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Comment by overcast | Hacker News Reader

For my Windows machine which is primarily gaming I only recently updated from an I7-920 to a Intel Xeon X5675 3.06GHz, for $95 used on ebay. These are NINE year old processors, that with a good video card still completely max out any game I throw at it with a resolution of 2500x1600.

My development/main machine is a 2008 MacPro, which has no problems doing anything I need on there.

I mean besides serious computations, what is my incentive to ever upgrade here? I'm basically waiting for entire system failure at this point for either.

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That thing has 6 cores, which is still uncommon for desktop cpus today, it easily and reliably overclock in the 4Ghz range. It supports loads of ram (including ECC), VT-d, has 48 PCIe lanes (2.0 though) and is dual socket enabled. You can get lower clocked models which are even cheaper and they still overclock to 4GHz.

A motherboard supporting overclocking or dual sockets [1] might cost more than the cpu though (in fact they cost more now than when they were new).

I own a X5670 myself. Although I bought a motherboard that supports overclocking, I have yet to bother.

[1] Only the legendary EVGA SR-2 does both, and it still costs quite a bit.

Exactly! Mine is at over 4ghz easily.

Same here: I am still rocking my i7-860 from 2009 and have never felt the reason to upgrade.

i7-930 here, just got my system up after being in storage for a year.

Just discovered the Xeon eBay upgrade path. Were the gains that good? Or should I save my money for a sky lake/Kaby lake i5 build?

For $90 and crazy overclocks, I would just go eBay. I really don't see a reason to got entirely new Kaby Lake system, unless you REALLY need maximum CPU crunching. Especially since the reviews are panning it everywhere. Intel isn't even trying anymore.

How is the power comparison?

Surely it's not as efficient, but not exactly a concern, especially for gaming machine on a handful of hours a week.

What he has done is quite difficult to do these days because of motherboard availability. In some cases an LGA1366 motherboard can cost more than original retail. It's insane. But the performance is great. But if you have an older first gen motherboard, you can get a 6 core Xeon for as little as $40 on eBay. Great upgrade.

What's really insane is that you can get several 10 core LGA1567 E7 Xeons for $20 apiece. If you have a end-of-the-line recycler in your city that will custom pick stuff out of the pile for you, you can get a very scratched up electricity sucking "hog" for next to nothing.

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