Intel CM8066002024000

The Intel Xeon E5-2698 V4 is a 20-core server chip from 2016 that shows its age in every benchmark. Single thread and multi thread scores both land in the bottom 4 percent of our database, and the 135W TDP makes it inefficient even by old server standards. European pricing ranges from EUR 596 to EUR 1,086, and even the low end is hard to justify. Only buy this if you're keeping an existing LGA-2011 server alive, everyone else should look at modern alternatives.

Let's talk about those benchmark scores, because they're rough. Single thread performance is in the 3rd percentile of all products we track. That means 97 percent of everything in our database beats it on per-core speed. For context, a modern budget desktop CPU will feel dramatically snappier in everyday tasks, opening apps, browsing, even basic office work. The 2.20GHz base clock is the culprit, and while the 3.60GHz boost helps, it's not enough to overcome the aging architecture.

Multi thread is where you'd expect a 20-core chip to shine, but it lands in the 4th percentile. That's a real letdown. The 135W TDP is also a problem, efficiency sits in the bottom 4 percent. You're burning a lot of power for performance that modern chips deliver at a fraction of the wattage. The 50MB of cache is generous, and the 9.6 GT/s QPI link was fast for its day, but the platform itself is a dead end. DDR4 memory support and LGA-2011 mean you're locked into old motherboards with no upgrade path.

Stacked against the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, this Xeon looks like it's from another planet. The 9800X3D has a fraction of the cores but absolutely destroys the E5-2698 V4 in single thread, gaming, and efficiency. For a home server or mixed-use box, the Ryzen is the obvious choice. The Xeon's only theoretical advantage is raw core count, but our multi thread benchmarks show even that advantage doesn't translate into real performance wins.

The other competitors in our list, like the Core i9 BX80673I99960X and the MICRO CENTER 9950X3D combo, are similarly lopsided matchups. The i9-9960X is also an older HEDT chip, but it runs at much higher clocks and supports newer platforms. The 9950X3D is in a completely different league for anything consumer-facing. Even the G.Skill Trident Z Neo, which is memory rather than a CPU, highlights the platform gap. This Xeon uses DDR4, while modern builds are moving to DDR5. The CG CHIPS GATE EPYC part is the only real server comparison here, and even that is a newer architecture with better efficiency.

Pricing on this chip is all over the place, which tells you a lot about the market for it. In Europe, listings range from EUR 596 to EUR 1,086 across DE, ES, and FR. That's a EUR 490 spread for the same processor. If you're in Europe and somehow need one of these, the lower end of that range is the only price that makes any sense, and even then it's a stretch. There's also a CAD 558 listing in Canada and a GBP 566 listing in the UK, but those currencies aren't directly comparable to the EUR prices.

The real question is whether any of these prices are good value, and the answer is mostly no. For what you'd pay at the low end, you can get a modern mid-range CPU that beats this Xeon in every metric we track, often while using a third of the power. The only scenario where this makes financial sense is if you already own a working LGA-2011 server board and just need a drop-in replacement to keep it running. Buying into this platform from scratch in 2024 is throwing money at a dead end.

The Intel Xeon E5-2698 V4 is a server chip from a different era, and reading the spec sheet feels a bit like opening a time capsule. Twenty cores, 50MB of cache, and a 2.20GHz base clock that can boost to 3.60GHz. On paper, that core count still sounds impressive. But this is a Broadwell-EP part from 2016, and the benchmarks tell a very different story than the marketing slide did back then.

This is not a chip for gamers or everyday desktop users. The gaming score of 6.8 out of 100 puts it firmly in 'don't bother' territory. Single thread performance lands in the bottom 3 percent of everything we've tested. That means anything relying on fast individual cores, which is most consumer software, will feel sluggish no matter how many cores are sitting idle.

Where this chip might still make sense is in very specific server workloads that scale across many threads and don't care about per-core speed. But even there, the multi thread score sits in the bottom 4 percent. Modern budget chips run circles around it while sipping power. This is a legacy part for people keeping old LGA-2011 servers alive, not a sensible new purchase.

Gamers should absolutely skip this. The gaming score of 6.8 out of 100 is one of the worst we've seen, and no amount of cores makes up for the slow single thread performance. If you're building a gaming PC, look at something like the Ryzen 7 9800X3D instead, it's in a completely different universe for gaming.

Anyone building a new server or workstation should also look elsewhere. The efficiency is terrible, the platform is dead, and the multi thread performance is disappointing despite the core count. A modern mid-range CPU will cost about the same as the low end of this Xeon's price range and beat it across the board. The only people who should consider this chip are those with an existing LGA-2011 board who need a cheap drop-in replacement to keep an old system running.

If you're running an old LGA-2011 server that needs a 20-core chip to keep chugging along, and you can find this Xeon at the bottom of the price range, it's a functional stopgap. The 50MB cache and ECC support mean it can still handle file serving, light virtualization, and other undemanding server tasks. Just don't expect it to be fast by any modern standard.

For everyone else, there's no reason to buy this. The gaming score is abysmal, single thread is bottom of the barrel, and the power draw is embarrassing for the performance you get. You'd be better off with almost any modern mid-range CPU, even a budget one. The only people who should consider this are those locked into the platform with no budget for a full upgrade.