Xeon Quandary

Hardware Hub CPU
1

Hi, I’m trying to wrap my head around Xeon processors and I’ve got some questions. Just to put things into perspective, I’m putting together a not very beefy server that will run a few services and act as a storage server.

This site:

appears incomplete at best and incorrect at worst. For example:

" [Intel® Xeon® Processor E3, E5, and E7 Families and Intel® Xeon Phi™ Product Family]" shows the existence of E3, E5, E7 processors.

I can’t for the life of me find these processors on:

I only see E2! These seem to be the most appropriate CPUs for my use case.

1.) Which ones are on sale and which ones are only OEM? I am having a hard time finding CPUs that I am interested in on sale anywhere. Maybe these are OEM only, but how can you tell?

2.) Also, it seems E2 are on the 14nm process and were released almost 2 years ago. Am I correct in assuming 10nm are coming later this year? These Xeons seem to be a generation behind desktop PCs! Really?

3.) What’s the difference between Scalable and the E Xeons? Just that Scalable has:

  • Way more RAM support
  • Dual socket
  • More PCI lanes

Are these the main differences or is there more to it?

4.) What are E series Xeons called? There’s a lot of info on Scalable CPUs, not much that I can find on these E series chips. Probably because I don’t know what they are called!

2

Since you mention surprise that Xeons you’ve seen are a generation behind desktop CPUs, It sounds like you’re interested in the latest products available and buying new rather than used, so I’ll tailor my response to that.

  1. The large number of different Xeon SKUs and high product differentiation means that usually there will be dozens of processors that are suitable for particular requirements or budget, many of which are indeed OEM-only.

I’ve never found Intel’s site easy to use to find comparison info between processor generations, models or specifications in general.

In my opinion these are much better:

ServeTheHome Sapphire Rapids SKU comparison:

1453×1121 569 KB

Wikipedia:

Yes, E-23xx and W-13xx are Rocket Lake-S and are 2 years old +/- a few months depending on the SKU. I haven’t seen any news of an update.

All that you list, plus:

  • Registered DIMM (RDIMM), LRDIMM and 3DS DIMM support. The E-2xxx and older E3 SKUs use UDIMMs only. Finding fast ECC UDIMMs can be tricky, even if you don’t want a large amount of RAM.
  • No onboard graphics, compared to -G suffix Xeon E, and all Xeon W-13xx SKUs having graphics output (needs a compatible mainboard).
  • Dual socket you mentioned, but also 4 and 8 socket.
  • Accelerators (QAT, IAA) - which require special application/OS support.
  • Various different subsets of AVX-512 support.
  1. Just “Xeon E”.
3

@xzpfzxds yes, looking for brand new and latest gen possible. Looks like I’ll probably be waiting till the last part of the year in the hopes of the 10nm processors getting released.

I watched: Wonderful World of Intel Xeon Scalable Platinum Gold and Silver Explained - YouTube

And it all finally clicked into place. E2 is the Xeon type, 3 is the generation, last two letters are the model, G means graphics processor and lack of it, the lack of on board GPU.

Got it, thanks.

I meant the Scalable are called Sapphire Rapids, what are the E2’s called?

Reading all the other links you posted to fill in the blanks!

4

The current generation Xeon SP (scalable platform) is Sapphire Rapids, which is the same Golden Cove core design as Alder Lake desktop CPUs but with larger die, more memory channels, and the new tile-based topology.

But, the Xeon “SP” branding was introduced back in 2017 with Skylake. The second digit in the model is the generation as you found, but with SP:

x1xx = Skylake
x2xx = Cascade Lake / Cascade Lake refresh (-R suffix)
x3xx = Cooper Lake (-H / -HL suffix) and Ice Lake (no -H / -HL suffix)
x4xx = Sapphire Rapids

The generation numbers for E- and W- models are roughly the same in terms of microarchitecture and core design, but they have different codenames, for example there are no Ice Lake Xeon E models, even though there were Ice Lake mobile processors!

No idea if “E” means anything, I suspect it is just “Enterprise” but never seen any official communication on what it stands for. The E3/E5/E7 models were launched in 2011 with Sandy Bridge, I guess to have similar branding as i3/i5/i7, but they were hardly similar in terms of features. That branding ended in 2017 with the E3 v6 Xeons, replaced by the the new Xeon E- branding with Coffee Lake cores (E-21xx).

All the E3 and E- models I’ve seen are basically i7’s with ECC and vPro enabled (although technically Alder Lake i7’s, and older i3’s can use ECC in some cases).

Confusingly, and alluding to the product differentiation I mentioned, the W- branding was introduced about the same time, with two different sockets:

W-22xx : LGA 2066
W-32xx : LGA 3647 (with 64 PCIe lanes, but not 100% compatible with the Skylake Xeon SP LGA 3647, which was 48 PCIe lanes)

And now we have the w3/w5/w7/w9 (“Workstation”) models too, introduced with Sapphire Rapids.

Basically, I’d recommend starting on the big list of Xeons on Wikipedia, start with the most recent models at the bottom of the list, and scroll until you find one that meets your requirements, then search on Intel ARK to confirm and verify specific features you’re looking for, I’ve only found Wikipedia puts it in a nice big table that you can visually compare.

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5

That’s a nice list thanks for that.

6

What I’ve dug up on this issue is twofold.

1.) Intel Xeon E series are no longer supported by Windows 11:

for the most likely reason of Spectre and Meltdown:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/windows-11-does-not-support-xeon-processors/40456b46-5834-4467-a38c-0ac7a23cd9cc

So buying older/second hand E series is a no go.

2.) It seems E series aren’t getting updated because Intel now offers ECC RAM on selected i5 and up Core processors.

7

Mateys, let me interrupt you there, you are moving in circles for no gain.

You are confused about E3 E5 E7 … because they don’t exist anymore. Xeon lineup went through partial rebranding and full market re-segmentation with first Xeon scalable gen launch three or four years ago.

Before that point here was rather simple ( sic!) system for enteprise CPU classification:

Xeon E3 - lowest core count and feature set, rebranded consumer chips with ECC enabled. You want ecc? Pay us for the privilege.
Xeon E5 - were the first true enteprise chips with multi multiprocessor support , larger pcie connectivity a etc.
Xeon E7 - were the top of line xeon chips with “extreme” features like 4P a 8P socket support.

This system does not exist anymore. The E-??? models were functional equivalent of E3 lineup, i.e rebranded consumer parts with ECC enabled.

Since xeon scalable 1 gen there is the following:

Xeon W - workstation segment, effectively replacing old core extreme lineup
Xeon Bronze - lowest server rung
Xeon Silver — +1 level
Xeon Gold — +1 level
Xeon Platinum — highest performing rung for mucho dinero

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8

Yep, that’s the same conclusion that I’ve come to. Thanks for verifying that my understanding is correct!

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9

Thanks for that link on Microsoft removing support. I run the E-2136 Xeons in a few of my servers so that’s unfortunate that they will be dropping support.
This likely signals Intel’s direction in this market segment, or rather lack of direction. The Xeon Entry line was originally supposed to be the edge and low-end server segment with rebranded desktop chips to enable ECC support and a few server-class features. They haven’t updated this segment in quite some time so I’ve been suspicious that they were going to just let it die in favor of the new Xeon w-2400 and -3400 lines, and this seems to be more confirmation of that.

Rather surprising they are even dropping the E-2300 line. Those are Rocket Lake parts on LGA1200 and aren’t even super old yet.

10

Looks like the low end server space will be replaced by Core CPUs which now have ECC support. Selectively, not every single one. ECC starts from i5 upwards. They are all Raptor Lake i.e. 7nm.

11

I read Xeon Quandary and my mind went to geographical locations and nextgen codename Quandary [Lake] cpus.

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12

Not a pretty name :slight_smile: .

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13

From the people who brought you the (guttural throat sound)Itanium, it’s the Quandary! What is it? Holds up hands

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