Intel Xeon Gold 6256 Review

Take a look at the Xeon Gold 6256! This Server processor from Intel's high-end range is a real game-changer. Launched in 2020, it boasts 12 cores and 24 threads. With a base clock speed of 3.6GHz, a max speed of 4.5GHz, and a power rating of 205W, it's all set to supercharge your gaming setup. The Xeon Gold 6256 is a proud member of the powerful Cascade Lake 14nm family and the legendary Xeon Gold series.

No surprise here, a beastly 12-core, 24-thread CPU with a 4.5GHz boost clock absolutely shreds. The Intel Xeon Gold 6256 is the undisputed king of consumer CPUs (until you jump into the HEDT market, that is) – at least until you upgrade to the Xeon Gold 6258R. Get ready to dominate the competition!

The Intel Xeon Gold 6256 is an absolute monster, just like its 12 cores, 24 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 Gold 6256 handles it all with ease. Bow down to the king!

Introducing the Xeon Gold 6256, the high-performance counterpart to the award-winning Xeon Gold 6254. Both are built on the same 14nm Cascade Lake platform, but the Xeon Gold 6256 cranks the power up to a toasty 205W for those extra cores and threads. We're expecting big things from this one, just like its lower-powered sibling! 'sChoiceHype

The Xeon Gold 6256 sits just below the mighty Xeon Gold 6258R with its fancy 14nm compute die and beefy 28 cores and 56 threads. While the Xeon Gold 6258R might seem like the obvious winner, Intel has done some magic to keep the Xeon Gold 6256's single compute die design efficient. Plus, the higher TDP allows for more aggressive boost clocks. This means the Xeon Gold 6256 could actually compete with the Xeon Gold 6258R in some games – who knew?

We already went deep into the nitty-gritty details of the Cascade Lake chip design in our reviews of the Intel Xeon Gold 6258R and Xeon Gold 6254. If you want to learn more about the Xeon Gold 6256's architecture (which is identical to the Xeon Gold 6254), head over there!

The Xeon Gold 6256 is the more expensive version of the Xeon Gold 6254, and it shows with its higher base and boost clock speeds: 3.6 GHz and 4.5 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 Gold 6256 compared to the Xeon Gold 6254's limit of 200W. This extra power allows the Xeon Gold 6256 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 Gold 6256 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 Gold 6256 will give you a noticeable performance boost.

The gaming tests with an RTX 2080 Ti were surprising! The budget-friendly Intel Xeon Gold 6256 (only 3900)managedtooutperformthemoreexpensiveEpyc 7351(1100) in three games we tested. We know three games aren't everything, but it shows that even a 12 core CPU can still hold its own today. You can even play modern games and stream to Twitch on the Xeon Gold 6256 (playable results, not amazing). As games get more demanding, a 12 core CPU might not be ideal, but the Xeon Gold 6256 can hold its own for now in a pinch.

With Xeon Gold, Intel brings new innovation with its new architecture and a 14nm manufacturing process. Similar to Xeon Gold, Xeon Gold is built for the 3647 platform with support for all the latest features like DDR4 RAM, super-fast NVMe SSDs, and Thunderbolt 3 ports.

Can you game on Intel's Xeon Gold CPU? Absolutely! We got a solid 88% score in our gaming benchmarks.

The Xeon Gold 6256 is a great choice for both gaming and content creation, thanks to its high performance (1.2%) and at least 12 threads. Live streaming, eSports, and uploading gameplay videos are becoming increasingly popular, and this CPU can handle it all.