i7 5820k Vs Dual Xeon X5680 in the real world...

I wanted a second machine so I could work while doing unattended things like rendering. It's December 2021 and I don't have much money. Figured a cheap dual Xeon off eBay must still have some use? Benchmark sites don't seem to do dual Xeons so I took a risk and bought one.

It's not terrible. Depends what you want it for. Definitely worth it for a secondary workhorse machine. Bit odd, but many applications perform a lot faster with hyper-threading disabled (12 cores 12 threads faster than 12 cores, 24 threads). Tests include Premiere Pro CC/2018, Maya, Handbrake... real world applications rather than a meaningless benchmark.

Non-technical video so I recorded audio. Tried to level it but it's all over the place. Was recorded in segments over 2 months. Hard to muster any enthusiasm when you spend your day at a garbage job surrounded by morons.

I did want to do more tests with the original dual Xeon W5580's, but lost a lot of the footage and didn't want to swap the CPU's back and forth. The upgrade from W5580's (4 cores) to X5680's (6 cores) was £40 for 2 CPU's. Easily worth the upgrade.

The first 2 premiere sections are very long because I show the processing. Didn't bother for the others. Just proving I really did waste days running all these tests.

The OBS part is rather useless as these platforms don't support 4k and quality is most lost.

5820
====
- 2014 i7 5820k, hyper-threaded 6 core @ 3.3GHz, 3.6GHz turbo
- 64GB DDR4 Corsair RAM (originally built with 16)
- NVIDIA RTX 3060 12GB
- M2, SSD, various mechanical hard drives
- Built by me in 2014
- Initial cost of ~£950, rebuild price today around the same with upgraded parts
- My main machine in 2021
#3.3 * 6 = 19.5GHz

Xeon X5680 (x2)
==============
- 2x 2010 Xeon X5680, hyper-threaded 6 core @ 3.33GHz, 3.6GHz turbo
- 96GB DDR3
- NVIDIA Quadro FX4800
- SSD, various mechanical hard drives
- Bought off eBay
- Initial cost £142
- Replaced dual W5580's with dual X5680's, pushed total cost to just over £200
- Lenovo D20, upgrded to the max
#3.33 * 6 * 2 = 39.96GHz

Downloads
=========
Maya renders:
- https://drive.google.com/file/d/19pVh1MX6vxLqRjrA4ynoRyfw0osLsj_j/view?usp=sharing

Timestamps
==========
00:00 - 03:20
- Explanation of the video

03:20 - 07:27
- Adobe Premiere Pro CC
- 06:23 Adobe Premiere Pro CC results

07:27 - 12:43
- Adobe Premiere Pro 1080 CS6/2018
- 11:08 Adobe Premiere Pro 1080 CS6/2018 results

12:43 - 17:38
- FFMPEG single and simultaneous video conversions
- 14:58 FFMPEG single and simultaneous video conversions results

17:38 - 19:34
- Handbrake DVD conversion (from hard drive)
- 18:42 Handbrake DVD conversion (from hard drive) results

19:34 - 22:15
- FLAC to MP3 MediaHuman Audio Converter (ffpmeg?)
- 21:08 FLAC to MP3 MediaHuman AUuio Converter (ffpmeg?) results

22:15 - 25:40
- Maya 8.5/2022
- 23:28 Maya 8.5/2022 results

25:40 - 36:28
- OBS

36:28 - end
- Summary, with all results
- ...just watch and pause to make your own conclusions.