Does a dual socket motherboard require matched pair of CPU?

[hugotias]

Or just 2 of the same type of CPU?
When I shopped on ebay for a dual LGA2011 motherboard to host dual CPU, I saw something like it "requires a matched pair" of, say, E5 2680 v2 CPU. "Matched pair" means they have to be from the same batch of production of the same model, or just any 2 of the same model (in this case, E5 2680 v2 CPU) is fine?

 

[BlueFox]

Generally the CPU stepping needs to match, but there are a few exceptions.

 

[Kneelbeforezod]

I've used ES Stepping and Retail Stepping Xeons together with no issues. For example I used a B0 X5550 with with a C1

 

[Evan]

At least in my experience so far any retail/production stepping is compatible with another retail/production. I am sure there are exceptions but that’s just my experience.

(HPE,Lenovo,Cisco,Dell,etc if you look seem to only offer to sell the actual CPU, I don’t recall seeing any notes from the big guys about stepping. Having said that I also don’t know if HPE insist that intel only supply 1 stepping in life of processor or not but they may do this)

 

[i386]

"Matched pair" = Same stepping.

The popular 2670 has two steppings, the First one Had a Broken Implementation of vt-d. Troubleshooting why virtualization was not working correctly was a pita when you Had cpus with both steppings.

 

[hugotias]

thank you everyone above, now i kinda know what mached means!

i'll buy 2 of the same type and just take the chance to see if they are "matched".