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I am planning to build a workstation whose main requirements are high single-thread performance, support for ECC memory, and a degree of energy efficiency. The second of these requirements leads me to look at Intel Xeon CPUs, but there is an incredible range and I'm unsure which to choose. If I didn't have the ECC requirement, then the Core i7-4790K would be ideal.

Using the Wikipedia list of Xeon CPUs I have located the Xeon E3-1286 v3. The relative specs are:

i7-4790K:   4.0Ghz / 88W TDP / HD Graphics 4600 / $339
E3-1286 v3: 3.7Ghz / 84W TDP / HD Graphics P4700 / $662

The Xeon seems remarkably expensive considering its lower clock. I suppose the GPU may be better considering its higher model number, but GPU performance is not a major factor for me.

Is the E3-1286 v3 the closest thing to a "i7-4790K with ECC memory support"? What accounts for the large price difference?

jl6
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  • Anyone of the haswell Xeon parts should meet your guidelines. – Ramhound Jan 17 '15 at 22:02
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    I suspect this of kinda off topic, but its too early in the morning to closehammer. http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Xeon-E3-1286-v3-vs-Intel-Core-i7-4790K is a nice site for looking at different processors, and comparing them featurewise. – Journeyman Geek Jan 17 '15 at 22:18
  • Prices are interesting to me also. For example different pricing where Xeon is cheaper but doesn't have GPU http://ark.intel.com/products/52273/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E3-1240-8M-Cache-3_30-GHz vs. http://ark.intel.com/products/75122/Intel-Core-i7-4770-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-3_90-GHz . Also check this http://www.velocitymicro.com/blog/xeon-vs-i7i5-whats-difference/ – Davidenko Jan 18 '15 at 11:14

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