Intel Xeon E5 processors are primarily designed for HPC, cloud computing and ‘big-data’, but they are also suitable for use in high-performance professional workstations and have many advantages over other processors. Intel Xeon E5 may also be used in gaming PC’s, with graphics installed in an available PCI slot. Intel Xeon series chips can be used very successfully in gaming systems, and in fact far exceed the requirements of most games currently available on the market.
The Intel Xeon R5 range is manufactured using Intel’s 14nm process node and uses Broadwell architecture. It has new security and virtualization features, while enhancements to the cores and memory configuration of the Intel Xeon E5 combine to boost performance to an exceptionally high level.
Intel Xeon E5 CPU’s offer support for up to quad-channel DDR4 memory, with a maximum supported speed of up to 2400MT/s, improving the speed of transactions and bandwidth. As previously mentioned, Intel Xeon E5 processors also feature improved virtualization features, which reduce latency and improve the performance and management of virtual machines. Due to the improved security enhancers, the Intel Xeon E5 series CPU’s are also able to prevent unwanted code execution and speed up cryptography.
The Intel Xeon E5 range offers a huge amount of options – there are five single-socket Intel Xeon E5 CPU’s, and twenty dual sockets. They offer a choice between four and twenty-two cores, with a frequency range of 1.6-3.7 GHz, and they also offer 55MB of last level cache, which offers the ability to speed up certain applications. the Intel Xeon E5 also uses a new lithography process, resulting in far better power efficiency.
A single-socket Intel Xeon E5 has a maximum memory of 768GB, support for EEC RAM (Intel Xeon EEC RAM support is crucial as the amount of RAM in servers grows to ever higher levels), VPRO, VT-x/VT-d and TXT. It is not recommended to overclock Xeon E5 CPU’s, and as they are designed to run exceptionally efficiently from stock it should not really ever be necessary. Intel Xeon processors are manufactured to perform extremely quickly while using multi-threaded applications, and so there is unlikely to ever be a requirement to overclock the chip.
A serverboard is not required to use an Intel Xeon E5 CPU, and you may actually find that some boards will limit you to a maximum of 256GB of RAM instead of the far superior 768GB that the Intel Xeon E5 series are capable of supporting.
For more information on Intel’s products or the Intel Xeon E5 family, feel free to check their website:
Intel Xeon Processor E5 Family