How to shop for xeons

[Mornincupofhate]

So basically I go on amazon and I type in "Xeon e5 4 core". I then see an 8 core xeon come up for $155, and then the next one is a 4 core xeon for $525...

If anyone could explain this, it would be great.

[007agentHP]

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/

 

pcpartpciker

choose cpu 

and on the left hand side you have a bunch of filter options and they provide pricing at all reliable retailers

 

[doomsriker]

These are likely two xeons from two different generations. 

[DunePilot]

Lots of the Xeons with the same name will differ greatly even with the same model number but the new revision... v1-v4 adding more cores every time or even changing sockets on the way. The best way is to search on Intel Ark and find what you need and then searching that model # exactly on your retailer website.

 

Example. E5-2670 and the E5 2670 v3

 

You can see that by the third revision it is on the 2011v3 socket instead of 2011, and also is now a 12 core intead of the original 8 core and even the clock speed has changed.

http://ark.intel.com/products/64595/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-2670-20M-Cache-2_60-GHz-8_00-GTs-Intel-QPI

http://ark.intel.com/products/81709/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-2670-v3-30M-Cache-2_30-GHz