The Intel Xeon E7 v2 Review: Quad Socket, Up to 60 Cores/120 Threads

125 Comments

View All Comments

• TiGr1982 - Friday, February 21, 2014 - link

  I think, 6 cores on desktop for $300 will NOT happen this year.
  Because if it will, then you'll get $300 4 core i7 on mainstream 1150 & $300 6 core i7 on new 2011 simultaneously on the market.
  To adjust this, they'll have to sell 1150 4 core i7 for $200-$220, like Core i5 now.
  This is not realistic, because that's Intel we're talking about, right?...

• dragonsqrrl - Friday, February 21, 2014 - link

  That's actually the plan, except it won't be $300. I think the latest leaks suggest that the lowest end Haswell-E SKU will be a 6-core K series at ~$400. The other two price points remain about the same, $600 and $1000 for the 8-core SKU's.

• TiGr1982 - Saturday, February 22, 2014 - link

  To me, seems too good to be true. Will require a major change of mindset inside Intel to start selling 6 core for $400 and lower 8 core for $600 :)
  
  (while 8 core XE for $1000 is not surprising at all)

• Harry Lloyd - Saturday, February 22, 2014 - link

  The thing is LGA2011 mobos are really expensive, so the CPU price does not have to be that high. You can get a good B85 mobo even for less than 100 $, and an LGA2011 mobos start at 250 or even 300 $.
  I would not pay 300 $ for a mobo, and 400 $ for a 6-core CPU, that would still be ridiculous. I hate this stagnation. The transision from 1-core to 4-core happend really quickly.

• MrSpadge - Saturday, February 22, 2014 - link

  The smallest 6-core K model has been around 500$ for quite some time, so I see no problem going to 400$ this time. 8 cores for 600$ would indeed be a significant step for some, though.

• psyq321 - Monday, March 10, 2014 - link

  Well, if Intel manages to castrate the HEDT "E" version enough so that it does not pose any threat to their Xeon revenue, price drop might happen.
  
  However, one factor not to be underestimated is total available market and how much are target consumers for this kind of hardware willing to pay. I have no data, but for some reason I think only small % of "power users" (>very< power users) need 8 cores today and they would probably be willing to shell out $1000.
  
  Thing is, if you are Intel, you will probably making the calculation: what if we drop the price to, say, $600? Is this going to bring us more customers? Is this going to cannibalize some of, more lucrative, Xeon market?
  
  I suppose if Intel fuses out TSX, VT-D, ECC memory support and, of course, QPI (which is what they do anyway with Sandy-E and Ivy-E HEDT CPUs) the chip would practically be next to useless to most Xeon customers. So the remaining issue is the market.

• f0d - Friday, February 21, 2014 - link

  i agree
  
  i was hoping for 8 core ivy bridge-e chips but had to settle for 6 cores which i can easily use all of
  
  i do a LOT of video encoding using handbrake and that program just loves cores, i easily saturate all 12 threads with my settings in handbrake so i do believe it could use a single socket 8 core well (i have read tests that show handbrake not liking dual/quad socket systems for more cores - but does improve when using lots of cores on a single socket)

• MT007 - Friday, February 21, 2014 - link

  You have a error on page 8, in your fourth paragraph you have the opteron as 2.4ghz and only with a score of 2481. From your graph it should have been 2.3ghz and 2723?

• webmastir - Friday, February 21, 2014 - link

  They don't tend to fix errors/read comments I don't think.

• JohanAnandtech - Friday, February 21, 2014 - link

  Sure we do :-)