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XEON X5680's for half price ?

Dr. Stealth

Dr. Stealth

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 14, 2004
814
740
SoCal-Surf City USA
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Couldn't pass this one up......

:D

Merry Christmas to ME ! I pulled the trigger on this super deal.

I'll essentially be doubling the speed of my 2010 MP for under 2k. :eek:

Currently a 8-core 2.4 - Soon to be 12-core 3.33

:D

mc2me.png
 
Dr. Stealth said:
:eek:
I'm going to upgrade my 2010 MP and came across this on Amazon last night. New x5680's for $945.00 ? Could this be true ? If so I could save $1500 on the dual processor upgrade.

http://www.amazon.com/Intel-X5680-Processor-Socket-LGA1366/dp/B003ELYSJQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1355069998&sr=8-1&keywords=x5680

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117228&Tpk=x5680
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If you can, you may wish to cancel that order ASAP and save yourself another $90+ by ordering direct,
[ https://www.eoptionsonline.com/p-1287-bx80614x5680.aspx?keyword=bx80614x5680 ], although it's not really half price - the unboxed new OEM chips have been selling for around $1,270 [ http://www.superbiiz.com/query.php?categry=14&name=Intel-Xeon&pa0=Xeon+Six-Core&pa4=LGA+1366 ] and I bought mine boxed from Superbiiz about 2 years ago for less than $1,500. Otherwise, Congratulations. It's still a great deal, especially for chips that perform as well as they do in self-builds with an under $400 B-stock EVGA Classified SR-2 (Super Record 2) [ http://www.evga.com/Products/Product.aspx?pn=270-WS-W555-RX ]; they can attain Geekbench 2 scores of over 35,000 and Cinebench 11.5 rendering scores of over 21.
 
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Dr. Stealth said:
Thanks for the tip Tutor. I thought about it a bit but I really like the security of dealing with Amazon.
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For future reference, when you use a credit card (Capital One, etc.) you have a ton of protection on your side and can definitely get your money back without too much trouble.

If you use a debit card that deducts cash from your bank (even if it's a Visa, MasterCard, etc) you will have more trouble getting your money back.

Just a tip.
 
This is gonna sound dumb, but can a dual processor Nehalem Mac Pro take these processors without issue?
 
Tutor said:
If you can, you may wish to cancel that order ASAP and save yourself another $90+ by ordering direct,
[ https://www.eoptionsonline.com/p-1287-bx80614x5680.aspx?keyword=bx80614x5680 ], although it's not really half price - the unboxed new OEM chips have been selling for around $1,270 [ http://www.superbiiz.com/query.php?categry=14&name=Intel-Xeon&pa0=Xeon+Six-Core&pa4=LGA+1366 ] and I bought mine boxed from Superbiiz about 2 years ago for less than $1,500. Otherwise, Congratulations. It's still a great deal, especially for chips that perform as well as they do in self-builds with an under $400 B-stock EVGA Classified SR-2 (Super Record 2) [ http://www.evga.com/Products/Product.aspx?pn=270-WS-W555-RX ]; they can attain Geekbench 2 scores of over 35,000 and Cinebench 11.5 rendering scores of over 21.
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Coming from a man with a Geekbench score of 58,000+ I greatly appreciate your insight and or advise....

:D
 
spoonie1972 said:
E and X prefix chips should work.
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True for purposes of upgrades. Generally for dual CPU {not core} upgrades these will work [ http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Xeon/TYPE-Xeon 5600.html ] and generally for single CPU {not core} upgrades these will work [ http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Xeon/TYPE-Xeon 3600.html ]. For more information, see https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1333421/ , especially post #1.


spoonie1972 said:
Someone may pipe in about stepping codes and if they matter.
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Stepping codes should match to avoid issues in dual CPU setups, but otherwise they don't generally matter, except that earlier steppings could lack certain features or have feature implementation defects. So I'd recommend sticking with the latest stepping, unless you've carefully and fully done all of your homework.
 
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Dr. Stealth said:
Coming from a man with a Geekbench score of 58,000+ I greatly appreciate your insight and or advice.... :D
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That's not in OSX; that's in Linux and with 4 CPUs [E5-4650s]. The best that I have done far in OSX is 40,100 with my two EVGA SR-2s each running two (2) X5680s with each CPU underclocked to run at 2483 MHz at idle, but then to turboboost 13 bins or steps (3 or more cores at 4966 MHz on each CPU) or 14 bins or steps (1 or 2 cores at 5157 MHz on each CPU) higher when tasked/needed.
 
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Does anyone know (with a fair amount of certainty) what would happen if I put one of the X5680s in my 2010 DP Mac Pro? Have seen conflicting information about the possibility of this working...
 
adr1974 said:
Does anyone know (with a fair amount of certainty) what would happen if I put one of the X5680s in my 2010 DP Mac Pro? Have seen conflicting information about the possibility of this working...
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If done correctly, the only thing that would happen if you installed two of them is that your computer would be faster, unless you, like some other, already have X5690s, in which case that would be a downgrade. I done the upgrade on a 2009 with the EFI hack and it worked completely fine. I also installed just one at a time and it worked fine so long as you install that one CPU in CPU A slot. However, I soon learned that such powerful chips are better paired the EVGA SR-2.
 
Thanks Tutor -- appreciate it. I currently have a 2010 Mac Pro with dual 2.4 quad cores and am thinking about upgrading. Would like to put in one of the x5680s now, and maybe another at some point down the road. Had heard stories of 1. fans going crazy 2. kernel panics and 3. the memory from slots 5-8 gets ignored. Can live with #3, but 1 and 2 are deal-breakers. Thanks again for your help!
 
adr1974 said:
Thanks Tutor -- appreciate it. I currently have a 2010 Mac Pro with dual 2.4 quad cores and am thinking about upgrading. Would like to put in one of the x5680s now, and maybe another at some point down the road. Had heard stories of 1. fans going crazy 2. kernel panics and 3. the memory from slots 5-8 gets ignored. Can live with #3, but 1 and 2 are deal-breakers. Thanks again for your help!
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As for memory not being recognized and kernel panics, that sounds like a problem with seating the CPU(s) properly or uneven pressure on it from the heatsink. Fans going crazy sound like a need to reset SMC. There will be more heat, but just use SMC Fan Control Utility to tame the beast's heat.
 
That really is awesome. How did the upgrade go? Any issues? How have your temperatures been?
 
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