ASUS Z9 PE-D8 WS Dual Xeon Insanity E5-2660 & E5-2687W

Introduction

One of the questions we always wonder about here at OC3D is whether a dual-CPU setup will ever become viable for the home user. Of course the main problem is price as even a basic Xeon processor will set you back a pretty penny. The Xeon price equivalent to the 2500K gets you a 1.8GHz quad-core non-threaded, and the ones we have on test today top out at a whopping £1400 each. The other issue is the sheer amount of performance available from the latest desktop processors. Why would you need to go to the trouble and expense of two CPUs if one provides all you'd ever need?

That doesn't mean it's stopped us from finding out what kind of results you could expect to find from the current range of LGA2011 Xeon's when paired up with the excellent ASUS Z9 PE-D8 WS board.

But we wouldn't stop with just showing you the ultimate, which we are doing with a pair of Xeon E5-2687Ws, but we're also seeing if sheer weight of cores is enough to overcome low clockspeed by bringing a couple of Xeon E5-2660s along for the ride.

So is it a sensible option, or is the 'Workstation' designation there as much as a caveat emptor as anything?

Technical Specifications

In the blue corner, the Octo-Core Intel Xeon E5-2687W.

And in the .. erm.. blue corner, the Octo-Core Intel Xeon E5-2660.

Now Xeons differ greatly from the standard desktop versions in that they can't be overclocked, but rather they rely solely upon the turbo function to attain extra clock-speed. On the plus side this is the full-fat 8 core version of the Sandy-Bridge E processors, and because we're running two we'll have a seriously high 32 threads available to us. We know the E5-2687W should break all known benchmark records, but will the rather lethargic E5-2660 manage to take advantage of the extra cores to give the i7-3960X a run for its money?

The trainer at ringside is the ASUS Z9 PE-D8 WS