Intel Xeon E5-2640 vs Intel Xeon E5-2660

Xeon E5-2640 vs Xeon E5-2660 benchmarks

In our benchmarks, the Xeon E5-2660 beats the Xeon E5-2640 in overall performance. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Xeon E5-2640 in all gaming tests too.

When comparing core counts for these CPUs, we notice that the Xeon E5-2660 has slightly more cores with 8 cores compared to the Xeon E5-2640 that has 6 cores. It also has more threads than the Xeon E5-2640. These CPUs have different clock speeds. Indeed, the Xeon E5-2640 has a slightly higher clock speed compared to the Xeon E5-2660. In addition, both chips have the same 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 Xeon E5-2640 has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.