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Upgrade your Socket 775 system to an Xeon Quadcore!


naquaada
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Hello,

 

I don't know if this is the right place for this - but I don't wanted to place this post in pimping hardware.

I wanted to build a cheap system from spare parts. I wanted to use a Core 2 Duo E8400 laying around. Then I read that somebody sold a Socket 775 board with a Xeon E5450 - and this is a Quadcore.

Okay, there are Core 2 Quad processors, but they are using a lot of power, 130W TDP. The Core 2 Duo has the half, 65W. The Xeon E5450 has 80W, that's not much more than the Core 2 Duo. But is has everything twice: both have 3 GHz, but the Xeon has two dual-cores, 128k L-1 cache and 12 MB L-2 cache! That's more than on a Core 2 Quad!

So I bought one. Well, two, the seller sold them as bundle. The price was 50 Euro plus shipping. Later I read that the Xeon has Socket 771, not 775. Hm. Why was the somebody selling a 775-Board with a Xeon? I made a little research, and you can get for about 4 Euro small stickers, which has to be placed on the CPU at a special place. It's not too difficult. Then you have to cut out the direction notches from the Socket 775, they are in a different position in Socket 771. Best use a scalpel, not a cutter, and remove them complete, otherwise the CPU may not fit. You still can use Socket 775 CPU's, but remember the direction! If the CPU is in place, finish your system and power it on. It *may* be possible that the BIOS doesn't support the Xeon, but mine does. You also maybe have to change some settings.

The result: Windows 7 system performance CPU test brings a result of 7.3, the Core 2 Duo E8450 has 6.6. In OSx86 Leopard I could play two Full-HD movies via network at the same time, with nearly no CPU consumption.

The rework of a Socket 775 system to a Xeon E5450 is not a bad idea: The CPU and the adapter are less than 35 Euro, the power consumption is not much higher as an Core 2 Duo, but much less than a Core 2 Quad. And it has more CPU cache. If somebody is still using a Socket 775 board and is not afraid to modify the CPU socket - check it out.

Greets, naquaada.

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You must have a big Heart for it..... :thumbsup_anim: But is the best metod to use Quad CPU on soket 775(price is good)

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Yep... I liked this system so much because it's a weird Zotac GeForce 9300 Mini-ITX board. It's one of the few Mini-ITX boards for Socket 775 that features a PCI-E x16 slot, most just have PCI and Intel Graphics. It's so great that I managed to get everything working on this chipset... The only issues are no sleep in Leopard 10.5.8 and no QE/CI/OpenGL in Mavericks 10.9.5.

 

I'm doing nearly all of my graphics work with 'Preview' from Leopard. But the never versions haven't changed to the positive (as so often in newer OS X versions :-P), so I want to keep a Leopard system. But it won't work on my Core i7. So I wanted to buy a cheap system... but it got rather expensive if I count altogether. Luckily I already had 8 GB DDR2-RAM, this stuff is really expensive. I can write a guide for the Zotac if someone is interested - Pentaboot inclusive ;-)

 

If I would now get the Radeon HD2600XT fully working in Mavericks I'd be in heaven... I read something that using the Snow Leopard 10.6.2 kexts should work. It does work, like with the Mavericks kext. But also here is ATIRadeonX2000.kext the problem. I know there's no patch, but probably just because the card is too old... modified versions for Radeon HD4xxx cards are existing, even for Mavericks. But the 2600XT is also no bad - a card allowing 2560x1440 on a 1920x1080 screen in Leopard is incredible. These cards are cheap, need not much power, there are passive cooled ones from Gigabyte with only one slot width. The cards are also short - my card is less than 17 cm, which is the maximum size of my Coolermaster Elite 110 cube.

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  • 1 year later...

Very interesting!

I have an GA EP 35 Board and could it be that that  X3370

can run without BIOS (not supported cpu message - press F1...) probs? Was this CPU listed compatible for your GA EP45 board?

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Why the huge font?

 

Of course it's not listed in the CPU list, because it's a server processor. The X3370 is a Socket 775 processor, not 771. But the X3370 is useless, the TDP is 95W and the price is more than 70 Euro. It has about the same specs as the cheaper Core 2 Quad Q9650. The upgrade with the E5450 or the E5472 have the big advantage that it's much cheaper - if you are willing to add a sticker modify your CPU socket.

 

The last BIOS for the EP35 is from June 2009, the one for the EP45 is from September 2009. And these are rather common chipsets, my Geforce MCP79 chipset on the Zotac board is more uncommon. I also didn't update the BIOS of this board because it has no recovery function. Still, the Xeon E5450 is correctly recognized in BIOS, Windows and OSx86. So, I don't think that it shouldn't make problems.

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Thanks, edited the text in smaller size (was because copied X3370 text) :)

I think you are right, the Q9xxx cpus seems to be cheaper, less TPW  and are not slower than X3370, some even faster.

Also, for our older boards the relative slow DDR2 Ram to DDR3 / DDR4 together with slower system bus clock seems to limit cpu speed advantages above Q9xxx.

I was shocked to see low end i3xxx Geekbench speeds (only 2 real cores, plus HT) compared to real 4 cores Q9xxx - they are at least same, mostly faster than Q9xxx.

I will stay at my low end Q9505 cpu now and change in the future also the board for DDR3/4 and i3/i5 low end cpu.

 

This is my geekbench (4.0.3, 64 Bit)) result Q9505, 2.84 GHZ : https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/1304649

X3370 3.0 Ghz : https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/331283  = only little faster than Q9505 (low end Quad)

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