving up performance in things that can't use more than a couple core. If I went with the fastest CPU my board supports http://ark.intel.com/products/75277 I would render like a champ but some performance would likely be lost in my day to day as I don't see it running 4.6Ghz very well. Not to mention the $1600 price tag

 

SO with a little more info I can try to make a recommendation but ultimately it's up to you to decide if it's going to give you anything for your money or even worse give you less.

[WhiteBear]

I don't game at all.  I only do Photo editing, rendering with some programming. I hope that helps I hope to start my own business, those around me are losing hope in it happening, that is what happens when you get older

Edited March 1, 2014 by WhiteBear

[cchalogamer]

Unless you do serious photo editing and professional rendering without off loading to a GPU I doubt you'll see anywhere near the money difference you're going to spend back in performance.  Based on the total comment, take the money you would have spent, put it into getting your business off the ground and have it up and running where it's fun to operate by the time you retire

 

I feel your pain on "getting older" I'm only 27 (OK I had to think about that and do the math) and my priorities are already aligning for long term vs short term and for me even though I COULD use it to make money a Xeon would not be a smart decision for me and I doubt for you either.  With that said in the spirit of OCC from years ago when I joined...one can never have enough hardware and the term "overkill" is not in my vocabulary