The Intel Xeon E5 v4 Review: Testing Broadwell-EP With Demanding Server Workloads
by Johan De Gelas on March 31, 2016 12:30 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Xeon
- Enterprise
- Enterprise CPUs
- Broadwell
Xeon E5 v4 SKUs and Pricing
As of press time we don't have precise Xeon E5 v4 pricing. But overall prices seem to be about 1-2% higher than the comparable Xeon E5 v3..
| Intel Xeon E5 v4 SKUs | ||||||
| Cores/Threads | TDP | Base Clockspeed | Price | |||
| E5-2699 v4 | 22/44 | 145W | 2.2GHz | $4115 | ||
| E5-2698 v4 | 20/40 | 135W | 2.2GHz | $3228 | ||
| E5-2697A v4 | 16/32 | 145W | 2.6GHz | $2891 | ||
| E5-2697 v4 | 18/36 | 145W | 2.3GHz | $2702 | ||
| E5-2695 v4 | 18/36 | 120W | 2.1GHz | $2424 | ||
| E5-2690 v4 | 14/28 | 135W | 2.6GHz | $2090 | ||
| E5-2687W v4 | 12/24 | 160W | 3.0GHz | $2141 | ||
| E5-2683 v4 | 16/32 | 120W | 2.1GHz | $1846 | ||
| E5-2680 v4 | 14/28 | 120W | 2.4GHz | $1745 | ||
| E5-2667 v4 | 8/16 | 135W | 3.2GHz | $2057 | ||
| E5-2660 v4 | 14/28 | 105W | 2.0GHz | $1445 | ||
| E5-2650L v4 | 14/28 | 65W | 1.7GHz | $1329 | ||
| E5-2650 v4 | 12/24 | 105W | 2.2GHz | $1166 | ||
| E5-2643 v4 | 6/12 | 135W | 3.4GHz | $1552 | ||
| E5-2640 v4 | 10/20 | 90W | 2.4GHz | $939 | ||
| E5-2637 v4 | 4/8 | 135W | 3.5GHz | $996 | ||
| E5-2630 v4 | 10/20 | 85W | 2.2GHz | $667 | ||
| E5-2630L v4 | 10/20 | 55W | 1.8GHz | $612 | ||
| E5-2623 v4 | 4/8 | 85W | 2.6GHz | $444 | ||
| E5-2620 v4 | 8/16 | 85W | 2.1GHz | $417 | ||
| E5-2609 v4 | 8/8 | 85W | 1.7GHz | $306 | ||
| E5-2603 v4 | 6/6 | 85W | 1.7GHz | $213 | ||
Meanwhile Intel's own performance estimations are not exactly exhilarating. Their estimates are based upon the almost perfectly scaling SPECrate benchmarks, and even these "perfect world" gains are simply modest, almost uninspiring in fact. We have said it before: this market desperately needs some competition if we want a new generation to bring more exciting improvements in performance-per-dollar metrics..
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SkipPerk - Friday, April 8, 2016 - link
"Anyone putting Microsoft on bare hardware these days is nuts"This brother is speakin the truth!
warreo - Thursday, March 31, 2016 - link
Can someone clarify this line for me?"The average performance increase versus the Xeon E5-2690 is 3%, and the Broadwell cores get a boost of no less than 19%."
Does that mean IPC increase is 19% for Broadwell, offset by ~16% decline in clockspeed to get to 3% average performance increase? But that doesn't make sense to me as a 3.8ghz (E5-2690) to 3.6ghz (E5-2699 v4) is only 5% decline in max clockspeed?
ShieTar - Thursday, March 31, 2016 - link
I understood it as "the -Ofast setting boosts Broadwell by 19%", so with the -O2 setting it was actually 16% slower than the 2690.And I think the AT-Theory based on the original measurements is that the 3.6GHz boost are not even held for a significant amount of time, so that Broadwell in reality comes with an even worse decline in clock speed.
warreo - Thursday, March 31, 2016 - link
Your interpretation makes much more sense than mine, but still doesn't quite add up. The improvement from using -Ofast vs. -O2 is 13% on average, and the lowest improvement is 4% on the xalancbmk, well below the "no less than 19%" quoted by Johan.Perhaps the rest of the disparity is normalizing for sustained clock speeds as you suspect? Johan is that correct?
Ryan Smith - Thursday, March 31, 2016 - link
I've reworded that passage to make it clearer. But ShieTar's interpretation was basically correct."Switching from -O2 to -Ofast improves Broadwell-EP's absolute performance by over 19%. Meanwhile the relative performance advantage versus the Xeon E5-2690 averages 3%. "
JohanAnandtech - Thursday, March 31, 2016 - link
That means that the -ofast has much more effect on the Broadwell. I mean by that that -ofast is 19% faster than -o2 on Broadwell, while it is 3% faster on Sandy Bridge. I assume that the older the architecture, the better the compiler is able to optimize it without special tricks.warreo - Friday, April 1, 2016 - link
Thanks for the clarification. Loved the review, great work Johan!Pinn - Thursday, March 31, 2016 - link
I'm still happy I went with the 6 core x99 over the 8 core. Massive core count is nice to see available, but I don't see the true value. Looks like you have to do the same rough math to see if the clock speed reduction is worth the core count.Oxford Guy - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
Why would there be "true value" for six and not for eight?Pinn - Wednesday, April 6, 2016 - link
Single threaded workloads.