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After a lot of Googling around comparing the options, I just upgraded my i7 930 processor to a Xeon X5677 processor. They sold for over £1,000 when they first came out, but I got mine for £55 off eBay.
It's given me at least 20% faster single-thread and nearly 25% faster multi-thread performance, and knocked about 10C off an already cool processor (it runs at under 30C at low load!)
You would have to check your specific motherboard carefully (and you may well need to upgrade the motherboard bios in advance of changing the processor) but there are a lot of people who seem to have done what I did successfully.
Most choose a 6-core Xeon (X5650, X5660 etc.) but I don't run anything that would really benefit from 2 extra cores so I figured having the highest (affordable) clockspeed boost made more sense, which is why I chose the X5677.
If you want to go down the 6 core route, then the sweetspots (depending on your budget, and how hot you're happy to have your system run) seem to be:
- X5650 = basically similar speed to an i7 930, but 2 more cores (6 vs 4), and lower wattage so should run much cooler. Probably £50-60.
- X5675 = fastest 6 core that is also lower wattage. Probably £80-100.
- X5680 or X5690 = very fast 6 core, but same 130W as the i7 930. Probably £130-160.
If the above was pure gibberish to you, you probably don't want to start doing the equivalent of brain surgery on your computer! But if it's encouraged you to get digging, that's great.
The three best sources of information to begin from are...
Intel's processor specs database: https://ark.intel.com/
Wikipedia's list of Xeon processors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Xeon_microprocessors
CPUBenchmark's database of Passmark benchmarks (you can compare up to 3 processors side by side): http://www.cpubenchmark.net/
One more thing to note: the motherboard manufacturers may be slow to update their lists of "compatible" processors. The processor I bought wasn't officially listed as compatible, but I found enough people on different forums had successfully upgraded that I was willing to take the risk.
(BTW, there are Xeon replacements for later generations of i7 processors too, but few with such a massive boost at such a low cost)
It's given me at least 20% faster single-thread and nearly 25% faster multi-thread performance, and knocked about 10C off an already cool processor (it runs at under 30C at low load!)
You would have to check your specific motherboard carefully (and you may well need to upgrade the motherboard bios in advance of changing the processor) but there are a lot of people who seem to have done what I did successfully.
Most choose a 6-core Xeon (X5650, X5660 etc.) but I don't run anything that would really benefit from 2 extra cores so I figured having the highest (affordable) clockspeed boost made more sense, which is why I chose the X5677.
If you want to go down the 6 core route, then the sweetspots (depending on your budget, and how hot you're happy to have your system run) seem to be:
- X5650 = basically similar speed to an i7 930, but 2 more cores (6 vs 4), and lower wattage so should run much cooler. Probably £50-60.
- X5675 = fastest 6 core that is also lower wattage. Probably £80-100.
- X5680 or X5690 = very fast 6 core, but same 130W as the i7 930. Probably £130-160.
If the above was pure gibberish to you, you probably don't want to start doing the equivalent of brain surgery on your computer! But if it's encouraged you to get digging, that's great.
The three best sources of information to begin from are...
Intel's processor specs database: https://ark.intel.com/
Wikipedia's list of Xeon processors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Xeon_microprocessors
CPUBenchmark's database of Passmark benchmarks (you can compare up to 3 processors side by side): http://www.cpubenchmark.net/
One more thing to note: the motherboard manufacturers may be slow to update their lists of "compatible" processors. The processor I bought wasn't officially listed as compatible, but I found enough people on different forums had successfully upgraded that I was willing to take the risk.
(BTW, there are Xeon replacements for later generations of i7 processors too, but few with such a massive boost at such a low cost)
