Intel Core i7-3720QM vs Intel Xeon E3-1230

Compare Intel Core 4 core CPU vs Intel Xeon E3 Family 4 core processor, specs and benchmark score. Which is the better CPU for gaming?

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Other Benchmarks
Specifications
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Intel Xeon E3-1230

Price

The cheapest price from our partner retailers

$ 99.95

$ 165.92 significantly less expensive

$ 265.87

Benchmark Score

Overall Score

A combined score of all workloads

2112 points

2180 points

3% slightly better overall score

Gaming Score

The raw gaming performance with a fast GPU

3499 points

2% slightly better gaming score

3414 points

Multitasking Score

Performance in workloads using up to 8 cores

1701 points

1814 points

6% slightly better multitasking score

Heavy Workload Score

Performance in workloads using up to 16 cores

1632 points

1741 points

6% slightly better heavy workload score

Free CPU Benchmark

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Other Benchmarks

Blender score

Cycles Render (Samples per minute)

42.68 points

43% significantly higher Blender score

29.69 points

Geekbench 5 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

2033 points

2572 points

26% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (multi) score

Geekbench 5 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

602 points

671 points

11% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (single) score

Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

1978 points

1979 points

0.05% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Geekbench 6 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

586 points

0.17% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (single) score

585 points

Specifications

Cores

Number of physical processing units

Identical

Threads

Number of logical processing units

Identical

Clock Speed

Base frequency at which the chip operates

2.6 GHz

3.2 GHz

23% slightly higher clock speed

Turbo Speed

Higher frequency used for heavy workloads

3.6 GHz

Identical

3.6 GHz

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the CPU

45 W

77% significantly lower TDP

80 W

PCIe Lanes

Number of physical connections between the CPU and expansion slots

25% slightly more pcie lanes

Memory Channels

Lanes for simultaneous memory access

Identical

Supported Memory

Maximum amount of RAM supported by this CPU

32 GiB

Identical

32 GiB

Other details

Rank

Ranking in the hardwareDB database

703rd of 1,089

686th of 1,089

Family

The product line

Core

Xeon E3 Family

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2012 May

2011 May

Memory Type

The type of memory used by this chip

DDR3-1333

DDR3-1066

Supports ECC memory

Does this CPU support error correcting memory

Yes

Core i7-3720QM vs Xeon E3-1230 specs and performance

In our benchmarks, the Xeon E3-1230 beats the Core i7-3720QM in overall performance. Despite this, the Core i7-3720QM has the advantage in our gaming benchmark.

When comparing these CPUs we notice that they have the same number of cores and the same number of threads. With our hardware info, we find that the Xeon E3-1230 has a slightly higher clock speed than the Core i7-3720QM. In addition, both chips have the same turbo speed. A Core i7-3720QM CPU outputs less heat than a Xeon E3-1230 CPU because of its significantly lower TDP. This measures the amount of heat they output and can be used to estimate power consumption.

The more cores a CPU has, the better the overall performance will be in parallel workloads such as multitasking. Many CPUs have more threads than cores, this means that each physical core is split into multiple logical cores, making them more efficient. Indeed, the Core i7-3720QM has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.