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Is my Precision T3500 w/ Xeon W3670 Oculus Rift VR ready?
I have a T3500 with Xeon Hexacore W3670, 24GB ram, and I have a Zotac GTX 970 4GB GPU. I looked at the requirement specs and notice I should meet all requirements except the CPU is questionable. i5-4590 is obviously much newer 3.3ghz quad-core vs 3.2ghz hexacore, but I'm wondering if anyone can tell if the CPU should be okay or not. Thank you.
For the full Rift experience, we recommend the following system:
Video Card NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD R9 290 equivalent or greater
CPU Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater
Memory 8GB+ RAM
Video Output Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output
USB Ports 3x USB 3.0 ports plus 1x USB 2.0 port
OS Windows 7 SP1 64 bit or newer
Techgee
590 Posts
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March 21st, 2016 17:00
You've got more cores (6 vs. 4) with your W3670 as well as HyperThreading (which i5-4590 doesn't have). Memory speed of W3670 is slower, but that shouldn't matter.
Provided there isn't some required CPU instruction the W3670 is missing, key difference is single threaded performance. Base clock on yours is 3.2 GHz vs. 3.3 GHz. More important is max turbo: 3.46 GHz (1/1/1/1/2/2) vs. 3.7 GHz (2/3/4/4). Numbers in parentheses are Turbo steppings from all cores active to a single core being active.
I would verify TurboBoost works with your T3500 (HWiNFO64 is only reliable way I've found to monitor this). (I have a Dell LGA 1366 socket machine from the same era, and Turbo doesn't work for 6 core CPUs.)
You're probably ok with extra cores and HT making up for slower single threaded performance.
Worse comes to worse you could upgrade to a W3690 (3.46 GHz base, 3.73 GHz max turbo). About $200 on ebay. Or, you can probably "overclock" Turbo (since the Xeon should be unlocked), although you might need a better cooler for that.
clutchc
48 Posts
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May 14th, 2016 11:00
I hope this thread isn't too old to warrant a reply...
@techgee
You mentioned "you can probably "overclock" Turbo (since the Xeon should be unlocked)". I don't think the T3500 BIOS has any options for OC'ing , does it? That would seem to be a dangerous option for a workstation that might be used as a server. And I don't think the W3670 has an unlocked multiplier, does it? Let alone the BIOS's ability to increase it... Just wondering.
speedstep
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47K Posts
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May 16th, 2016 09:00
Overall I would say its not ready and requires high end GPU and CPU and USB3 card to get to bare minimum.
NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD 290 equivalent or greater
This requires an upgraded power supply.
Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater
Description: Socket: LGA1150 In the case of Clock speed This absolutely counts.
Clockspeed: 3.3 GHz
Turbo Speed: 3.7 GHz
No of Cores: 4
Max TDP: 84 W
Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4590 CPU @ 3.30GHz
This is not possible in a 3500 closest equivalent would be W3690
which via benchmark is NOT as fast
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Xeon-W3690-vs-Intel-Core-i5-4690K
http://ark.intel.com/products/52586/Intel-Xeon-Processor-W3690-12M-Cache-3_46-GHz-6_40-GTs-Intel-QPI
8GB+ RAM
24 gigs of DDR3 is possible.
Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output
This would require a new GPU.
2x USB 3.0 ports
This would require USB 3.0 PCI-E card and Power
Windows 7 SP1 or newer
Most 3500's come with windows 7 pro but they can also have VISTA Business on them.
http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/precn/en/q2wk6_dell_precision_t3500_spec_sheet.pdf
In general not only is it NOT READY its not worth upgrading to make it ready.