Sandy Bridge-E: 17 New Xeon CPUs for Q4

Damn, that's a lot of cache.

Is anyone else slightly puzzled why the E5-2690 is slower than the E5-2687W? Wouldn't it have made more sense to switch the names?

These processors are going to offer absolutely beastly performance, especially in dual processor configurations. Imagine a tweaked Sandy Bridge architecture, coupled with much more L3 cache, a quad channel memory controller, 40 on die PCIe 3.0 lanes, with 8-cores/16-threads. I can't wait to see the benchmarks later this year, this is going to be epic.

yeah i was thinking the same thing, probably could just buy the faster one and underclock it for the power saving >.>

150W?

Having said that, 20MB of L3 is astounding.

Notice this announcement only a short time before Bulldozer is due to arrive (maybe)?

Has anyone else noticed theE-2687W with it's 150W TDP?! I mean 20MB L3, 8 Physical and 16 Logical cores, all running at 3.1GHz, I can't imagine that it'll be cheap. I have to admin I agree with ssleyler, I'm somewhat surprised with the extremely large amounts of L3 cache that these chips have. I've heard that with Nahelem Intel engineers used 2MB of L3 per core as a rule of thumb as they believed that it was the optimal amount for best performance, looks like they've decided to go a little above that 2MB/Core figure for Sandy-Bridge-E.

I would feel like a dope for upgrading to the i7 2600k a week ago, but the price tag on these babies is going to be ridiculous.

the 2600k will be a top-tier CPU capable of pretty much anything for years to come, you shouldn't feel like a dope at all

These seem like they would be ridiculous lol, but so will the price... I think.

I look forward to seeing a Mac Pro with 2x8-core CPUs. The virtual networking I could do would be a lot of fun.

Lemme guess. A new chip-set that will have no future upgrade-ability forcing individuals to swap their motherboard anytime they want a processor upgrade.

I'll stay with AMD xxthx.

So the xeon e3 and xeon e5 have been released. I wonder what the xeon e7 will be...

Personally I see the E5-2650L being the sweet spot. 70 watts for 8 cores is incredible, and in all of our server clusters getting more power is the limiting factor. So decreasing the power requirements of the systems will allow us to install additional racks to add to the farm.


Packing four of these into a single blade would deliver incredible performance.

halcyon: I'm assuming you mean creating a bunch of server VMs and playing Systems Engineer? Why on earth you'd consider Mac to be an optimal platform is beyond me, and you could host a he11 of a lot more VMs on a 2x12-core Opteron system running Linux for less money. You could even host plenty of VMs on a Phenom II X6 with 16GB of RAM for well under $1000.

...because I use my Macs for other things too that I prefer doing in OS X nowadays.

Im waiting on the i7 2800k coming Q1 2012

I guess these will be server chips and not extreme desktop chips. I smell a huge price tag..

Yes,unlike AMD these will greatly improve over the last series, and the next series will greatly improve on this one. So not only a new chipset, but a whole new socket for them as well.
Besides, these things are for major servers that you set up and then leave alone. It is not for your home network where you play a little and upgrade here and there. If that is all you are doing then a little i3/5 will do plenty.

They look terrific but what about the price? Usually These specs come with estimated prices in 1k quantities. I will love to have one of those 8 cores/16 threads but without a price I have no perspective at all.

However I can see 2 more relevant not so clear specs to me (?):

1.- They are not in direct line of GHz upgrade with the top current Xeons but they have a greater cache. The new top 6 cores 15 MB cache ones are lower clocked than current W3680 3.20 and 3.33 GHz 6 cores 12 MB cache. Will Intel release an extreme series later? Or are they fast enough and will also be cheaper?

2.- I can see they are on another thermal design too. The E5-2643 3.3 GHz, the closest Xeon to the 2600K has a 130 Watt TDP while the 2600K desktop is a 3.4 GHz is has a 95 w TDP. The same happens with the 6 cores.

They are very different beasts!

I guess it will make sense if they where somewhat lowered priced Xeons. I will have to wait and see what INTEL intended to do.

They look fine but what about the price? Usually These specs come with estimated prices in 1k quantities. I will love to have one of those 8 cores/16 threads but without a price I have no perspective at all.

However I can see 2 more relevant not so clear specs to me (?):

1.- They are not in direct line of GHz upgrade with the top current Xeons but they have a greater cache. The new top 6 cores 15 MB cache ones are lower clocked than current W3680 3.20 and 3.33 GHz 6 cores 12 MB cache. Will Intel release an extreme series later? Or are they fast enough and will also be cheaper?

2.- I can see they are on another thermal design too. The E5-2643 3.3 GHz, the closest Xeon to the 2600K has a 130 Watt TDP while the 2600K desktop is a 3.4 GHz is has a 95 w TDP. The same happens with the 6 cores.

They are very different beasts!

I guess it will make sense if they where somewhat lowered priced Xeons. I will have to wait and see what INTEL intended to do.

Sorry!

Why does the E5-2637 intrigue me ? Now I should be more enthralled with the 2643 and the '87W (more cores slight more bump in clock. pure math is rather more dazzling) but if'n I was going to build a system with bang for the buck with an upgrade path for years to come.. a good motherboard and 2 cores at 3GHz... sounds good to me.. Now let's just hope that intel doesn't gouge us to death with their prices... I am not holding my breath.

First these aren't made for the desktop and second you can't afford one anyway.

E3 and E7 have been released. E5 is what is going to be released in Q4.

Been saying that for years. Designing a new CPU chip to use an old motherboard, while great for "compatibility" and economy, deliberately hamstrings the performance of the new CPU.

On the other hand, the P4 S423 lasted less than a year.

... when they struggle with innovating, they just put award winning cache in large amounts... maybe in the next series they will put something in, that's is faster and don't need a large cache...

... and another socket? Again?

It's good that all these new technology is coming out now,but I doubt whether I will use these new xeon processors since they're used for servers.

Ah, so there is a technical problem to support old socket for more than 12 month eh? Who would think of that. Evil users say "intel just wants to make more money" but you sound much more convincing.

I can't believe I am going to say this, but I wonder if they will have integrated graphics. HD2000? I would just laugh.

My bigger concern is if they will support vt-x and vt-d, and have the built in hardware security features.

20Mb of L3? Yes please.

Still, I'm more excited for the price drop on the last gen Xeons when these hit the shelves.

Why do you think a new Xeon would not support vt-x and vt-d?