Intel Core i7-3960X vs Intel Xeon E5-2640 v3

Core i7-3960X vs Xeon E5-2640 v3 benchmarks

According to the hardwareDB Benchmark tool, the Xeon E5-2640 v3 is faster than the Core i7-3960X. Despite this, the Core i7-3960X has the advantage in our gaming benchmark.

When comparing core counts for these CPUs, we notice that the Xeon E5-2640 v3 has slightly more cores with 8 cores compared to the Core i7-3960X that has 6 cores. It also has more threads than the Core i7-3960X. These CPUs have different clock speeds. Indeed, the Core i7-3960X has a slightly higher clock speed compared to the Xeon E5-2640 v3. Also, the Core i7-3960X has a slightly higher turbo speed. The Xeon E5-2640 v3 outputs less heat than Core i7-3960X 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 i7-3960X has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.