Intel Xeon 2697 V2 24 Core 48 Thread Madness Review

Intel Xeon E5-2697v2 Review

Introduction

Fantastic though desktop CPUs are, if you really want enough calculation performance to make your jaw drop you have to move towards the Xeon offerings which are designed for the workstation environment.

We’ve looked at a few Xeons before and, whilst we’d never dedicate ourselves to something that’s beyond the reach of nearly the entirety of our audience, sometimes it’s nice to see what is potentially possible at the very edge of technology. Almost every major player in the TOP500 list of computing power is based around the Intel Xeon CPUs, and they also give us an indication of where our future desktops will be.

It was only 10 years ago that the first dual-core CPUs appeared, and yet we already couldn’t imagine ever buying a single core CPU again. So to see that the E5-2697v2 comes with a massive 12 Cores has us lusting for some theoretical i7 of the future. So with the understanding that to nearly all of us this is just about stunning numbers rather than advice about a potential purchase, let’s see what the latest Intel Xeon brings to the party.

Technical Specifications

Status Launched
Launch Date Q3’13
Processor Number E5-2697V2
# of Cores 12
# of Threads 24
Clock Speed 2.7 GHz
Max Turbo Frequency 3.5 GHz
Intel® Smart Cache 30 MB
Intel® QPI Speed 8 GT/s
# of QPI Links 2
Instruction Set 64-bit
Instruction Set Extensions Intel® AVX
Embedded Options Available  No
Lithography 22 nm
Scalability 2S Only
Max TDP 130 W
VID Voltage Range 0.65–1.30V