Sandy Bridge for servers: Intel Xeon E5-2600 review

Versions

Intel is releasing a total of 17 versions of the Xeon E5-2600 series. The high-end model, that we've also tested, is the Xeon E5-2690 which has eight cores, a standard clock frequency of 2.9 GHz and a max turbo of 2.8 GHz. The TDP of this chip is 135 watts. The second model that we tested is the more affordable Xeon E5-2660. It also has eight active cores, but a TDP of 95 watts and clock frequencies of 2.2 GHz and 3.0 GHz turbo.

The E5-2690, -2680, -2670, -2665 and -2650 are all eight-core models with 20 MB L3-cache and different clock speeds and TDPs. The E5-2640, -2630 and 2620 are 6-core versions with 15 MB L3-cache and a 1333 MHz memory controller. The E3-2609 and E3-2603 are quad-core entry-level versions without HyperThreading or Turbo, and only support DDR3-1066.

There are also a few special versions. The E5-2687W is purely aimed at workstations, and its CPU has a TDP of 150 watts. A number of processors have been further optimised for higher clock frequencies and fewer cores, including the E5-2667, the E5-2643 and particularly the E5-2637. The latter has only two cores and is meant for customers who struggle with expensive per-core licenses for their software. Then there are also two versions that are tuned specifically for energy efficiency. The E6-2650L is an 8-core model with 70W TDP and the E5-2630L is a 6-core model with 60W TDP.

The processors all use the Socket 2011 processor socket, also known as Socket R.