Intel Xeon E5-2640 vs Intel Xeon X5680

Xeon E5-2640 vs Xeon X5680 specs and performance

In our benchmarks, the Xeon X5680 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 these CPUs we notice that they have the same number of cores and the same number of threads. Our comparison shows that the Xeon X5680 has a slightly higher clock speed compared to the Xeon E5-2640. Also, the Xeon X5680 has a slightly higher turbo speed. A Xeon E5-2640 CPU outputs less heat than a Xeon X5680 CPU because of its slightly lower TDP. This measures the amount of heat they output and can be used to estimate power consumption. In terms of cache, the Xeon E5-2640 has significantly more L2 cache when compared to the Xeon X5680. The Xeon E5-2640 also has significantly more L3 cache.

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.