14 DAY TRIAL // The Xeon E5 series of central processing units, otherwise known as he Ivy Bridge-EP series, has turned out to be a bit larger than originally announced. Last week, five appeared, but now two more have been unearthed.
Looking closely at the two central processing units (CPUs) that CPU World uncovered, it's not hard to see why Intel would not include them in the original release. Or at least we can say that about one of the processors.
After all, when you release a collection of processors that are supposed to dominate in terms of performance, including one that doesn't even have Hyper-Threading and Turbo Boost technologies doesn't really make much sense, even if it is designed with the same core architecture.
That's right, the 130W Xeon E5-1607 v2 processor is an entry-level chip even though it is based on the Ivy Bridge-EP core. At least, it still has 10 MB L3 cache memory and an operating frequency of 3 GHz, even if it does only possess 4 cores.
That said, the Xeon E5-1680 v2 is more in line with the traits of the new chip collection, featuring eight cores. That means that 2 cores are disabled.
The processor has 25 MB of L3 cache memory and a base clock frequency of 3 GHz. That's right, there is a base clock because Turbo Boost is supported, the top setting being of 3.9 GHz.
Hyper-Threading is available as well, which means that the 8 cores become 16 logical ones (Threads) in Windows, all of which are run at the same time.
As for the memory controller, while it can run DDR3-1600 RAM, it also handles DDR3-1866 RAM. All in all, not bad, seeing as how the TDP is the same 130W as on the quad-core.
The Xeon E5 server processors communicate with motherboard chipsets via Direct Media Interface and support PCI Express 3.0. Intel will probably charge $244 / €244 for the E5-1607 v2 and $1,723 / €1,723 for the E5-1680 SKU.