MP 1,1-5,1 Is it worth it to go from E5620 to X5677?

[Conecandy]

Hi everyone,

I am budget-upgrading my mid-2010 Mac pro with dual 2.4 ghz processors and was curious if the switch would be worth it. I'm not familiar with hardware comparisons, but googling seems to make it seem like there isn't much benefit or boost for the hassle of swapping them out. Would appreciate a more experienced person's thoughts. Thanks!

 

[flowrider]

IMHO, Absolutely I've been running my X5677s for 6 years now. One of the best mods I've done. The increase in speed is noticeable in my work and by benchmarks.

Lou

 

[Conecandy]

IMHO, AbsolutelyView attachment 849295 I've been running my X5677s for 6 years now. One of the best mods I've done. The increase in speed is noticeable in my work and by benchmarks.

Lou

Very interesting! I appreciate your reply. So am I not understanding how to interpret reports like this http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Xeon-X5677-vs-Intel-Xeon-E5620 ? It looks like there's no benefit.

Second questuon: would I be crazy spending 30 bucks on 2 refurbished ones from Hong kong?

 

[kohlson]

I think the single biggest upgrade is some form of SSD, either SATA or NVMe. Assume you've done that already.
I just helped a friend swap out dual 4x2.4s for 6x3.33s. From the perspective of day-to-day email and web surf, no noticeable difference. But video encoding (his primary workload) - big difference.

 

[Conecandy]

I think the single biggest upgrade is some form of SSD, either SATA or NVMe. Assume you've done that already.
I just helped a friend swap out dual 4x2.4s for 6x3.33s. From the perspective of day-to-day email and web surf, no noticeable difference. But video encoding (his primary workload) - big difference.

Already did the SSD. 256 and keep it half empty. Thinking about upgrading it.

I'm also getting a GTX 760 from a friend so I can utilize my 4k display for design and spreadsheets. I don't do much or any video editing, but heavy on photoshop.

So the cpu swap wasn't worth it to you?

 

[kohlson]

So the cpu swap wasn't worth it to you?

I upgraded my 4x2.93 to 6x3.33. I upgraded my friend per above. Absolutely worth it in both cases as we use our cMPs for video editing (FCPX for me and CS6 for him). For just doodling around, not noticeable difference. For heavy lifting, big difference.

 

[Conecandy]

I upgraded my 4x2.93 to 6x3.33. I upgraded my friend per above. Absolutely worth it in both cases as we use our cMPs for video editing (FCPX for me and CS6 for him). For just doodling around, not noticeable difference. For heavy lifting, big difference.

Great feedback. I appreciate it. For curiosity sake, any idea why when I Google comparisons on the cpus, it looks nominal at best?

 

[thornslack]

Because the cpus are both old, of the same generation, and have been leapfrogged by the modern competition. Therefore they both perform similarly compared to the newest stuff so they get rated similarly.

X5677 achieve the highest possible clockspeeds and I also found it to be a successful upgrade on my machine (for gaming). However as others have stated, ‘doodling’ around may not offer a huge subjective upgrade. The big benefit is in single core performance. So if you feel you are lacking there it might be worth it.

 

[Conecandy]

Because the cpus are both old, of the same generation, and have been leapfrogged by the modern competition. Therefore they both perform similarly compared to the newest stuff so they get rated similarly.

X5677 achieve the highest possible clockspeeds and I also found it to be a successful upgrade on my machine (for gaming). However as others have stated, ‘doodling’ around may not offer a huge subjective upgrade. The big benefit is in single core performance. So if you feel you are lacking there it might be worth it.

That makes a lot of sense. I really appreciate all the time you and others have spent replying to this thread. I went ahead and bought the CPUs. Looking to give my computer a new life!

Any thoughts on the SSD? Is there a speed benefit to getting a 1TB SSD vs. having my 250 gig half full?

 

[kohlson]

any idea why when I Google comparisons

Do you means things like Geekbench? Benchmarks can be helpful. But if you're doing things like video transcoding, you can see CPU performance in a real-world workflow, if that workflow is CPU-based transcoding. How apps perform is a combination of how the software engineers at the app developer, plus the software and hardware engineers at the platform vendor(s) all work together. As a user it's hard to know. If you know your app depends on the CPU for performance, then bumping it up will help.

 

[AidenShaw]

Any thoughts on the SSD? Is there a speed benefit to getting a 1TB SSD vs. having my 250 gig half full?

"Half full" means nothing unless TRIM is enabled and active (and cleaned up with an 'fsck -fy' if the drive ever has run without TRIM).

Other than that, look at the specs for the SSD. Sometimes larger SSDs are inherently faster. For example, if you have a 256 GB SSD from a family, the 1 TB drives in that family might be organized as four 256 GB banks in what is effectively RAID-0, or two 512 GB banks. This will show up as faster speeds for the larger drives. (If they're AHCI or SATA, the controller might be the bottleneck regardless of the organization. If the limits are around 600 MB/sec, it's a controller limit. ...or 300 MB/sec for the slow SATA on the cMP.)

If the specs are the same for 256 GB and 1 TB with PCIe or NVMe, then they're probably single banks.

 

[Alex Sanders74]

Hi everyone,

I am budget-upgrading my mid-2010 Mac pro with dual 2.4 ghz processors and was curious if the switch would be worth it. I'm not familiar with hardware comparisons, but googling seems to make it seem like there isn't much benefit or boost for the hassle of swapping them out. Would appreciate a more experienced person's thoughts. Thanks!

Did the exact same swap on my 5.1. Everyday use it felt the same, but CPU intensive tasks were way faster. Paid $40 Canadian for dual X5677 and for the price, was well worth it.

 

[orph]

E5620 - 2.4 - 2.6ghz - 4core
X5677 - 3.46 - 3.73ghz - 4core
so thats about 1GHZ faster per core, a big jump in cpu speed.(50% faster?)
looked on ebay and they start at £20 a cpu, so a good buget option.

for fun do a before and after cinbench and see how it compares.

first thing i did on my cmp was pull the 4c 2.8ghz cpu and swap it with the 6c 3.33ghz cpu (single cpu cmp).