E5-2640v2 vs E5-2687W

[voodooFX]

I'm building my new workstation, which will be basically a "gaming station", (+ occasional video transcoding) given that my main computer is a iMac 5K.

As for the CPUs (the motherboard is dual socket) I can choose between two E5-2640v2 or two E5-2687W

E5-2640v2
- 8Core 16Threads
- 20MB Cache
- 2 GHz (2.5 GHz)

E5-2687W
- 8Core 16Threads
- 20MB Cache
- 3.1 GHz (3.8 GHz)

Do we all agree that the E5-2687W is the best choice or there is some unknown magic in IvyBridge which will make the 2640v2 somehow faster?

 

[T_Minus]

The E5-2687W is an awesome workstation CPU!! Just be sure your system can handle it as it's rated higher power than a lot of boards support, and needs great cooling

 

[voodooFX]

Uhm good point, I think I have a problem

The board is a Supermicro X9DRi-F which supports up to 135W TDP but the E5-2687W is rated 150W

You think it will not turn on, or could have stability problems in full load? I could lower the max CPU freq somehow..

uhm...

 

[_alex]

you could disable 2 cores in bios what should keep you within the specs. I would go for the 2687 if ever possible on a workstation because of the higher frequency. you will have a certain amount of single-threaded workloads that profit from it.
So you would end with 6x 3.1/3.8 GHz vs 8x 2/2.5 GHz per CPU.
I wouldn't lower frequency for power savings as it affects perceived performance more than lower Core count in your case.

Just make sure the Bios accepts th CPU / has the microcodes.

 

[voodooFX]

thanks _alex, good idea!

 

[Joseph Nunn]

I would love to have gotten E5-2687Ws, but the price difference on Ebay made no sense to me. $300 each vs $55-60 each for 2670s that are rated 115w, its a no brainer there.

Definitely you will find the 2687W to be awesome, but they will also consume quite a bit of electricity I think. I would not trade them for the 2640v2s though.