wafflestomper

Distinguished
Oct 5, 2008
15
0
18,510
Hi, I was wondering how the latest quad core Xeon processors stack up against similarly priced i7 processors in terms of performance. Any help would be aprreciated. Thanks
 
Solution
I have the Xeon W3520 and it is identical to the Core i7 920 except that it's memory controller can handle ECC memory. There are other W35xx Xeons that are identical to their Core i7 9xx counterparts - there is no difference in performance.

Other current Xeon models are also based on the Nehalem microarchitecture and are very similar to their Core i7 counterparts, except that they support two or more CPUs on a motherboard. These chips should perform similarly to equivalent Core i7 parts on their own, but of course will support more threads when used in a multiprocessor system.
I have the Xeon W3520 and it is identical to the Core i7 920 except that it's memory controller can handle ECC memory. There are other W35xx Xeons that are identical to their Core i7 9xx counterparts - there is no difference in performance.

Other current Xeon models are also based on the Nehalem microarchitecture and are very similar to their Core i7 counterparts, except that they support two or more CPUs on a motherboard. These chips should perform similarly to equivalent Core i7 parts on their own, but of course will support more threads when used in a multiprocessor system.
 
Solution

blackhawk1928

Distinguished
Well..there are already hexacored xeons like the x7460 and most xeons are made for busniss grade usage so they are generally higher quality i would imagine to withstand more rigorous usage. However i am not sure, search on the net to verify and get more info.
 

Kraynor

Distinguished
Aug 10, 2007
829
0
19,010
Since the Xeons are designed for servers it's reasonable to ssume they'd be higher quality across the board than equivalent i7s. Performance should be roughly the same (unless you go using ECC memory), and in theory they should overclock better.
 


Hmm.. Interesting. I still don't see the need though. Since both are Nehalem chips (assuming we are talking about the Nehalem-based Xeons), surely i7 is sufficient for any desktop application? Why go for a Xeon?
 

endorphines

Distinguished
Mar 11, 2008
68
0
18,640


because silicon that intel takes is the cream of the crop. if you have a i7 920 and whatever it's xeon equivalent is. and you overclock both the xeon is likely to be more stable, and therefore will often have more overclocking head room.

plus it's just cool.
 
I bought the Xeon simply because it was the only way to get ECC memory support. Memory is the ONLY component in most desktop computers that has NO error checking of any kind. That's not good enough for me, particularly since I've been stung by intermittent memory problems in the past.