Intel Xeon E5-2696 v2 vs Intel Xeon E5-2666 v3

Xeon E5-2696 v2 vs Xeon E5-2666 v3 specs and performance

Our benchmark analysis concludes that the Xeon E5-2696 v2 performs better than the Xeon E5-2666 v3. Despite this, the Xeon E5-2666 v3 has the advantage in our gaming benchmark.

With info from our database, we find that the Xeon E5-2696 v2 has slightly more cores with 12 cores whereas the Xeon E5-2666 v3 has 10 cores. It also has more threads than the Xeon E5-2666 v3.

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 E5-2696 v2 has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.