Key issues in older Xeon E5-1620 and E5-2960 models
Key issues in older Xeon E5-1620 and E5-2960 models
Consider which GPUs would complement these CPUs without causing major performance issues. You're open to slightly limiting their speed for better value, but not so much that the upgrade loses its appeal. Pairing with a 3060 seems feasible, though you might want to check if it fits your budget and needs. A used 2060 with a newer Ryzen CPU could work too, especially if you're planning to replace the motherboard and RAM—your current setup already has 64GB RAM. Overclocking the 1620 to ~4GHz is possible, so that's another option to weigh.
With today's GPU costs and stock, finding a GT 710 would be quite rare.
Heh, you and me both brother. As way of reference, I'm running 2xE5-2643 v2 with a GTX 1060 3GB nVidia card, and I feel there is enough power (CPU, not wattage) on the table that going up to a 2070 would be a worthwhile expenditure, but not until prices drop dramatically, given the MSRP of the 3060 is supposed to be 399$, it should drive used 20xx series right into the dirt....again, assuming availability, which isn't something I think we are going to see until Spring of 2021.
I explored this further to understand the reasoning behind it. For me, especially in optimized games, I observed relatively low CPU usage, suggesting the processors are still functional. I also questioned whether there are any new instruction sets or features I might be overlooking. Additionally, since I frequently work with video and CG rendering, I wondered about their effects—both tools rely on GPU compute.
By watching a lot of videos, since the Chinese starting introducing a ton of dual "x79" motherboards (and single ITX ones as well) there has been renewed interest in cheap workstation-class systems. Much of the benchmark testing using the latest and greatest GPUs and will tell you if the CPU or GPU is the limiting factors. the YT channel "Craft Computing" has some very nice and detailed reviews on these things. Bear in mind the old Ivy Bridge CPUs, as cheap as they are, are a dead end as more and more games are taking advantage of instruction sets that don't exist in those chips (Tech YES City pointed that out in his review of a dual x79 board) so if gaming is your primary interest, you'll need to be careful about how you spend your dollars.
I actually own a single CPU from a Chinese X79 motherboard. I purchased it by chance, and I was really impressed. Plenty of PCIe slots, six SATA ports (only two are 3.0...), and I installed 64GB of affordable ECC RAM along with an EVO 970 SSD. It’s nice to have it without a GPU—my setup has a 1060 and a mix of Quadro and Tesla components. Thanks for the advice and the YT suggestions!
You are welcome. I love messing with strange hardware and pushing the limits, so when these x79 and x99 systems hit my radar I was highly interested. There is a Russian fellow, Myconst, that devotes his channel almost exclusively to reviewing these boards and hacking the drivers to do things Nature never intended.