Intel Xeon E5-2643 vs Intel Xeon E5-2696 v2

Xeon E5-2643 vs Xeon E5-2696 v2 benchmarks

In our benchmarks, the Xeon E5-2696 v2 beats the Xeon E5-2643 in overall performance. Despite this, the Xeon E5-2643 has the advantage in our gaming benchmark.

In terms of the number of cores of each of these CPUs, the Xeon E5-2696 v2 has significantly more cores than the Xeon E5-2643. Indeed, the Xeon E5-2696 v2 has 12 cores compared to 4 cores found in the Xeon E5-2643. It also has more threads than the Xeon E5-2643.

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 E5-2643 has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.