Intel Xeon E5 Version 3: Up to 18 Haswell EP Cores
by Johan De Gelas on September 8, 2014 12:30 PM ESTSKUs and Pricing
Before we start with the benchmarks, let's first see what you get for your money. To reduce the clutter, we have not listed all of the SKUs but have tried to include useful points of comparison. Also note that we are not comparing pricing or performance with AMD at this point, as AMD has not updated its server CPU offerings for almost 2 years. The Steamroller architecture was very promising and addressed many of the bottlenecks we discovered in the earlier Opteron 6200, but unfortunately it was never made into a high end server CPU. So basically, Intel's only competition right now is the previous generation Xeons, which means Intel has to convince server buyers that upgrading to the latest Xeon pays off.
| Intel Xeon E5 v2 versus v3 2-socket SKU Comparison | |||||||||
| Xeon E5 | Cores/ Threads |
TDP | Clock Speed (GHz) |
Price | Xeon E5 | Cores/ Threads |
TDP | Clock Speed (GHz) |
Price |
| High Performance (20 – 30MB LLC) | High Performance (35-45MB LLC) | ||||||||
| 2699 v3 | 18/36 | 145W | 2.3-3.6 | $4115 | |||||
| 2698 v3 | 16/32 | 135W | 2.3-3.6 | $3226 | |||||
| 2697 v2 | 12/24 | 130W | 2.7-3.5 | $2614 | 2697 v3 | 14/28 | 145W | 2.6-3.6 | $2702 |
| 2695 v2 | 12/24 | 115W | 2.4-3.2 | $2336 | 2695 v3 | 14/28 | 120W | 2.3-3.3 | $2424 |
| "Advanced" (20-30MB LLC) | |||||||||
| 2690 v2 | 10/20 | 130W | 3-3.6 | $2057 | 2690 v3 | 12/24 | 135W | 2.6-3.5 | $2090 |
| 2680 v2 | 10/20 | 115W | 2.8-3.6 | $1723 | 2680 v3 | 12/24 | 120W | 2.5-3.3 | $1745 |
| 2660 v2 | 10/20 | 115W | 2.2-3.0 | $1389 | 2660 v3 | 10/20 | 105W | 2.6-3.3 | $1445 |
| 2650 v2 | 8/16 | 95W | 2.6-3.4 | $1166 | 2650 v3 | 10/20 | 105W | 2.3-3.0 | $1167 |
| Midrange (10 – 20MB LLC) | Midrange (15-25MB LLC) | ||||||||
| 2640 v2 | 8/16 | 95W | 2.0-2.5 | $885 | 2640 v3 | 8/16 | 90W | 2.6-3.4 | $939 |
| 2630 v2 | 6/12 | 80W | 2.6-3.1 | $612 | 2630 v3 | 8/16 | 85W | 2.4-3.2 | $667 |
| Frequency optimized (15 – 25MB LLC) | Frequency optimized (10-20MB LLC) | ||||||||
| 2687W v2 | 8/16 | 150W | 3.4-4.0 | $2108 | 2687W v3 | 10/20 | 160W | 3.1-3.5 | $2141 |
| 2667 v2 | 8/16 | 130W | 3.3-4.0 | $2057 | 2667 v3 | 8/16 | 135W | 3.2-3.6 | $2057 |
| 2643 v2 | 6/12 | 130W | 3.5-3.8 | $1552 | 2643 v3 | 6/12 | 135W | 3.4-3.7 | $1552 |
| 2637 v2 | 4/12 | 130W | 3.5-3.8 | $996 | 2637 v3 | 4/8 | 135W | 3.5-3.7 | $996 |
| Budget (15MB LLC) | Budget (15MB LLC) | ||||||||
| 2609 v2 | 4/4 | 80W | 2.5 | $294 | 2609 v3 | 6/6 | 85W | 1.9 | $306 |
| 2603 v2 | 4/4 | 80W | 1.8 | $202 | 2603 v3 | 6/6 | 85W | 1.6 | $213 |
| Power Optimized (15 – 25MB LLC) | Power Optimized (20-30MB LLC) | ||||||||
| 2650L v2 | 10/20 | 70W | 1.7-2.1 | $1219 | 2650L v3 | 12/24 | 65W | 1.8-2.5 | $1329 |
| 2630L v2 | 6/12 | 70W | 2.4-2.8 | $612 | 2630L v3 | 8/16 | 55W | 1.8-2.9 | $612 |
At the top of the product stack is the new E5-2699 v3, and it's priced accordingly: over $4000 for the most cores Intel has ever put in a Xeon processor. TDP has also gone up compared to the previous generation's top SKU, but for six additional cores that's probably reasonable.
At first glance, the 2695 v3 looks interesting for the performance hungry as it the cheapest "HCC" (High Core Count) option. You get the largest die with the two memory controllers, 35MB LLC, two rings, and TDP is limited to 120W. Of course the question is how well Turbo Boost will compensate for the relatively low base clock.
For those looking for a good balance between price/performance and power, the 2650L v3 offers a 100MHz higher clock, much higher Turbo Boost, two extra cores, and a slightly lower TDP for about $100 more. This SKU looks very tempting for people who do not need the ultimate in processing power, e.g. those looking for a host for their VMs.
Lastly, there is the 2667 v3 which has a high base clock (3.2) and a still reasonable TDP of 135W for all applications that need processing power but do not scale beyond a certain core count.
Those are the SKUs that we have included in this review, so let's see how they fare.
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martinpw - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
There is a nice tool called i7z (can google it). You need to run it as root to get the live CPU clock display.kepstin - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
Most Linux distributions provide a tool called "turbostat" which prints statistical summaries of real clock speeds and c state usage on Intel cpus.kepstin - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
Note that if turbostat is missing or too old (doesn't support your cpu), you can build it yourself pretty quick - grab the latest linux kernel source, cd to tools/power/x86/turbostat, and type 'make'. It'll build the tool in the current directory.julianb - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
Finally the e5-xxx v3s have arrived. I too can't wait for the Cinebench and 3DS Max benchmark results.Any idea if now that they are out the e5-xxxx v2s will drop down in price?
Or Intel doesn't do that...
MrSpadge - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Correct, Intel does not really lower prices of older CPUs. They just gradually phase out.tromp - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
As an additional test of the latency of the DRAM subsystem, could you please run the "make speedup" scaling benchmark of my Cuckoo Cycle proof-of-work system at https://github.com/tromp/cuckoo ?That will show if 72 threads (2 cpus with 18 hyperthreaded cores) suffice to saturate the DRAM subsystem with random accesses.
-John
Hulk - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
I know this is not the workload these parts are designed for, but just for kicks I'd love to see some media encoding/video editing apps tested. Just to see what this thing can do with a well coded mainstream application. Or to see where the apps fades out core-wise.Assimilator87 - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
Someone benchmark F@H bigadv on these, stat!iwod - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
I am looking forward to 16 Core Native Die, 14nm Broadwell Next year, and DDR4 is matured with much better pricing.Brutalizer - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Yawn, the new upcoming SPARC M7 cpu has 32 cores. SPARC has had 16 cores for ages. Since some generations back, the SPARC cores are able to dedicate all resources to one thread if need be. This way the SPARC core can have one very strong thread, or massive throughput (many threads). The SPARC M7 cpu is 10 billion transistors:http://www.enterprisetech.com/2014/08/13/oracle-cr...
and it will be 3-4x faster than the current SPARC M6 (12 cores, 96 threads) which holds several world records today. The largest SPARC M7 server will have 32-sockets, 1024 cores, 64TB RAM and 8.192 threads. One SPARC M7 cpu will be as fast as an entire Sunfire 25K. :)
The largest Xeon E5 server will top out at 4-sockets probably. I think the Xeon E7 cpus top out at 8-socket servers. So, if you need massive RAM (more than 10TB) and massive performance, you need to venture into Unix server territory, such as SPARC or POWER. Only they have 32-socket servers capable of reaching the highest performance.
Of course, the SGI Altix/UV2000 servers have 10.000s of cores and 100TBs of RAM, but they are clusters, like a tiny supercomputer. Only doing HPC number crunching workloads. You will never find these large Linux clusters run SAP Enterprise workloads, there are no such SAP benchmarks, because clusters suck at non HPC workloads.
-Clusters are typically serving one user who picks which workload to run for the next days. All SGI benchmarks are HPC, not a single Enterprise benchmark exist for instance SAP or other Enterprise systems. They serve one user.
-Large SMP servers with as many as 32 sockets (or even 64-sockets!!!) are typically serving thousands of users, running Enterprise business workloads, such as SAP. They serve thousands of users.