The Intel Xeon E5-2600 V2 CPU's - What You Need To Know

The launch of the new Ivy Bridge based Xeon E5 2600 V2 marks a serious step for the E5 family of CPUs as they catch up with their siblings already on the Haswell architecture. As already reported on the Boston blog, the Boston Labs team has been testing the new processors, and they recently launched the first of two articles about their experiences.

The first takes a look at the ‘need to know’ facts about the new processors and goes into detail about the changes from V1 to V2. Some of the changes include:

• An increase from 8 to 12 cores
• The threads per socket upped from 16 to 24
• A boost in LLC size to 30MB, up from V1’s 20MB
• Max memory speed increased from 1600 MHz to 1866 MHz

Of particular interest is the power usage targets set by the new processors. The promise of increasing processing power whilst maintaining or lowering power usage is extremely tempting for Data Centre Managers. The idle power targets for the V2 CPUs are 10.5W or higher (7.5W for LV SKUs).

Combine the added features and power efficiency with the ease of upgrading, and getting on board with the E5-2600 V2 processors early is a compelling proposition.

You can read the full Boston Labs article here. Stay tuned for the follow up blog on the real world performance benefits of the V2 CPUs!