Review Processor Xeon E3 1225: A Powerful Alternative for Your Desktop

How about the technical specs? Since the E3-1225 is based on the same Sandy Bridge core as Intel’s latest desktop CPUs, it also shares a similar set of features, including SSE 4.2 and AVX instructions. It is also equipped with an on-CPU graphics processor too. Look at the table below for a comparison with the Core i7-2600K.

Although both processors have similar TDP rating, there are a number of key differences that set the two apart. For example, Core i7-2600K has larger cache and higher clockspeed while the Xeon E3-1225, being server/ workstation-oriented, comes with ECC memory support. Judging from their theoretical raw power alone, the Core i7-2600K holds up to 50% advantage. Is that really the case? We’ll find the answer in our performance test.

Actually, the most suitable platform for the E3-1225 is one of the new workstation-class motherboards based on the Intel C-200 chipset. However, since these boards are currently unavailable, we resorted to a more common option: a motherboard based on the H67 chipset. As we mentioned earlier in this article, Xeon E3-1225 turns up to be compatible with our H67 motherboard. In addition to CPU processing power, this allows us to measure up the graphics performance of Xeon E3-1225’s on-CPU graphics processor as well. Here’s a complete list of the hardwares used as our test platform:

CPU-Z Screenshot

It seems that the most recent release of CPU-Z application is still unable to identify the Xeon E3-1225 correctly. As shown here, the processor’s name is shown as the “Core i5-2400” instead.