The Xeon E5-2600: Dual Sandy Bridge for Servers

Eight improved cores, 16 threads, integrated 40 lane PCIe 3.0: the new socket 2011 Xeon E5-2660 manages to package it all in a very modest power envelope of 95W TDP (at 2.2 GHz). If you read the Intel Xeon E5 paper specs, it becomes more and more likely that Intel has pulled off another "Nehalem": much better performance, richer features while consuming less power. Yes, as much as we like a good fight, the question is not whether Intel will outperform the competition and the previous Intel generation but by how much...