# Xeon x5680 vs x5690...



## jononotbono (Jul 6, 2016)

So I want to upgrade my cMP and change the CPUs. Obviously if I had the money I would just put in 5690s but I am wondering if I would notice the difference if I went for 5680s which has a freq of 3.33Ghz and the 5690 is at 3.46Ghz. The 5690s are DOUBLE the price which I am thinking is a little steep for the speed difference. Hmmm...


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Jul 6, 2016)

I'd say get the cheaper one if you really need it and then eventually get a new computer with an i7 down the road. I wouldn't invest in a Xeon nowadays. 

An i7-5820k (which is already quite old) will give you the same, if not better, performance than the X5680. The price on the Intel site for the 5820 is $390 while the X5680 is $1663. That's a $1200 difference for the same speed and number of cores with the i7 likely giving you a better realtime performance. That's the price of an entire computer. You can get a quad core i7 at 4.0GHz and 32GB of ram from Dell at that price. That would probably give you a better performance than either of the 6 core ones.


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## kgdrum (Jul 6, 2016)

jononotbono said:


> So I want to upgrade my cMP and change the CPUs. Obviously if I had the money I would just put in 5690s but I am wondering if I would notice the difference if I went for 5680s which has a freq of 3.33Ghz and the 5690 is at 3.46Ghz. The 5690s are DOUBLE the price which I am thinking is a little steep for the speed difference. Hmmm...





I doubt there'd be a enough of a difference going from 3.3 to 3.46 to justify the bump in price.
fwiw I upgraded my 2.8 4 core to 3.3 6 core with the 5680 and it's been great! I bought it on ebay from a reputable seller for $200


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## jononotbono (Jul 6, 2016)

Well, my PC Slave has an i7 and clocked at 4.5Ghz. My Mac Pro 5,1 needs to be updated so I was going to buy 2 x 3.33Ghz Hex Core CPUs to make it a 12 core. From everything I have read, this upgrade will apparently keep up with the newer Cylindrical Mac Pro 6,1? The x5680s are £139 each on Ebay.


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## jononotbono (Jul 6, 2016)

kgdrum said:


> I doubt there'd be a enough of a difference going from 3.3 to 3.46 to justify the bump in price.
> fwiw I upgraded my 2.8 4 core to 3.3 6 core with the 5680 and it's been great! I bought it on ebay from a reputable seller for $200



Yes! Indeed. I think I shall go for 2 x Hex 3.33Ghz. The 3.46Ghz is a huge amount of money for such a small speed increase. Going from the dual Quad 2.06Ghz chips, this is likely to change my World!


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## kgdrum (Jul 6, 2016)

jononotbono said:


> Yes! Indeed. I think I shall go for 2 x Hex 3.33Ghz. The 3.46Ghz is a huge amount of money for such a small speed increase. Going from the dual Quad 2.06Ghz chips, this is likely to change my World!


 
I think you'll enjoy doing this, for me it was a really nice performance upgrade!


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## jononotbono (Jul 6, 2016)

I think I will too! Currently things get sluggish and I've been recently thinking that no matter what brilliant library deals I go for, it doesn't mean anything if I can't run them properly. I'll upgrade the RAM to a minimum of 64gb as soon as I can as well. I have thought about 128gb but I don't know if that is a waste of RAM and am thinking the x5680s will give up before I could ever use that much. Still, headroom is nice.


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## kgdrum (Jul 6, 2016)

how much ram do you have now? 
I'd love to have 64g but it's still a bit more $$ than I want to spend.........


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## jononotbono (Jul 6, 2016)

32gb in my PC Slave and a mere, pitiful 8gb in the Mac.


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## josefsnabb (Jul 7, 2016)

jononotbono said:


> I think I will too! Currently things get sluggish and I've been recently thinking that no matter what brilliant library deals I go for, it doesn't mean anything if I can't run them properly. I'll upgrade the RAM to a minimum of 64gb as soon as I can as well. I have thought about 128gb but I don't know if that is a waste of RAM and am thinking the x5680s will give up before I could ever use that much. Still, headroom is nice.


I believe OSX support up to 96GB. Read the _Standard RAM_ section here:

http://www.everymac.com/systems/app...core-3.06-mid-2012-westmere-server-specs.html

I just bought a MP 5.1, an upgraded 4.1 to X5675 (2x3,06Ghz) and it gets over 25k in BenchMark, so I´m happy. Will put 64GB in it as well. Just like you, I think my CPU´s will peak before all that RAM is used. But why not go for 96 to be sure.


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## jononotbono (Jul 7, 2016)

josefsnabb said:


> I believe OSX support up to 96GB. Read the _Standard RAM_ section here:
> 
> http://www.everymac.com/systems/app...core-3.06-mid-2012-westmere-server-specs.html
> 
> I just bought a MP 5.1, an upgraded 4.1 to X5675 (2x3,06Ghz) and it gets over 25k in BenchMark, so I´m happy. Will put 64GB in it as well. Just like you, I think my CPU´s will peak before all that RAM is used. But why not go for 96 to be sure.



Good point. But I am sure I read 128gbs of ram can be installed. I'll double check. 96 plus the 32 in my PC will tide me over for a while. The evntual purpose of my Mac Pro is to become a second slave anyway and then finally make the move to Thunderbolt and a secondhand trashcan MP but this is a big upgrade for me because I will have to change my PCIe Motu HD192. Damn you Apple for dropping PCIe


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## jononotbono (Jul 7, 2016)

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7535277?start=0&tstart=0

Yeah man, 128gb is supported...


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## jononotbono (Jul 7, 2016)

josefsnabb said:


> I believe OSX support up to 96GB. Read the _Standard RAM_ section here:
> 
> http://www.everymac.com/systems/app...core-3.06-mid-2012-westmere-server-specs.html
> 
> I just bought a MP 5.1, an upgraded 4.1 to X5675 (2x3,06Ghz) and it gets over 25k in BenchMark, so I´m happy. Will put 64GB in it as well. Just like you, I think my CPU´s will peak before all that RAM is used. But why not go for 96 to be sure.




Can I ask, did you de-lid the CPUs or not bother?


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## Lawson. (Jul 7, 2016)

jononotbono said:


> I have thought about 128gb but I don't know if that is a waste of RAM and am thinking the x5680s will give up before I could ever use that much. Still, headroom is nice.



There is no such thing as too much RAM. Rid your mind of those evil thoughts and embrace the possibilities! 

(Source: Has a total of 160GB RAM and it still isn't enough.)


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## jononotbono (Jul 7, 2016)

Lawson. said:


> There is no such thing as too much RAM. Rid your mind of those evil thoughts and embrace the possibilities!
> 
> (Source: Has a total of 160GB RAM and it still isn't enough.)




I hear ya man. However, your CPUs are the bottle neck of how much RAM you can use. Answer? Get more CPUs haha.


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Jul 7, 2016)

I wouldn't get the 2 processors. Getting the second one probably won't boost your realtime performance and may well reduce it because of how it has to distribute things between the 2 processors. Maybe for samples it'll help but probably not for running plugins. Going up from 2.06GHz to 3.33 you'll already see a massibe difference. From what I've heard the 3.5Ghz 6 core on the new MP gives the best performance. You'd be almost there with just a single 3.33GHz. Many people here are running 128GB computers with a 5820k which is similar.


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Jul 7, 2016)

Just remembered that the X5680 is what I have in my old machine. the 5820k is only marginally better and can handle quite a bit.


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## josefsnabb (Jul 8, 2016)

jononotbono said:


> https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7535277?start=0&tstart=0
> 
> Yeah man, 128gb is supported...


I see, then the info at everymac.com was outdated, thanks for the correction. 



jononotbono said:


> Can I ask, did you de-lid the CPUs or not bother?


The previous owner did the upgrade and did delided the IHS on the CPU´s, to get better cooling because the heatsinks was porly attached otherwise. He said it was not an easy process though, however there are many guides for this.


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## jononotbono (Jul 8, 2016)

Gerhard Westphalen said:


> I wouldn't get the 2 processors. Getting the second one probably won't boost your realtime performance and may well reduce it because of how it has to distribute things between the 2 processors. Maybe for samples it'll help but probably not for running plugins. Going up from 2.06GHz to 3.33 you'll already see a massibe difference. From what I've heard the 3.5Ghz 6 core on the new MP gives the best performance. You'd be almost there with just a single 3.33GHz. Many people here are running 128GB computers with a 5820k which is similar.




Well, thanks for your advice but I have made an Ebay offer and surprisingly won it this morning so I am going to put in 2 x Hex x5680. For the money, and compared to what I have in there now, it is going make a huge difference. I bought a matching pair for £230. That's a fantastic deal.

This Mac Pro is eventually going to be turned into a Slave Computer for Samples so upgrading it with as much horsepower is a good thing as I will want as much ram installed as possible. Eventually. Then I'll get a MP 6,1 for my main computer but that's not for a while yet.


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## josefsnabb (Jul 27, 2016)

So, how did it go for you with your CPU- and RAM upgrade Mr Bono?

I just successfully upgraded mine further with total of 64GB RAM, had to reset the PRAM to make the system change from showing 1066MHz to 1333MHz. It´s nice to see that it performs better than the nMP Darth 8-Core which costs twice as much from what I´ve paid. And also put in PCIe SSD which is crazy fast. Happy guy right here 

Benchmark Comparison

Specs

Results


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## jononotbono (Jul 27, 2016)

Well, I have successfully put in 2 x 3.33ghz x5680s and after a few tweaks (tightening toe Hex Bolts) my MP 5,1 is super fast. Just waiting to get paid to put more RAM in, 1 more SSD into PCIe for samples and that will be me done for a while!


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## Killiard (Jul 27, 2016)

Good stuff. You got a seriously good deal on those 5680s. When I looked before I'm sure they were going for about £350 a pair!


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## jononotbono (Jul 27, 2016)

Yeah I'm really pleased. I would like to put 128gb of RAM in it but I'm not sure if that is overkill and whether the CPUs give up before using that much. 64 will be a great step up to start with!


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## Killiard (Jul 27, 2016)

Damn if I could find them that cheap I'd do the same thing with my 2x2.26 MacPro. 
Hmm...


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## jononotbono (Jul 27, 2016)

Killiard said:


> Damn if I could find them that cheap I'd do the same thing with my 2x2.26 MacPro.
> Hmm...



That is exactly what I just upgraded from. The difference is mental. I only have 8gb of RAM in the machine and that is certainly a bottle neck of which I will rectify as soon as I get paid, but if you can, upgrade those CPUs. I think the price difference between the 5680s and 5690s is ways too much for the small speed increase but some of us have deeper pockets than others. I think the point of diminishing returns is just not worth it. The Multi Core score on Geekbench was just over 28000. Check Ebay


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