Which PC would be better for me to game on?

[MastaChaOS]

Hi all.  I recently inherited an dual quad core Xeon system, and I was wondering how it would stack up to my current system in terms of gaming performance.

The Xeon system is a 2x 2.0gHz Xeon quad core.  It came with 4GB of RAM, but it's only ~$20 to up that to 12GB, so that is what I would be doing.  

 

Here are the stats of my current CPU:

 

 

My current rig has 5GB of DDR3, the Xeon would have 12GB of DDR2 (FB).

 

I would be swapping my current video card into the Xeon if I end up deciding it's worth it.  

The video card is a Sapphire Radeon HD 7700.

In all honesty I don't do too much gaming, but if you could help me pick the better of the systems for it I'd appreciate it.

 

Thanks!

[philcruicks]

I would suspect its gonna be fairly even, although Xeon's aren't traditionally designed for gaming, GPU is the biggest constraint on modern games, so CPU probably won't have much effect, the Xeon might be a bit better, but your dropping to DDR 2 rather than 3.

I'd also ask why you have 5GB in your current system...you can't have matched sets (pairs/triples) with 5GB...needs to be 2 4 6 8 12 16 etc...

How much would a RAM upgrade in your current system be? as that's more likely to make a difference than either CPU.

[MastaChaOS]

My current system came with 4GB and I had a 1GB stick laying around so I just threw it in.  I think my current system caps out at 8GB tho, so the Xeon system has more memory potential.

[+InsaneNutter MVC]

In all honesty you probably wont notice any difference gaming wise, I would keep your current system and upgrade the Radeon HD 7700 if you are not happy with gaming performance.

[Liana]

I would compare the supported CPU instruction sets between what you have and the Xeon processors, but I would lean toward the Xeon setup, as long as the OS you are using is properly utilizing all the power and cores. I don't have much experience with Xeon processors, but I don't see any reason not to use them. I also wouldn't really worry about DDR2 vs DDR3, as the performance increase isn't all that great.

 

I would suspect its gonna be fairly even, although Xeon's aren't traditionally designed for gaming, GPU is the biggest constraint on modern games, so CPU probably won't have much effect, the Xeon might be a bit better, but your dropping to DDR 2 rather than 3.

I'd also ask why you have 5GB in your current system...you can't have matched sets (pairs/triples) with 5GB...needs to be 2 4 6 8 12 16 etc...

How much would a RAM upgrade in your current system be? as that's more likely to make a difference than either CPU.

I think most modern desktop-class motherboards support mixing RAM brands and sizes, you just won't be able to run it all in dual or triple channel mode, which isn't much of a performance increase anyway.

[MastaChaOS]

In all honesty you probably wont notice any difference gaming wise, I would keep your current system and upgrade the Radeon HD 7700 if you are not happy with gaming performance.

 

I'm not unhappy with it per se, it handles the games I play pretty well (mainly Blizzard titles).  I was just curious as to whether or not I'd see a boost in gaming performance, or worse, a drop. 

If it's all about even, then I'll probably switch to the Xeon system which has more memory and more cores.  Windows 8 seems to run very well on it.

[philcruicks]

Best bet then is find the code that shows fps in your games (apparently Ctrl R in WoW) not sure which Blizzard games you have but chances are the command is similar, then pop the GPU in the Xeon system and compare.

[MastaChaOS]

Thanks for the help everyone! I'll do some testing and see what works best.

[neoadorable]

Not a huge difference, but i'd got with upping the RAM on the Xeon as it's a quad core. However, the Athlon II X2 is an awesome CPU. I had an Athlon II X4 and that took on every game back in 2010-2011. Overall, i'd go with the Xeon desktop for gaming, even though they are "technically" server/workstation CPUs as you well know.