Intel Xeon E5-2687W v3 and E5-2650 v3 Review: Haswell-EP with 10 Cores

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• TiGr1982 - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link

  This new workstation CPU, Xeon E5-2687W v3, as we see, is intended for multithreaded software.
  
  There are actually workstation CPUs better fitting for singlethreaded software: these are Xeon E3, e.g., Xeon E3-1286 v3 (3.7/4.1 GHz) and slower and cheaper models below it.
  These are essentially "professionalized" Core i7s for LGA1150.
  Being the same silicon as Core i7s for LGA1150, these E3s have their own downsides, however: only 32 GB of RAM and only 8 MB of L3 cache.
  
  And the really fastest in single threaded tasks is Core i7-4790K at 4.0/4.4 GHz, but it lacks ECC memory support.

• hrrmph - Tuesday, October 14, 2014 - link

  I would like to encourage Ian and AT in general to continue to split the coverage (as they have been doing recently) for dual-socketed platforms into the "low-end" enthusiast / workstation segment, and the "high-end" more heavy-duty server / enterprise segment.
  
  Ian's recent articles hitting this from the "low-end" enthusiast / workstation angle have been really helpful to me, even though I've already been part-time "playing" with dual-socketed systems for some time, both as an educational exercise and a personal curiosity endeavor.
  
  In particular, the effects of NUMA aware software on dual-socketed system performance are of great interest.
  
  I've also noticed a lot of negative feedback to Ian's articles that I think is unwarranted. It's mostly from folks who want Ian to do more complex testing of more complex tasks that are primarily enterprise related. That's all well and good, but as I understand it, that is the job of the "other half" of AT to do.
  
  Ian and AT doing dual-socketed articles on "low-end" Windows builds is exactly what we need to help people know whether or not they would like to "step-up" from X99-E. It also is helpful so that folks know what they are really getting into if they go the dual-socketed route. As Ian pointed out in recent articles there are still some things that X99-E will do better and going into dual-socketed computing all "starry-eyed" isn't necessarily the best way to approach it.
  
  If there is anything that AT could use, it's actually even more comparative testing of X99 Haswell-E versus the C6xx Haswell-EP from a Windows workstation user's perspective. It would be great to see which taskings favored which platform in actual testing.
  
  Everyone has an opinion, but actually doing it is the best way to demonstrate what works and what doesn't.

• mapesdhs - Thursday, October 16, 2014 - link

  
  Entirely agree! Good summary.
  
  Btw, disappointing to see the threaded CB R15 result for the 2687W is only 30% better
  than an oc'd 3930K (mine @ 4.7 gives 1221). Does confirm that to really best a 1-socket
  oc'd i7, one really has to move to a multi-socket platform, and then of course it boils down
  to whether the sw is written to match (eg. is Handbrake written as well as it could?)
  
  Ian.
  
  PS. I hasten to add, I'm a different Ian. :D

• SanX - Tuesday, October 14, 2014 - link

  "And remember this rule Pinnochio for the rest of your life -- two processors with the factor of 1.5 difference are equal"

• colonelclaw - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link

  Any chance you could include V-Ray in future benchmarks? It's multi-application and multi-platform and very popular in the CGI world.

• mapesdhs - Thursday, October 16, 2014 - link

  And of course c-ray, which scales extremely well with multiple cores.
  
  Ian.

• otherwise - Monday, November 17, 2014 - link

  In the future, is there any chance you can add a benchmark that stresses single-threaded integer performance? I'd love to see how much Int performance has changed from generation to generation, but most sites (including this one) seem to focus on FP performance.