upgrading unraid hardware E5 2690 v3 and non ecc ram


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Hi,

I am thinking of upgrading my unraid from a skylake 6700 to an E5 2690 v3 engineering sample i have seen on ebay. Its only $400 as is an engineering sample and I could never afford the standard chip!!! Although to be honest i am quite happy with what i have now, just the thought of having 12 cores 24 threads just seems awesome.

But I have some questions before committing.

 

1.  As the e5 chip has a slower clock speed than my i7 (even though has many more cores), i am worried my gaming vm could take a hit?

 

2. The e5 being an engineering sample the speed is as follows CPU is 2400 MH, instead of 2600.

Turbo frequency    3500 MHz ( i guess that would be one core not all cores, the seller says the

turbo speed of all cores at once  is 2698 MH

Bus speed      9.6 GT/s QPI (4800 MHz)

5 GT/s DMI

Clock multiplier      26

Package    2011-land Flip-Chip Land Grid Array

Socket    Socket 2011-3 / R3 / LGA2011-3

As its not exactly as the production chip is it still a good buy and alot better than my 6700?

 

3.  I was thinking of using this chip with an ASRock Fatal1ty X99M Killer, LGA 2011-v3  Motherboard.

I already have 32 GB ram (4x8GB) Corsair DDR4 Vengeance LPX Black, PC4-19200 (2400), Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 14-16-16-31, XMP 2.0, 1.2V.

that I thought i could use in this build. I understand that Xeons will work with Non-ECC Unbuffered ram. Is this correct? (http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2698383/xeon-unbuffered-ecc-ram.html)

 

4. Just wondered what peoples thoughts are with this upgrade. Pros and cons.

 

Thanks

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Make sure the specific chip you are looking at supports virtualization.

 

As jonathanm said, but just to add some additional info as vt-x is usually supported. More specifically, vt-d is commonly disabled in early ES (engineering samples).

 

Also, you might like to consider that as DX 12 games become more prevalent throughout later this year and beyond they will be wanting to use more cores. This is good as it will scale with a processor that has more cores but will subsequently cause the chip to not turbo as high. If a gaming vm is a high priority you might like to consider something with a higher clock speed (at least 3Ghz). In the newer chips these cost quite a lot more. I'm currently thinking about building at dual socket E5-1660 (http://ark.intel.com/products/64620/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-1660-15M-Cache-3_30-GHz-0_0-GTs-Intel-QPI). These 6 core cpus have a base clock of 3.3Ghz and turbo to 3.9Ghz. With two of these you still have plenty of cores for running vm's, transcoding and other tasks whilst still having a decent clock speed for games.

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As jonathanm said, but just to add some additional info as vt-x is usually supported. More specifically, vt-d is commonly disabled in early ES (engineering samples).

 

Also, you might like to consider that as DX 12 games become more prevalent throughout later this year and beyond they will be wanting to use more cores. This is good as it will scale with a processor that has more cores but will subsequently cause the chip to not turbo as high. If a gaming vm is a high priority you might like to consider something with a higher clock speed (at least 3Ghz). In the newer chips these cost quite a lot more. I'm currently thinking about building at dual socket E5-1660 (http://ark.intel.com/products/64620/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-1660-15M-Cache-3_30-GHz-0_0-GTs-Intel-QPI). These 6 core cpus have a base clock of 3.3Ghz and turbo to 3.9Ghz. With two of these you still have plenty of cores for running vm's, transcoding and other tasks whilst still having a decent clock speed for games.

 

FYI from the link you posted I thought you could like to know that you can't run dual 1660's. That chip only works in single cpu configurations. I also wanted to run that same setup.

 

Op, I have a recently purchased E5-2670v3 es that has a stock speed of 2.2ghz. I have just been running stock win10 on it. I have steam on it but I have only streamed games from one of my other computers. I'll load up some crysis 3 tomorrow after work and let you know how the performance compares to my 5960x computer and my 8350 computer. If it runs on my 2.2 chip, yours should be fine. 

 

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FYI from the link you posted I thought you could like to know that you can't run dual 1660's. That chip only works in single cpu configurations. I also wanted to run that same setup.

 

Good spot! I thought most / all xeons could run dual configuration. Those bastards! :P

 

I haven't purchased anything yet. Still weighing up my options.

 

Cheers,

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Op, I have a recently purchased E5-2670v3 es that has a stock speed of 2.2ghz. I have just been running stock win10 on it. I have steam on it but I have only streamed games from one of my other computers. I'll load up some crysis 3 tomorrow after work and let you know how the performance compares to my 5960x computer and my 8350 computer. If it runs on my 2.2 chip, yours should be fine.

Please please please. I'm very interested in knowing too.  ;D

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Op, I have a recently purchased E5-2670v3 es that has a stock speed of 2.2ghz. I have just been running stock win10 on it. I have steam on it but I have only streamed games from one of my other computers. I'll load up some crysis 3 tomorrow after work and let you know how the performance compares to my 5960x computer and my 8350 computer. If it runs on my 2.2 chip, yours should be fine.

Please please please. I'm very interested in knowing too.  ;D

 

Me too would be very interested!  So your engineering sample supports vt-d? i was worried after reading what JustJoshin said that some early es chips have vt-d disabled. I have a e5 2690 v3 es base 2.4  all core turbo 2.9 on its way at the moment

cpu.png

hope to have it by the weekend

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I'm at work now so I'm not 100% sure on vt-d. I know it's enabled on my mb and I swear I saw it somewhere. I will double check later. Also I have read that it is/can be enabled depending on the Es revision. For each Es chip their are several revisions that go out. So it may be some are and some are not enabled.

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Op, I have a recently purchased E5-2670v3 es that has a stock speed of 2.2ghz. I have just been running stock win10 on it. I have steam on it but I have only streamed games from one of my other computers. I'll load up some crysis 3 tomorrow after work and let you know how the performance compares to my 5960x computer and my 8350 computer. If it runs on my 2.2 chip, yours should be fine.

Please please please. I'm very interested in knowing too.  ;D

 

Me too would be very interested!  So your engineering sample supports vt-d? i was worried after reading what JustJoshin said that some early es chips have vt-d disabled. I have a e5 2690 v3 es base 2.4  all core turbo 2.9 on its way at the moment

cpu.png

hope to have it by the weekend

 

 

OK, here are my results of testing "gamming scenarios" on my system. Here is the official info on the non ES version http://ark.intel.com/products/81709/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-2670-v3-30M-Cache-2_30-GHz.  On the ark site note it says base frequency of 2.3GHz, Max Turbo frequency 3.1GHz.  My actual testing on my ES shows 2.2GHz - 2.61GHz.  CPU-Z shows 2.20GHz specification, but by changing the Processor Power Management (Windows 10) I was able to keep it at 2.5GHz.  OK continuing with the specs I have 24GBs DDR4 on an ASRock Extream6 x99 mb with a 120gb ssd.  I have a AMD R9-380 and a GeForce 210. The GeForce is not being used at the moment but it is plugged in the MB. The R9-380 is driving a 40" Phillips 4k display at 60Hz via the Display Port.

 

I am attaching several pictures (Via imgurhttp://imgur.com/a/KGc6u) with this post so you can see the information.  Im not into bench marking very much so I just used the basics that I had.  I ran Unigine Heaven at 1080p Windowed (just to see what would happen, in my experience this requires more cpu/gpu than full screen). FPS was 68.6, Score: 1727 ( I don't know if that's good or bad) Min FPS 8.6 (ouch) Max was 135.8 (yay). I thought it looked great (oh I might mention I didn't check to see if Vsync was on, I found it on when playing GTA-V), it wasn't flawless like it is on my main system (5960x, 64GB ram, 2 R9-Fury's in crossfire, with a 950 Pro M.2 NVME, 2 850 Evo's and 2 WD Red 8TB @4K) but it still looked great.  If your familiar with the unigine benchmark then you will understand the following reference, the only time it really had trouble was in the first few scenes when it transitioned to the night versions.  It stuttered slightly in the beginning of this section but evened out quickly.  I think this was the section that caused the 8.6fps low.

 

Ok so with the benchmark out of the way, how did it perform in an actual game? I wanted to run several games that in my opinion stress the system, however I couldn't make up my mind on where to start. I popped Crysis, Crysis 2, Far Cry 4, and GTA-v on a thumb drive to start. That's when I realized I only had a 120GB ssd as my only drive.  So I transferred over GTA-V and completely filled the drive.  I ran GTA-V on my older computer (AMD FX-8350, 16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3, 1 R9-280 and three 27" 1080p displays) and that was my main system until the new 5960x I just built.  So I was confident that I would be able to compare the two experiences. So I cranked the settings in GTA-V way higher than my R9-280 could do and let her rip.  Man was it bad (btw GTA-V warned me as soon as I started the game that the processor was below the minimum threshold for the game and I could experience performance issues).  At first I thought it was the slow processor, to be honest I wasn't expecting it to be great, but we all know how most games use the GPU more than the CPU.  So I decided to look at the graphics settings.  Low and behold this is when I found Vsync was on.  I disabled that and everything smoothed out immediate. Buttery smooth.  I think that most of today's games need much more GPU power than CPU, I think this chips low frequency is not really a problem when in game.  Starting the game and loading the scenes took longer than I remember, that might be the SSD though, I haven't bench marked that at all so it could be the bottle neck.  Once in game though I had no issues (other than trying to drive with the keyboard).  I went through the first 2 missions, drove around the city, shot some people, ran from the cops, the usual.  I had no stuttering when traveling very fast from one area to the next, (I had small issues on my 8350 system in the past when going really fast from one end of the city to the other).  All in all I would say this should be able to handle games quite nicely.  Provided you had another video card I could easily see you running 2 gaming computers off this chip. I didn't see the cores use hardly anything.  So running a 1080p windowed game on a 4k monitor, no problem.  I'm posting my game settings too so you can see I had many of the settings cranked.

 

 

Moving on to VT-D.  This one was a bit harder to discover.  I know its enabled in the bios, but I don't know if that means the MB hardware is capable when using a VT-D cpu.  I found a program called SecurAble which supposedly tells you if you have VT-D.  I attached a screenshot of that as well.  It says Yes for HW Virtualization but that may just be VT-x. So I'm still not 100% on that one.  If any of you know a definitive way of checking let me know, because this info isn't exactly on Ark.

 

 

In conclusion I would say in my case using the 2670v3 which is fairly slow, I experienced no real issues in gaming.  I can continue to test this, but to be honest I'm still more interested in playing with my new 5960x rig, this 2670 is kind of on the back burner for me, but I'm willing to keep looking into it if anyone wants.  I think a game like Crysis (1-2-3 I have them all) might use the CPU more but i don't know for sure.  I have many other games on steam so if you want me to check ask me the name of a game and I might have it to try.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks so much for taking the time out to post your results.

I have just received my e5-2690 v3 es sample cpu. Base speed 2.4, all core turbo 2.7  single core 3.0. Dont know why they sell it as a 2690 ES as its clock speed is closer to the 2680 which has a base clock of 2.5 whilst the 2690 is 2.6?

Anyway havent really done alot of testing. Cpu passmark i get 17500. Gaming has no noticeable differences with my gtx 970, except load times are slower on startup. Games play fine but  3dmark seems to crash, i guess because it cant identify the cpu correctly????

 

My windows 10 is on unraid as a vm so vt-d is working fine.

I am going to overclock the cpu to try and squeeze a bit more out of it. I have heard the multiplier is unlocked on es samples but not sure. If not i will clock the bclk up to 105.

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Yes my chip is fine sold as a 2690v3  but i would put it closer to the 2680v3 based on clock speed. Chip is QEYJ ES 2.4  with a mild bclk overclock i get 17000 passmark score. VT-d is working fine and i have all my vms working. gaming is fine cant notice any difference from my 6700 skylake whilst playing. Any other questions please ask.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Yes my chip is fine sold as a 2690v3  but i would put it closer to the 2680v3 based on clock speed. Chip is QEYJ ES 2.4  with a mild bclk overclock i get 17000 passmark score. VT-d is working fine and i have all my vms working. gaming is fine cant notice any difference from my 6700 skylake whilst playing. Any other questions please ask.

 

Hey! Just wondering the ebay lister you bought from? I just got an x99x and was planning to buy the 2683 but there are a few listings. I figure if yours is good maybe this one would be!

 

Thanks,

 

T

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I have recently bought the new E5-2698v4 (ES) from eBay seller xtrememicro. Everything is running smoothly for now. Hope it helps :)

 

Thats awesome! I just checked them out.  How long was shipping for you?

Aprox. one week. CPU came well protected and no problem so far

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I have recently bought the new E5-2698v4 (ES) from eBay seller xtrememicro. Everything is running smoothly for now. Hope it helps :)

 

Thats awesome! I just checked them out.  How long was shipping for you?

Aprox. one week. CPU came well protected and no problem so far

 

Thats great news! I ordered the 2695 v3 heres hoping that it works well!  ::)

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