Is using a Xeon making my life harder?

So as the title says, at home im running a Xeon 4108 as a main Desktop for Games, Content Watching, Web Browsing etc etc and a 4310 for my server stuff and recently come to the conclusion that it might just be making my life harder doing this as i have to tweak games to run, Add PCie Cards for more NVME, More USB, More Sata. Although i love the idea of having a WS CPU with ECC at home for uptime and not having to worry, am i just making life harder for myself? or would something like Xeon-W 3xxx make it easier for me to have best of both worlds?

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You have to do this to run games on a Xeon Scalable processor? I did not know that. I would not say that HEDT in general makes your life harder, it might only be the specific platform that you have chosen. For example I have a Threadripper Pro system, which offers enterprise features like IPMI, supports for loads for memory and many PCIe lanes, while it offers the usual connectivity that one can expect from consumer boards and does not need any specific treatment for applications to tun.

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have you considered setting things up to run a VM with a dedicated gaming card passed through?

It might actually be simpler for your OS to see virtualized parts rather than bare system. The overhead of a VM is really reasonable these days on a modern WS class system with decent memory.

Because ST performance is weak or for some other reason?

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are you using this in a single socket config or are you running multiple sockets?

how is your memory configured?

the 4108 has the lowest clocks out of that entire range of CPUs and this single item will affect games substantially. Especially if you memory config is sub-optimal.

my current desktop is a overclocked xeon 2960-v4 with a w6600 and it scored 14565 in superposition 1080p medium.

These are limitations of the motherboard rather than the processor. There are socket 3647 boards designed for more “workstation” usage that might be a better choice. But one of the whole points of server processors with a large number of PCIe lanes (compared to bling/RGB/gaming boards) is flexibility in how to use the I/O by using add-in cards, rather than limited to the onboard devices and small number of PCIe lanes from the CPU and chipset.

I would be interested to know what the tweaks you’re making.

I run games on a dual socket 8173M system with an RTX A5000 and seldom drop below the 165 FPS maximum of my GSync monitor in major titles like the Battlefield series and Hitman. One game I can think of that gives me trouble is Rust, which fluctuates between 100 and 130 FPS during gameplay, though I’m not sure if that is down to my system or due to it being a poorly optimized Unity game. In any case, GSync takes care of it and I only notice the fluctuations if I have a frame rate overlay enabled. I’ve even noticed some particularly well-written DirectX 12 and Vulkan games like Civilization 6 and DOOM (2016) using more than 16 threads.

This experience is night-and-day compared to my Epyc Milan and Rome systems, which have frequent stutters (probably because of the Windows scheduler).

There are a couple settings you might want to change in the BIOS for workstation use, like enabling ISOC and disabling sub-NUMA clustering. Also, it looks like your 4108 may have a maximum turbo of 3.0 GHz and this could be part of the issue (though the 8173M I use only goes up to 3.6 GHz).

Off-roadmap Skylake Xeons like the 8173M are cheap on the used market, and 165 watt models like the 8173M require no special BIOS support, VRM mods, etc. and work in all motherboards. If you’re looking for an upgrade, and are happy with the rest of the system, this might be a good solution.

You also don’t mention your GPU, memory config, preferred refresh rate, monitor resolution, and so on. A lot of people have fallen for the “upsell” that you need a 5GHz+ CPU for gaming - you don’t! I’m sure plenty of other users on this forum can attest to that.

So, essentially, what you are asking is whether an 8-core CPU from 2017 with a boost clock of 3 GHz is making your life harder for gaming? Weeeeelll… To put that into perspective, here is a similar complete PC build from 2021 that does everything the 2017 computer does and more:

AMD 5700X Build

Type Item Price
CPU AMD Ryzen 7 5700X $189.00
Motherboard Gigabyte B550M DS3H AC $109.99
Memory G.Skill Ripjaws V 2x32 GB DDR4-3600 CL18 $145.99
Storage Kingston KC3000 2.048 TB NVME SSD $167.99
Video Card PowerColor Fighter Radeon RX 6600 $239.99
Case Fractal Design Meshify 2 Mini $109.99
Power Supply be quiet! Straight Power 11 650W Platinum $134.90
Total $1097.85

Again, this is as good as your current platform or better. For $500-$600, you can easily upgrade Motherboard+CPU+RAM to a 2021 year old computer. So what if we do a current gen 13700k or 7900X3D?

AMD 7900X3D Build

Type Item Price
CPU AMD Ryzen 9 7900X3D $594.99
CPU Cooler Deepcool AG620 BK ARGB $49.99
Motherboard MSI MAG B650M MORTAR WIFI $239.99
Memory G.Skill Ripjaws S5 2x32 GB DDR5-5600 CL36 $229.99
Storage Kingston KC3000 NVME SSD $167.99
Video Card PowerColor Fighter Radeon RX 6600 $239.99
Case Fractal Design Meshify 2 Mini $109.99
Power Supply SeaSonic FOCUS Plus Platinum 850W $179.99
Total $1812.92

Intel 13700k Build

Type Item Price
CPU Intel Core i7-13700K $417.94
CPU Cooler ID-COOLING SE-225-XT $44.99
Motherboard Asus ROG STRIX Z690-G GAMING WIFI $299.00
Memory G.Skill Ripjaws S5 2x32 GB DDR5-5600 CL36 $229.99
Storage Kingston KC3000 NVME SSD $167.99
Video Card PowerColor Fighter Radeon RX 6600 $239.99
Case Fractal Design Meshify 2 Mini $109.99
Power Supply SeaSonic FOCUS Plus Platinum 850W $179.99
Total $1689.88

At this point I think it is pretty clear you should start considering if it is worth getting on the upgrade train. That Xeon is just not a good CPU anymore and will only get worse with time. :slight_smile:

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