For those of you wondering, the goal absolutely was to max out the GPU in all of the tests (it was completely intentional). This is because we're not looking at overall performance, rather we want to see performance changes with different CPUs. When the GPU is maxed out, it no longer significantly affects the performance, outside of typical variation (a 1% change isn't important because it can be considered margin of error, but a 10% change from a different CPU is important).

I got a 1650v3 a couple of years ago for around 15$, my whole setup set me back 350$ including 32gb of RAM and a 6700xt. Great value and nothing comes close to requiring me to lower settings especially on 1080p

X99 was Intels 1080 Ti moment. ASRock/ASUS/Gigabyte boards support 4-bit ECC RDIMMs even on i7 CPUs, shitloads of PCIe, and of course high core count V3/V4 Xeons. We never got anything from Intel comparable since, Intel nerfed X299 retroactively when it turned out RDIMMs could be used on Gigabyte boards - still, no ECC.

a great vid mate. i do a lot of vr and last year i built a x99 rigg just to see how it would do. a 2670 that i tryed "12core 24 thread" performs very well with a 3080 in pcie 3x16 even with the core max clock of 3.1. im very happy with how the Zeon performed for a £20 cpu only 18 fps behind my zen 3900x.

I know this video took you a long time to make with all the testing. Thank you for doing this so other people that are interested in the platform know what to expect.

amazing and very in depth review! ty so much for this video!

Using an ASrock X99 WS till this day, along the 5930K in a test station. Excellent platform. Diagnosed a lot of hardware with that board.

First time viewing your channel. By chance, I like X99 Boards too. I have three ASUS X99's, with my favourite being my Rampage V Edition 10 / 6900K / ROG 1080ti's in staggered Vertical SLI. I must admit, I like the newer Gen. , similar, ROG X299 E MB / 9900X / ROG 2080ti. Gotta love the looks of Quad Channel Motherboards when they're full. I'm retired and build Ol' Retro Flagships. Not to sell, that would be insane, more of a Museum.

You earned a sub. I appreciate this style of precise presentation of info.

hi , and thanks for video . got a x99 ud 4 with a 5930k , just recently bought 2nd hand (don't have it yet) rtx 3090 for mainly use the pc with stable diffusion on windows and/or linux , got 32GB ram 2133 memory, do u think i should update my proc to E5 2699 V3 /E5 2697 V4 or i7 6950x . ( What the cons and pros between these 2 kinds of cpu ) , may use photoshop also on the computer , thanks

Thanks mate for the video. I have got an X99 - HUANANZHI X99 CH8, E5 2680 V4, 128GB DDR 2133 ECC RAM, AMD RX 580 8GB and NVIDIA 1050Ti. 2 x 28" Samsung 4K monitor for vm (virtual machine) passthrough and a Dell 24" monitor to display Proxmox's (hyperviser) user interface. I don't game at all. One 28" monitor is permanently for Win 10. The other is for whatever vm I want to try. Just ordered another X99 - same model for my email server and whatever else I am planning to use in the future.

i wonder if you turn off the hyperthreading if it would fix some the 0.1 percent lows in the few games that they were low

Wow, this validated my feeling. I currently run a 2014 i7 5930k, recently paired with a rtx 3070. I usually build a fully new PC two years after a new console launch to keep up, but this is the first generation where I didn't struggle with CPU performance, far from it even. It didn't felt right to build a new PC, and instead I chose to replace the GPU. I'm rather shocked my 2014 high-end build can play every current gen only game at 1440p stable 60fps with DLSS. Moore's law truly seems dead, at least in the CPU space, or game-logic stagnated in such a way that everything needs to be built around the lowest common denominator. It's maybe why there doesn't seem to be a drastic simulation leap in gaming since the late 2000's, and only visual fidelity went up.

What about the frequency optimized Xeons like the 2667, 2689 and the workstation optimized Xeon 2687W? Would you consider testing those?

I'd love to see a video from you about the e5-2696V4

I'm using x99 ASUS A II with 2696v3 (Bios modded) for Gaming with 3070 TI.. Running very nice

hey bro do you know what's the difference between the x99-p4 and x99-8d4?

can you test the e5 2670 v3 vs e5 2666v3? I want to know which one its better for gaming.

Good work, but you really need to leave the benchmark graphs up for longer

I have an old HP Z440 running an E1620v3 with 32 gb 213. Bought in eBay in Sydney for $230. I thought about changing the CPU but settled for what I have because I mainly write and watch 4 K videos. Also I wanted something bullet proof. I thought about the V4 range. Cheers from Roselands 2196.

Personally I find the e5 2620v4 cpu to be the most interesting because of the lower power consumption, can be cooled with a piece of tin foil, and has decent single core. Plus it's dirt cheap.

I'm doing a gaming pc build with the 2650 v4 so this is very good information for me

I'm still on my AsRock X99 paired with a 6950X (the thing is still $200 on AliExpress). I occasionally contemplate upgrading to 16+ core Xeon v4, but I just can't give up the OC rate of the unlocked 6950X -- 4200MHz -- and 10 cores is still sufficient. Next time I'll probably jump to a used LGA1700 CPU and mobo. Enough HEDT adventures for me.

What is the best gpu for my e5 1620 v3 ?

It's been few days since I've shifted from Asus X99-A II to ryzen 2600 on A520. Basically 2400mhz quad channel had better latency and throughput. In short In majority of gaming 1650 v3 overclocked 4.5 ghz was way faster than stock 2600. Similarly 1650 v4 was faster than Ryzen 2600 stock. Not only that ryzen 2600 was terrible with same 2400 Mhz memory and had to be used with 3200 to achieve similar performance. GPU was RTX 3070ti at 1440p and 4k

so ur saying that in the xenos its better to play at 4k, 2k than rather 1080p to increase gpu work right

i just won a lenovo p500 for £20 and bought the e5 2699 v3 for only £36 what gpu and amount ram would be a good match?

so many xeons, well done. gta iv runs on more than 6 cores... on the ps3 mayhaps. i havnt tried any xeons on my x99 mb, just so many to chose.

Could you test with the E5-1680 v3 ? This one clocks @ 3,8 GHz and easily reaches 4,0 GHz when overclocked. The results should be nice =)

there is a couple CPU's missing from this test there is an e7 24 core vga2011 V4 I have not seen any test of this one sadly in the x99 motherboards my other thoughts is it appears you do not have the Turbo boost unlocked during this test I do think it would benefit greatly on single and multi Core test as they, or at least some can be boosted to 3.50ghz per core I would like to see it tried, the E7 V4 24cores can be had a little under $40 USD

I got an almost new Asus Rampage V Extreme for free couple of days ago and was looking for a Xeon. Came across your video after I had placed my order yesterday. I looked at the 2650v4 amongst others and eventually went with the 2640v4 instead as it had a much higher single-core boost speed - 3.4 GHz vs 2.9 GHz.

I had a e5 2697v3 on my asrock x99 extreme 4. Not I bought the e5 2699v3. My GPU is 6750xt. Pretty solid. CPU Temps are 50 degrees even on latest game from 2024. Also, the percentage on CPU usage is 30% while running games. So none of the bottlenecking stuff

Got a e5-2690 v4 I picked up two years back for cheap and I bought it because it was the fastest, highest core count cpu my dell precision 5810 could fit. I assumed that high l3 cache and single core turbo speeds would be helpful. I had also never owned a high core count cpu before. All of this came for my hunt for a cheap, high pci lane count platform that also supported AVX2 instructions. I also wanted a platform that could support a lot of ram cheaply. All in all it has performed well but I'm considering switching to a e5-2689v4 since I think the 10% higher all core turbo clock speed will probably make a bigger difference that the larger cache and 4 extra cores. My main game is Elden Ring and it's heavily bottle necked by single core speed. I feel like my cpu is getting punched in the junk at itmes. Needless to say, I like your video but am only 20% into your video and am eager to see your results. =)

A bit late to this video but I managed to put together an entire X99 based system for less than £200. an old Lenovo P500 for £70, Sold the NVS 510 it came with for £15, bought a E5-1660v4 from Aliexpress for £25, a 1TB SSD for £40 and a RX570 8GB for £55. It came with 32GB 2133mhz RAM in quad channel. Honestly as a ChimeraOS based system it runs sweet as a nut.

is missing 1660 v4 or 2667 v4, 2666 v3v4

You didn't mention that you unlock the E5 v3 turbo boost, which will totally change your tests.

Did u notice micro stutters ingame? It looks like a shader comp thing but I have my doubts. I am running 5700xt undervolted + 2650 v4. temps are great and fps is high. but when new things appear = stutter. How does this happen and what can u do about it?

I haven't done anything quiet so extensive. Just been testing CPUs over the years on 3Dmark. I recently picked up a Machinist X99 PR9 and a E5-2680 V4. Runs pretty good. Wonder if it would do better on an ASUS WS board though. I tried comparing it against 2687W V2 and an overclocked W3690. Course the W3690 beats on pure speed I believe at 4Ghz OC'd, 2680 V4 comes in 2nd, probably by core count as you mentioned and the 2687 V2 is ~30% slower than the 2680 V4. All scores seemed 30% even though the V2 system I used a GTX 1650 and a RX 580 on the V4 system. Looks like I am not the only one curious how these old workhorses do in modern games.

what about the e5 2680 v4s there 14 cores and 28 threads and cheap i just bought a dual cpu HUANANZHI F8D motherboard and 2 2680 v4s the 2 2680s cost me only 45$ cad

Just got a pair of 2699v4's for $120 each! I am only using them for multithreaded workloads and I am very happy with their performance.

Still got a virgin SATA Express option that I never used! Nor did anyone else...

Great informative video.. Just bought the 'better half' a 4070Ti Super and will be running it on a Bios 'turbo unlocked' & "ReBar enabled" Asrock x99m with a E5 2695 v. My daughter wanted to play 'Minecraft RTX' and hogged 'my' PC for long enough for me to want to pass the issue onto her.

I have a 2650 V3 with 10 cores. I tried a 12 core, and 14 core in the same mother board, but the higher clock speed with fewer cores was better in games which were not well optimised for loads of cores. The processor I have with Cities Skylines 2 spreads the load evenly over all the cores. With version one of the game, it is bound by one core overloading. I might change back to the 14 core V4 once my city gets big enough to max out the V3 10 core CPU. I bought my mother board, CPU and ram in an aliexpress kit all together. I tried to keep away from the processors over 100W.

Gotta applaud all the work that went into this

What you really need is a turbo boost unlocked 2697 v3 I have two running. smoking fast. comparable to a amd 5600 .

i have a dell t7910 and its a beast LOL ill probably grab two 2697a v4s since they have decent base and boost clocks

As a cheaper alternative to the E5-1650 v4 I'm trying out the Xeon E5-2643 v4. It was 20% less in price than the E5-1650 v4 at the time of purchase and offers some interesting features. New the 2643 was over double the price. It's also a six core and 12 thread processor, has a slightly bigger 20mb of L3 cache and runs at a lower 135w (vs 140w). It's within 5% of the single core score and 3% of the multithread score. But depending on which method you use to test it, it's either marginally worse, the same or slightly better. One interesting feature in the 2654 over the 1650 is "Smart Cache" which it describes as: " Intel Smart Cache refers to the architecture that allows all cores to dynamically share access to the last level cache.". It is explicitly stated on the the E5-2 not on the E5-1.

Try the i7 5960x on a good mobo, I was able to OC it to 4.7ghz all core, 3200mhz cl16 ram, in cyntetics it was 2% slower than stock 9900k and almost the same in games.

love xeons.. great 1080 budget gaming

Lots of cores, massive L3 cache, lots of PCIe lanes, quad-channel DDR4 (theoretically double the bandwitdth of dual). The achilles heel of the platform is the low all-core clock speeds of the CPU, it gets worse as the core count goes up...

i have a E5 2696v4 (just buy one, it's worth the money, go big and you wont ever go back) and let me tell YOU. I've been running a GTX 1070 FTW and I can run any game at 1080p usually from 96 - 500fps depending on the game, i can encode av1 in 10 minutes (tv episode) It is a literal BEAST for what it is. I have a MACHINIST x99 k9 v2.0 motherboard and 64 gb ddr4 (2x32) UDIMMS (samsung), and one hynix, one micron 8 gig sticks to make 80gb total. 43 terabytes of hdd space, it doesn't slow down when doing 1080p it shines. It will MAX out encoding 4k. Bought an arc a770 and it wouldnt take, so i'm buying a rtx 4070 and i'm sure even though the rtx will be slowed down 1% by the pci-e 3.0 slot, it will absolutely rip into the next 5 years. (i'm running windows 11 via the upgrade hack/trick)

Suggestion please, either E5 1600 series processor or 2600 series processor, model and why.

My 3 favorite X99 CPUs are (Base/Single/All) E5-2699A v4 (2.4/3.6/3.0) 145W 22c/44t E5-2679 V4 (2.5/3.3/3.2) 200W 20c/40t (Dell OEM) E5-2698A v3 (2.8/3.2/3.2) 165W 16c/32t (Lenovo OEM)

I have ho z440 as well. I have it with 2699V4. Fallout 76 get less than 40 fps with my 3060 12GB

When it comes to doing benchmarks on gta 4 I'd install the Vulcan mod for it first then test

x99 : i will give you CORES!

I have a X99 paired with a GTX 1080 Ti. Haven’t upgraded in years…

2687w is always my favorite

So basically for gaming purposes the $2 used xeon is as good as the $80 one

👏👏

I bought myself a $13 2666v3

Another nice job, subbed! My issues are the lack of a TPM2 and lacking processor instructions for virtualisation and compute: AVX2 and AVX 512. I want to use Nvidia compute containers locally (why not I paid good money for the cards - too much for just playing games!) and can no longer with my oc 3930k on a x79 mb. I also need more ram and even better support for nvme ssd's. It's a real conundrum, my 10 year old PC is still going strong OC'd to 4.9GHz for that time, and can play all games at a satisfactory frame rate on a 4k tv. Yet MS has drawn a line through updating it, and platforms I want to use for AI and containerisation insist on so called advanced instructions that in actual fact, are not really necessary. It's also too easy to be sucked into the cloud for both gaming and compute.The trouble with that is kiss your privacy goodbye and if perchance you do invent some form of valuable IP, then you can kiss that goodbye real quick, too. I have had many such IP hijackings happen to me over the years. Normally used to make some Stanford or other tech bro a billionaire ...

I would've loved to see you test apex legends

The 1660 V3 can be overclocked to 4.5GHz and is equivalent to a 5960X.

2689 V4 is the King. 165 W, 10 cores and they all boost to 3.8 GHz non-stop. Nobody ever tests this obscure CPU but I can say without a doubt it's the best you'll find on X99

You can do a turb-ohack bios mod to run the v3 at max boost. You also forgot the most important model, 2696v3, this can run ~4ghz with a small bclk OC and Turbo mod