Intel Xeon E5-2697 v2 and Xeon E5-2687W v2 Review: 12 and 8 Cores
by Ian Cutress on March 17, 2014 11:59 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Xeon
- Enterprise
For our gaming benchmarks we brought in the MSI X79A-GD45 for some three-way GPU action, as the original GIGABYTE motherboard is limited beyond two GPUs. For the Xeons in our tests, the PCIe arrangement gave x16 in single GPU mode, x16/x16 in dual GPU mode and x16/x16/x8 in tri-GPU mode.
F1 2013
First up is F1 2013 by Codemasters. I am a big Formula 1 fan in my spare time, and nothing makes me happier than carving up the field in a Caterham, waving to the Red Bulls as I drive by (because I play on easy and take shortcuts). F1 2013 uses the EGO Engine, and like other Codemasters games ends up being very playable on old hardware quite easily. In order to beef up the benchmark a bit, we devised the following scenario for the benchmark mode: one lap of Spa-Francorchamps in the heavy wet, the benchmark follows Jenson Button in the McLaren who starts on the grid in 22nd place, with the field made up of 11 Williams cars, 5 Marussia and 5 Caterham in that order. This puts emphasis on the CPU to handle the AI in the wet, and allows for a good amount of overtaking during the automated benchmark. We test at 1920x1080 on Ultra graphical settings for a single GPU, as using multiple GPUs seems to have no scaling effect.
| F1 2013, 1080p Max | ||
| NVIDIA | AMD | |
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While the higher frequency of the E5-2687W v2 puts it ahead of the 12-core Xeon, in each of our data points, except 3x HD7970, the Core i7-4960X gets the better frame rates.
Bioshock Infinite
Bioshock Infinite was Zero Punctuation’s Game of the Year for 2013, uses the Unreal Engine 3, and is designed to scale with both cores and graphical prowess. We test the benchmark using the Adrenaline benchmark tool and the Xtreme (1920x1080, Maximum) performance setting, noting down the average frame rates and the minimum frame rates.
| Bioshock Infinite, 1080p Max | ||
| NVIDIA | AMD | |
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| Minimum Frame Rates |
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Again, the 8-core higher frequency Xeon is faster than the 12-core Xeon in most of our tests, however the i7-4960X beats them most of the time. For certain arrangements, such as 2x HD7970, the Xeons lose slightly to the i7-4770K, most likely due to CPU IPC. However as the difference is only a couple of frames per second out of 130, this should not make much difference.
Tomb Raider
The next benchmark in our test is Tomb Raider. Tomb Raider is an AMD optimized game, lauded for its use of TressFX creating dynamic hair to increase the immersion in game. Tomb Raider uses a modified version of the Crystal Engine, and enjoys raw horsepower. We test the benchmark using the Adrenaline benchmark tool and the Xtreme (1920x1080, Maximum) performance setting, noting down the average frame rates and the minimum frame rates.
| Tomb Raider, 1080p Max | ||
| NVIDIA | AMD | |
| Average Frame Rates |
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| Minimum Frame Rates |
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In all the Tomb Raider tests, all the CPUs perform similarly, making Tomb Raider a seemingly agnostic test to CPU power.
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Ian Cutress - Monday, March 17, 2014 - link
Corrected :) The test setup for the A10-7850K is the same as the Kaveri review. ASRock FM2A88X Extreme6+ with extra cooling, 2x8GB DDR3-2133 (i.e. rated processor speed).Nintendo Maniac 64 - Monday, March 17, 2014 - link
So stock clocks with turbo enabled on Win7 64bit SP1 w/ core parking update?Ian Cutress - Monday, March 17, 2014 - link
Correct.mattchid - Monday, March 17, 2014 - link
I have two 2697v2 I was gifted, and while I'm only running one on an x79 MB, I have two questions I can't find answers to elsewhere on the 2697 v2:1. Is the memory limited to 1866, even on motherboards supporting higher overclocks? I have tried to run memory above that speed (1866 memory that usually over clocks well) and the computer refuses to boot past the bios at that speed.
2. What would the performance gains be with both installed, in reference to multithreaded activities, like rendering, or even more rudimentary, like x264 or handbrake conversion? I would guess with single threaded activity, there would be no difference in performance, than one CPU.
psyq321 - Tuesday, March 18, 2014 - link
I have tested two generations of 2697 v2 (C0 and C1 stepping) and both refuse to accept anything above 1866 MHz. Practically, my old workhorse (dual 2687W) was much better in that regard and could run DDR3 @2133 MHz without any trickery.Although the CPU platforms (JakeTown and IvyTown) are pin-compatible for the EP series, high-core-count (HCC) EP IvyTowns have two separate memory controllers and I suppose this introduces regressions when it comes to "overclockability" of the RAM.
As for the #2, if you are running NUMA-aware multithreaded software that can spawn 24 or 48 threads, you can expect almost linear performance scaling with dual-CPU setups.
If the software is not NUMA aware, then there are performance drops that can be 30-50% (so you get, maybe, 1.5x speedup). If the software cannot get more than, say, 8 threads, then there would be no speedups (but even in this case you can start two separate processes and do two encoding sessions at once, and regain the 2x speedup)
CamdogXIII - Monday, March 17, 2014 - link
Typo in the gaming benchmarks. Under BF4, the button selection heading reads company of heroesIan Cutress - Tuesday, March 18, 2014 - link
Corrected :)iwod - Monday, March 17, 2014 - link
This doesn't really answer any question about the State of Xeon.So what exactly is difference between a Xeon E3- v3 and a Normal Top End Haswell Chip?
We have Broadwell soon ( in a few months? ) Are we suppose to get new Haswell E5 too? Isn't the Xeon E5 always one year behind the desktop counterpart, or are they slipping even more?
JlHADJOE - Monday, March 17, 2014 - link
Xeon E3 has ECC support, which is pretty cool.venk90 - Tuesday, March 18, 2014 - link
Ian, Could you post the AMD Kaveri CPU and GPU numbers to the respective bench sections of this website ? Makes comparisons a lot easier.