Intel Core i7-960 vs Intel Xeon E5-2420

Compare Intel Core 4 core CPU vs Intel Xeon E5 Family 6 core processor, specs and benchmark score. Which is the better CPU for gaming?

CPU Comparison

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Price

The cheapest price from our partner retailers

$ 150.00
$ 205.55 significantly less expensive
$ 355.55

Benchmark Score

Overall Score

A combined score of all workloads

1995 points
2140 points
7% slightly better overall score

Gaming Score

The raw gaming performance with a fast GPU

3216 points
7% slightly better gaming score
2978 points

Multitasking Score

Performance in workloads using up to 8 cores

1629 points
1875 points
15% slightly better multitasking score

Heavy Workload Score

Performance in workloads using up to 16 cores

1563 points
1814 points
16% slightly better heavy workload score

Free CPU Benchmark

Want to compare your processor against the Core i7-960 and the Xeon E5-2420? Download our free and quick PC Performance Test.

Other Benchmarks

Blender score

Blender score

Cycles Render (Samples per minute)

32.27 points
36.28 points
12% slightly higher Blender score
Geekbench 5 (multi) score

Geekbench 5 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

1700 points
2643 points
55% significantly higher Geekbench 5 (multi) score
Geekbench 5 (single) score

Geekbench 5 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

503 points
11% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (single) score
453 points
Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

1672 points
1814 points
8% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (multi) score
Geekbench 6 (single) score

Geekbench 6 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

492 points
30% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (single) score
378 points

Specifications

Cores

Number of physical processing units

4
6
49% significantly more cores

Threads

Number of logical processing units

8
12
49% significantly more threads

Clock Speed

Base frequency at which the chip operates

3.2 GHz
68% significantly higher clock speed
1.9 GHz

Turbo Speed

Higher frequency used for heavy workloads

3.46 GHz
44% significantly higher turbo speed
2.4 GHz

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the CPU

130 W
95 W
36% slightly lower TDP

Memory Channels

Lanes for simultaneous memory access

3
Identical
3

Supported Memory

Maximum amount of RAM supported by this CPU

24 GiB
384 GiB
1500% significantly more supported memory

Other details

Rank

Ranking in the hardwareDB database

719th of 1,089
697th of 1,089

Family

The product line

Core
Xeon E5 Family

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2009 November
2012 May

Memory Type

The type of memory used by this chip

DDR3-1066
DDR3-1066

Supports ECC memory

Does this CPU support error correcting memory

No
Yes

Core i7-960 vs Xeon E5-2420 specs and performance

Our benchmark analysis concludes that the Xeon E5-2420 performs better than the Core i7-960. Despite this, the Core i7-960 has the advantage in our gaming benchmark.

With info from our database, we find that the Xeon E5-2420 has significantly more cores with 6 cores whereas the Core i7-960 has 4 cores. It also has more threads than the Core i7-960. These CPUs have different clock speeds. Indeed, the Core i7-960 has a significantly higher clock speed compared to the Xeon E5-2420. Also, the Core i7-960 has a significantly higher turbo speed. The Xeon E5-2420 outputs less heat than Core i7-960 thanks to a slightly 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 i7-960 has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.

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