This X99 Xeon beats a 12th Gen i3... but at what cost?

Testing and overclocking the Intel Xeon E5-1660 v3 8-core 16-thread CPU in 10 popular and demanding games in 2024, using an RX 6900 XT discrete GPU, and comparing it to the i3-12100F.

Track names: “Neon Nights”, “Midnight Racer”, “Binary Sunrise” & “Vercetti Forever”

00:00 Intel E5-1660 v3 in 2024
00:44 The Perils of Overclocking X99
02:45 X99 Motherboards for Overclocking
04:56 Test System
05:28 Gaming Benchmarks
05:31 Benchmarks: Valorant
06:06 Benchmarks: Fortnite
06:40 Benchmarks: Counter Strike 2
07:16 Benchmarks: Call of Duty: Warzone
07:52 Benchmarks: Starfield
08:32 Benchmarks: Cyberpunk 2077
09:09 Benchmarks: The Last of Us
09:40 Benchmarks: Dragon’s Dogma 2
10:16 Benchmarks: Jedi Survivor
10:52 Benchmarks: Civilization VI
11:01 Synthetics: 3DMark Fire Strike & Time Spy
11:09 Synthetics: CPU-Z & Cinebench R23
11:24 Productivity Test: Davinci Resolve
11:48 Productivity Test: Blender
12:15 Conclusion

A D S
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G E A R
Audio:

Video:
Camera & 18-55mm lens kit:

C O N T A C T
Twitter/Insta @IcebergTop10s

#X99 #scalperpandemic #Xeon

[lamikal]

"This X99 Xeon beats a 12th Gen i3... but at what cost?"

UNLIMITED !!!

[Tmaxx]

Finally upgraded from my ol trusty 5820k to a R7 7800X3D last year. Honestly it was still putting up a decent fight but it was time.

[OlaftheGreat]

I found a Asrock x99 extreme 4 at a local college surplus store that had been marked down to $20 USD. That's practically a steal at that point. Until such time I would acquire something like an 6900k or equivalent Xeon, I've got a E5-2667 V3 I got for $8 on eBay.

I love this platform

[LKNear]

This is the equivalent of Trunks buffing the hell up to try and beat Perfect Cell

[alexthething]

Bloody hell the videos are coming quick.

Ain't complaining about it though.

[Gastell]

X99 is first generation of motherboards that supported NVMe, and you can even get them to support Resizable Bar, so it fair really well considering it's age, it's really one legendary generation
Edit: Ah fudge, that's for Z97 and 4th Gen Intel, not X99

[yourbluewaffle]

Thanks to Miyconst, I was able to build a budget x99 system with the Machinist x99 PR8 and the xeon 2666v3. It has 10 cores/20 threads and turbos over 3ghz at stock. It pairs well with cards up to the 6600xt. I got the board and CPU for less than 40$ shipped to my country.

[sgdude]

Haswell really was ahead of it’s time. My z97 has usb 3.1 ports and a m.2 slot that I recently put a 2tb ssd in. At the time it was seen as an incremental improvement over ivy bridge but these creature comforts plus avx2 support means that a simple swap of my 980ti to a 1080ti (equivalent, im running a 12gb Titan Xp) a little down the road still has the ancient pc pretty relevant.

[lindsaymobil]

I'm quite surprised by your take in this video, since it wasn't that long ago you were singing the praises of the i7-5960X which is essentially the same chip as the 1660v3.

I'm running a j-batch 1660v3 @ 4.3GHz in my daily workstation with 32GB DDR4-2400 on my old AsRock X99-Extreme4, coupled with a 6700XT, and this machine still continues to REALLY impress me. The 1660v3 was an upgrade from my venerable 5820K that I'd been running since 2015 at 4.4GHz (the Xeon was cheaper and easier to get ahold of than a 5960X at the time), and I still feel no need to upgrade away from X99 with the Xeon. I do more productivity than gaming, but even at 4K I'm still getting performance I'm perfectly happy with! I definitely made the right choice back in 2015 throwing the extra cash at X99 instead of Z97.

Only drawback of course is my power bill (my partner runs a 1680v4 workstation day-to-day lmfao) and the space heater quality of this machine :D

[pwnmeisterage]

That was back in the day that the perfect-yield first-pick top-bin parts were always chosen for Xeons.
The top-tier top-rung top-price power-user enthusiast-gamer consumer i7-5960X was actually an E5-1680v3 which was downbinned because it couldn't run as fast. And the rest of the Haswells (then later the Haswell-E's) followed the same pattern on each rung.

[markazkk]

x99 2697 v3 x2 here. run two systems in single and dual. have been a great way to recycle items and reduce e-waste!

[samuellopez-jenw]

3 months ago, bought full server blade w i75960x water cooled + GTX 970 no ssd for $160 CA. went back after validating the whole thing and since the gpu was bad on the one i got em down to 100$ each. bough x 3. all of those GPU's worked!!! so happy x99 Gigabye G1 Gaming p5 UD mobo! then went back bough 4 more. doing a giveaway or at cost sale for upgrades on all 4 of those PCs. hmu if ur in central CA. Buyers market over here.

[T.Lspitz]

X99 for life!
Still my go-to suggestion for cheap gaming or home server build.
Still looking for some of those rare 16xx V3 cpus!
Got my hands on a 1680v3 for a fairly cheap price not to long ago. Although the 1650v3 and 1660v3 were the most fun to overclock.

[GewelReal]

That's why I switched from X99 to Ryzen 5600 2 weeks ago.
Haswell/Broadwell is just too old to run high framerates in competitive games

[RDL_Jamaican]

i bought my X99 F8 combo with E5-2696(18 cores, 32 threads) v3 and 64gb ddr4 for less than a modern i3 cpu alone. when I test in cpuz my setup has a higher score than a i9 11th gen. let that sink in

[AJDOLDCHANNELARCHIVE]

This misses the appeal in the X99 Xeons.... their true value is in being able to get an 8/10/12/14/16/18 core CPU for dirt cheap, and sticking it in a dirt cheap AliExpress motherboard with dirt cheap quad channel ECC memory.

[patrickprafke]

I had my Xeon W3690 OC'd to 4.6ghz for 5 years or so. Finally upgraded to a Ryzen 9 5950x. Yes, huge performance upgrade. But damn....that thing still keeps up mostly. Even had it with a Samsung 950 pro nvme drive to boot from. It's still in my living room for the kids to play with. Both have a 6950XT gpu. Unlocked Xeons are no joke. Back then, the Xeons where made from the core of the silicon slug. The I 7's where just outside of that. So these Xeons were really durable.

[hammerth]

The US government just dumped 127k cores worth of Haswell E onto the secondary market, so I'd expect them to be cheap and readily available for years to come. They just don't have the performance per watt to actually be worth buying if your electricity isn't basically free.

[fady]

Approximately few months back I grabbed myself a Chinese motherboard with 8 RAM slots for $95. Surprisingly found 256GB (32×8) 2666mhz ECC registered as well for dirt cheap $130 ish. Paired it with a 1680v4 costing $85 (but man it came after like nearly 2 months). Paired these up with a decent 650W deepcool PSU and a decent airflow case. Everything got me fired up less than $500. I had a spare 3070 lying around so added that ($350 at that time from second hand market)

Before that I do have two other systems with an intel i9-9900k + RTX 2080ti (which costed me about $2500+ back in the day) and a somewhat newer Ryzen 7 5700x paired with an RX 6950xt which was build about a year ago.

I must say the xeon build puts those two new systems to shame when it comes to value. True it costs a bit more wattage but not that much. I'm really really surprised actually. Using 3 of them simultaneously but recently finding myself using the Xeon system more often hmmm

[lucasgtr]

I'm actually using Strix X99 with E5-2666v3 and RTX2070, i also have platform with i7 9700K.
When i did timespy benchmark 2666v3 beats I7 9 gen easly (7837 vs 6504).
Currently i'm going to sell i7 and stay with E5 for few more years...

My E5 2666v3 with RTX2070 gets 8397 points in timespy benchmark without any O.C