Although scheduled to launch in Q1 2016, we now have some first details and benchmarks of one of the first Intel Broadwell-EP Xeon CPUs that have found its way online.

Available for sale at Chinese online retailer, Taobao, this Intel Broadwell-EP Xeon E5-2698 V4 CPU is a qualification sample selling for 15,500 Chinese Yuan. While it is quite risky to buy a qualification sample chip from an unknown source, at least we now have some of the first benchmarks of this chip which packs 20 cores, 40 threads and 50MB of L3 cache.

In case you missed it earlier, the Broadwell-EP line is aimed at servers and workstations and will be available as a part of Intel's Xeon E5 V4 lineup. These can be used in single-socket and up to 8-socket racks and be compatible with with Grantley platform, same one that has been used for Ivy Bridge-EP, Haswell-EP and now the Boradwell-EP V4 CPUs.

According to the CPU-Z screenshot, the listed CPU is the 20-core Intel Xeon E5-2698 V4 CPU. Since it has support for Intel Hyper-Threading, it has 40 threads and has 2.5MB of L3 cahe per core, which adds up to a total of 50MB of L3 cache. The base clock is set at 2.1GHz while the maximum clock is set at 3.5GHz and it has a TDP of 130-140W. The low TDP and high clock is achieved due to a move to an improved 14nm manufacturing process.

Tha top model in the new Broadwell-EP Xeon E5 2600 V4 series will pack up to 22 cores with 44 threads and 55MB of L3 cache. It will have up to 40 PCI-Express lanes, support for quad-channel DDR4-2400 memory and have a TDP ranging from 55 to 145W.

The provided Cinebench R15 benchmark results are quite impressive as it scores 4980 points in multi-threaded benchmark, which is higher than anything we have seen so far.

The full lineup of Intel Broadwell-EP Xeon CPUs are expected in Q1 2016. AMD on the other hand is preparing its Opteron lineup based on Zen architecture and it will be interesting to see how well it can compete with this Broadwell-EP and 22-core, 44-thread beast.







Source: Expreview.com.