Intel Xeon E5-2679 v4 Review

Explore the Xeon E5-2679 v4! This Server processor is a highlight in Intel's high-end range. Introduced in 2016, it has 20 cores and 40 threads. It operates at a base frequency of 2.5GHz, can hit up to 2.5GHz, and has a power consumption of 200W, ready to upgrade your gaming setup. The Xeon E5-2679 v4 is designed on the Broadwell 14nm architecture and is a part of the respected Xeon E5 series.

The Intel Xeon E5-2679 v4 is another epic drop from Team Intel, cranking things up in the neverending Intel vs AMD CPU war. But hey, core count ain't everything, especially for playing the hottest PC games. Single-core performance gotta be on point too.

Can the Intel Xeon E5-2679 v4 finally dethrone the king of mainstream CPUs, the Ryzen Threadripper 1950X? It's a maybe. The Xeon E5-2679 v4 doesn't quite reach the same single-core performance as its rival, but more games are starting to use all those threads, so who cares!

The Intel Xeon E5-2679 v4 is an absolute monster, just like its 20 cores, 40 threads, and hefty price tag suggest. This is the top dog of mainstream processors, the king you've been waiting for. Games, video editing, 3D work – the Xeon E5-2679 v4 handles it all with ease. Bow down to the king!

Introducing the Xeon E5-2679 v4, the high-performance counterpart to the award-winning Xeon E5-2673 v4. Both are built on the same 14nm Broadwell platform, but the Xeon E5-2679 v4 cranks the power up to a toasty 200W for those extra cores and threads. We're expecting big things from this one, just like its lower-powered sibling! 'sChoiceHype

The Xeon E5-2679 v4 sits just below the mighty Xeon E5-2682 v4 with its fancy 14nm compute die and beefy 16 cores and 32 threads. While the Xeon E5-2682 v4 might seem like the obvious winner, Intel has done some magic to keep the Xeon E5-2679 v4's single compute die design efficient. Plus, the higher TDP allows for more aggressive boost clocks. This means the Xeon E5-2679 v4 could actually compete with the Xeon E5-2682 v4 in some games – who knew?

We already went deep into the nitty-gritty details of the Broadwell chip design in our reviews of the Intel Xeon E5-2682 v4 and Xeon E5-2673 v4. If you want to learn more about the Xeon E5-2679 v4's architecture (which is identical to the Xeon E5-2673 v4), head over there!

The Xeon E5-2679 v4 is the more expensive version of the Xeon E5-2673 v4, and it shows with its higher base and boost clock speeds: 2.5 GHz and 2.5 GHz, respectively. That's a nice boost in speed, but the real game changer is the higher power delivery (PPT). This lets the motherboard pump more juice (up to 142W) to the Xeon E5-2679 v4 compared to the Xeon E5-2673 v4's limit of 135W. This extra power allows the Xeon E5-2679 v4 to crank up the boost clocks even more aggressively, on both single and multiple cores. That means the performance gap between these two CPUs might be bigger than what the specs on paper suggest.

The high number of threads (over 7!) in the Intel Xeon E5-2679 v4 makes it a monster for tasks that use all the cores at once (multi-threaded workloads), especially for the price. If you edit a lot of videos or work with giant spreadsheets, the Xeon E5-2679 v4 will give you a noticeable performance boost.

For gamers, both the Ryzen Threadripper 1950X and Xeon E5-2679 v4 are great choices. They're neck and neck, with a slight edge to the AMD CPU if you don't overclock it. The Xeon E5-2679 v4's base performance can be achieved with cheaper RAM (around $90), whereas the Ryzen Threadripper 1950X needs faster RAM ($110-$120) to hit the frame rates we showed. The price difference is small though, and with anything less than an RTX 2070 or Vega 64 graphics card, your GPU will bottleneck your performance anyway. BottleneckAtPlay

If you don't care too much about overclocking and max boost speeds, then the Intel Xeon E5-2673 v4 is a good option for $2395.58. It also has 20 cores and 40 threads, but with slightly lower clock speeds (2.3GHz base and 2.3GHz boost).

Building on the success of mainstream Xeon E5 CPUs, Intel is now attacking the high-end market with the Xeon E5-2679 v4 processors, available since 20 June 2016.