How did we get here?
Recently, I tested the newly acquired E3 1270v3 Xeon in the Dell Optiplex as a possible replacement. I found it wasn’t an upgrade because of the GPU. Fair enough. I knew the RX6400 wasn’t a great card, but it’s what fit and it worked.
I then chose to get some parts and put the Xeon in a different case on a Dell motherboard. Perfect. So far, so good. The original plan was to compare the new benchmark numbers to the old to show how much more room we had to grow. As it turns out, it was quite a bit, and with a better Graphics card, it now turned in figures like newer hardware.
Well, that didn’t turn out the way I wanted. I expected the set up testing 1440P and 1080P on high, medium and low quality to show the Xeon struggling. It didn’t. In fact it was for the most part within margin of error of the newer CPUs. That wasn’t going to make for an informative video at all.
The Testing
So, I ditched the idea of the comparison with the older i5 and concentrated on testing against the 10105F and 11400F. Not brand new, but recent enough to compare. The 10105F is a four core, eight thread i3 from tenth Generation intel, and the 11400 is a six core, eight thread from 11th Gen. Both of these should be more than a match, so I tested with the mid range RX480 GPU, which was out around the same time as this Xeon. Obviously, the newer CPU’s have an advantage, right? Well, no.
As I mentioned the Xeon stayed within margin or error using the mid range GPU, so what could I do? I dropped the resolution. Instead of 1440P and 1080P, I dropped the settings down to test 1080P Low, 900P Low and 720P Low. Resolutions that the 11th gen chip has no business thinking about, because it would normally run with a better GPU.
Very much to my surprise, the 11400F actually lost to BOTH four core chips in some games. What? Seriously? That can’t be right.
But it was. on multiple games in repeatable tests. It traded blows with the 10th gen CPU in some games, but in others it actually performed the worst. Now, understandably, the six core CPU has no business thinking about running games at 720P and it shows, but that doesn’t solve my original problem. How do I get a fair test between the three processors?
Need a different GPU
Quite simply, I need to be able to test all three of these at a higher resolution, so I’m going to have to get use a better graphics card. The RX 6600XT is the easiest one for me to access and test with, so it will be next. To that point, seeing how close the two four core chips are, I will probably just compare the Xeon with the 11400F. I have records of a fair difference in the 10th gen and 11th gen using the 6600XT, so if I have to, I’ll include all three, but that should give us a better idea of how good this Xeon actually is.
I’m curious, just how well the older E3 1270 holds up to a far more recent product. This should be fun. The video will be linked here.
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