Optimum Multiboxing Performance - Thoughts on two systems

[MiRai]

That i7 machine is going to blow the Xeon machine out of the water in, most likely, everything except for niche benchmarks like compute and heavily multi-threaded 3D applications.

First, here's my list of things...

CPU:

• From what I understand, Xeons are about on par with an i7 in terms of performance in gaming at the same clock speed. The mere fact that they can't be overclocked at all makes them very undesirable at their current price tag.

Motherboard:

• Who knows what you're getting with that Apple brand mystery motherboard.

Memory:

• ECC memory has higher timings for error correction which is garbage for gaming.

GPU:

• FirePro D700 is apparently a W9000 which is about on par with a HD7970 / HD7970GE / R9-280X in the memory bandwidth department.
• It could end up being handicapped for gaming because the GPU uses different drivers and its VRAM is ECC which is meant for error correction and compute rather than raw FPS.
• FirePro cards use CrossFire Pro, which somehow differs from just regular CrossFire (probably because you can't mix-n-match different GPUs with CrossFire Pro like you can with CrossFire).
• CrossFire, and most likely CrossFire Pro, don't work in Windowed mode, so you'd be forced to split the load of the clients across multiple monitors to even utilize the second GPU (which may or may not work depending on the game).

Storage:

• Do whatever you want. Just make sure you're gaming on some sort of modern SSD.

Second, I have no idea how these two systems could be priced only a few hundred dollars apart, because that Xeon CPU ($2700) and a single W9000 GPU (3400) are $6,100 by themselves which completely dwarfs the entire i7 system (~$3500 as it's listed above) almost twice over.

And finally, I also agree that you don't need a 4960X for the same reason that RSM72 stated.