Asus' E3 Pro Gaming V5 mobo lets Xeons get their game on

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

T_Minus

Build. Break. Fix. Repeat
Feb 15, 2015
7,625
2,043
113
Kind of a weird move IMHO.... I mean if you're already on an i7 or have an older-gen why would you decide hey, I'm going to stick with the same class CPU but get a XEON!! Makes 0 sense to me.

Now, on the other hand... I have a MSI X99 SLI+ motherboard, I ran a 5930K and it was more than I needed (power and heat)... I tossed in an Intel XEON E5-1620 V3 I had on hand, works fine.

I could see an E5 "desktop" geared board, but E3 is not even enthusiast level... the E5 would at-least "take it up" a level, let me use ECC, etc... (not sure if my board would work)
 
  • Like
Reactions: eva2000

markarr

Active Member
Oct 31, 2013
421
122
43
Retail Price.

i7-6700 $350
E3-1230 v5 $250

If your going to put a graphics card in the computer already why not save the 100 to get similar cpu performance.
 

wsuff

Member
Aug 16, 2015
75
13
8
I got all AMD systems [FX] mainly due to budget so I just saw it interesting to consider. Granted kids these days spent way too much on their "gaming pc"
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
12,511
5,792
113
It used to be that the E3-1200 series tracked fairly closely with the i7. Now with the GPU taking up more of the die space, the E3-1230 is now closer to the high end e3-1200's. There are also fewer Core SKUs aimed at gaming these days.

Then again, if you are getting a Core i7-6700 for a gaming PC, you are crazy. Spend a few dollars more for the K version if you are going the i7 route.
 
  • Like
Reactions: eva2000

Patriot

Moderator
Apr 18, 2011
1,450
789
113
Intel is blocking use of xeons on the z170 chipset... This is the first gen doing that so... this is the industry's response.
 
  • Like
Reactions: T_Minus

EffrafaxOfWug

Radioactive Member
Feb 12, 2015
1,394
511
113
ECC support seems to be absent from this board so availability/price constraints aside I'm not sure I see the point...
 
  • Like
Reactions: T_Minus

Patriot

Moderator
Apr 18, 2011
1,450
789
113
ECC support seems to be absent from this board so availability/price constraints aside I'm not sure I see the point...
Overclocking via blck is opened back up. spend $100 less on cpu and more on gpu.
MSI has some nice workstation boards popping up for those that want ECC.

Also, there is no US pricing info just 118Euros... So I would expect it to be between 115-175 USD.
 

Diavuno

Active Member
ECC support seems to be absent from this board so availability/price constraints aside I'm not sure I see the point...
The board supports the Chip.
The chip determines the RAM... it should work with ECC.


On the otherhand... Why Xeon over an I7?
Out of all the gaming machines I've build+sold from my business most are for bragging rights.
A few like to script (bot) multiple games.

The biggest "gaming" machine I sold recently was $12,xxx and had dual V3 chips with 128GB a 4 way SLI and a 8 drive raid 10 of 850 pros.

why? because he told me he wanted the ultimate, cost was no issue. I asked him how far and he said 10-15k.

The guy then got into a $100,000 CLK and drove away.
 

Keljian

Active Member
Sep 9, 2015
428
71
28
Melbourne Australia
Xeon? Cause you don't need internal graphics when you have discrete. (Unless it is crystalwell, then you definitely do want it)

Dual chip setups are actually actively bad for gaming, when one needs to access the other's cache/ram it isn't good for latency, and you are relying on the os' scheduler software to do the juggle.

My ultimate gaming machine would be quad sli etc, but have a single chip with as many of the fastest cores I could find. Speed of the cores being more important than number(above 4), it would also have the fastest memory I could find.
 
Last edited:

EffrafaxOfWug

Radioactive Member
Feb 12, 2015
1,394
511
113
The board supports the Chip.
The chip determines the RAM... it should work with ECC.
Don't think it's that simple and I wouldn't buy one assuming it's supported until someone has tested it; IIRC you need a) additional mobo tracery and b) BIOS support to turn on the ECC doohickeys in order to get it working. One of the things that drew me to ASRock several years ago was when they started making sure ECC was a supported option where feasible; their equivalent to the Asus boards, also using the C232 chipset, actually lists ECC as supported.
 

Diavuno

Active Member
Don't think it's that simple and I wouldn't buy one assuming it's supported until someone has tested it; IIRC you need a) additional mobo tracery and b) BIOS support to turn on the ECC doohickeys in order to get it working. One of the things that drew me to ASRock several years ago was when they started making sure ECC was a supported option where feasible; their equivalent to the Asus boards, also using the C232 chipset, actually lists ECC as supported.
I would have to test it myself too, all of my stuff is mobile or it already supports ECC.
 

Diavuno

Active Member
Xeon? Cause you don't need internal graphics when you have discrete. (Unless it is crystalwell, then you definitely do want it)

Dual chip setups are actually actively bad for gaming, when one needs to access the other's cache/ram it isn't good for latency, and you are relying on the os' scheduler software to do the juggle.

My ultimate gaming machine would be quad sli etc, but have a single chip with as many of the fastest cores I could find. Speed of the cores being more important than number(above 4), it would also have the fastest memory I could find.
Dual chips do have a penalty and here is the condensed version:
if a CPU needs to access its own RAM there is no penalty.
If a CPU needs to access RAM on a remote CPU expect waste and added latency, about 1-4% slower
HOWEVER *IF* you have tapped out the QPI (or hyper transport) you basically get the same affect as disk thrashing, expect 20% or more latency (over local speeds.)

Their are ways to combat that, starting with loading one program at a time, the OS will typically assign to the available CPU (and it's ram)
While one program might not use the same quantity of ram modern OS's are pretty good about it.

For the few clients who have maxed out their systems We use AutoNuma for *nix or HyperV for windows (this is great for guys who "bot 10/20 games at the same time)

Even right now I have a couple VM's running on my desktop, and I know that by (my)default all HyperV VMs are using CPU1(and the ram attached to it.)