Intel's E3 Xeon Processors Will Launch Next Week

Details about Intel's upcoming line of Xeon E3 processors based on the Sandy Bridge architecture have been available for quite some time, and it now seems like the Santa Clara-based company is finally getting ready to launch its new CPU series, as these should reach retail sometime next week.

According to SemiAccurate, Intel's Xeon E3 lineup should be comprised out of 11 new processor models and three C200 series motherboard chipsets.

The CPUs will be introduced in the E3-1200 product family and all, but one, are based on the quad-core version of the Sandy Bridge architecture.

All of them incorporate 8MB of L3 cache (minus the E3-1225 and the E3-1220L), support Intel's Turbo Boost technology, that increases the operating frequency of the processors according to the application load, and their clock speeds range from 3.1GHz to 3.5GHz.

This makes the Xeon E3-1280, the fastest Sandy Bridge CPU manufactured by Intel and, according to some leaked benchmarks, the chip manages to surpass the Core i7 2600K desktop CPU in all the tests run.

Hyper-Threading has also made its way to the Xeon E3 line and almost all of the processors, except for the entry-level E3-1220 and E3-1225, have this technology enabled.

Graphics, however, is an entirely different story as most of the new CPUs have the on-die GPU disabled, so motherboard makers will have to include some sort of integrated graphics into their products.

Pricing has not yet been announced, but various online retailers already have the processors available for pre-order, and prices range from $225 for the entry-level Xeon E3-1220 clocked at 3.1GHz, to $686 for the E3-1280 high end model that operates at 3.5GHz.

All Intel E3-1200 series microprocessors are compatible with motherboards built using the C200-series chipsets, like the Asus boards that we have previously detailed.