I now have Core i7-970, and read here that Xeon 5650 i best buy upgrade for X58A UD3 MB.
Does anyone have an idea how much real realworld difference would be upgrading from Core i7-970 to Xeon 5650?
Price for used i7-970 is much higher than Xeon 5650, so it is a little confusing.
I am also looking for fast SSD, but this SATA3 controller on EX58A-UD3 is bottleneck, not great performance with regular SATA SSD.
Does anyone have experience with PCIX SSDs, maybe using "Edge memory Boost Express PCIe 3.0" (great performance on paper, but no first hand expirience)? Anyone? I can see that PCIe x16 3.0 port is required, but will work also with PCIe x16 1.0, but how fast?
There's almost no reason to upgrade from i7-970 (6-core, 32nm process, Gulftown) to Xeon 5650 (6-core, 32nm, Westmere) if you're after performance. They are almost identical processes, with the same cores, and the same general range of overclocking ability. If you're lucky, you'll get a slightly higher OC (just as you might if you simply buy another i7-970 and hit the OC jackpot)-- and if you're unlucky you might get a lower OC.
The only potential advantages are these:
1. The Xeon is a 95W CPU, so it should run a bit cooler, consume less energy, and take lower voltages than your 135W i7-970.
2. The Xeon can be used in 2-CPU motherboards like the SR-2. But unless you have one of these boards around-- and the time to mess around with what is by all accounts a really, really finicky BIOS-- these dual-CPU boards are huge, $$$, and a PIA.
3. If you can sell the 970 for more than the cost of the Xeon, you could fold that $$$ back into something else. But the caveats exist: What if you get unlucky and get a bad overclocker? What if you bend a pin installing the chip (really unlikely, but we have proof it happens!). Is it really worth the hassle for no performance boost?
Short version: No, it's almost definitely not worth upgrading from an i7-970 to a Xeon 5650 if you're after performance. It's a killer upgrade from the 4-core, 45nm X58 cpus because you get a huge performance boost and lower temps.