Intel Core i7-3960X vs Intel Xeon E5-2643

Core i7-3960X vs Xeon E5-2643 specs and performance

Our benchmark analysis concludes that the Core i7-3960X performs better than the Xeon E5-2643. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Xeon E5-2643 in all gaming tests too.

With info from our database, we find that the Core i7-3960X has significantly more cores with 6 cores whereas the Xeon E5-2643 has 4 cores. It also has more threads than the Xeon E5-2643. According to our data, the Core i7-3960X and Xeon E5-2643 have the same clock speed. Despite this, the Core i7-3960X has a slightly higher turbo speed. Both these chips have an identical TDP (Thermal Design Power). 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.