Intel Xeon E3-1231 v3 vs Intel Xeon E5-2420 v2

Xeon E3-1231 v3 vs Xeon E5-2420 v2 benchmarks

Our benchmark analysis concludes that the Xeon E3-1231 v3 performs better than the Xeon E5-2420 v2. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Xeon E5-2420 v2 in all gaming tests too.

When comparing core counts for these CPUs, we notice that the Xeon E5-2420 v2 has significantly more cores with 6 cores compared to the Xeon E3-1231 v3 that has 4 cores. It also has more threads than the Xeon E3-1231 v3. These CPUs have different clock speeds. Indeed, the Xeon E3-1231 v3 has a significantly higher clock speed compared to the Xeon E5-2420 v2. Also, the Xeon E3-1231 v3 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.

Modern CPUs generally have more logical cores than physical cores, this means that each core is split into multiple virtual cores, improving efficiency for parallel workloads. Indeed, the Xeon E3-1231 v3 has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.