Intel Core i7-3930K vs Intel Xeon E3-1280 v3

Core i7-3930K vs Xeon E3-1280 v3 specs and performance

In our benchmarks, the Core i7-3930K beats the Xeon E3-1280 v3 in overall performance. Despite this, the Xeon E3-1280 v3 has the advantage in our gaming benchmark.

In terms of the number of cores of each of these CPUs, the Core i7-3930K has significantly more cores than the Xeon E3-1280 v3. Indeed, the Core i7-3930K has 6 cores compared to 4 cores found in the Xeon E3-1280 v3. It also has more threads than the Xeon E3-1280 v3. Our comparison shows that the Xeon E3-1280 v3 has a slightly higher clock speed compared to the Core i7-3930K. Also, the Xeon E3-1280 v3 has a slightly higher turbo speed. The Xeon E3-1280 v3 outputs less heat than Core i7-3930K thanks to a significantly lower TDP. This measures the amount of heat they output and can be used to estimate power consumption.

Most CPUs have more threads than cores. This technology, colloquially called hyperthreading, improves performance by splitting a core into multiple virtual ones. This provides more efficient utilisation of a core. Indeed, the Core i7-3930K has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.