Xeon E5-1660: specs and benchmarks

VS

Aggregate performance score

Xeon E5-1660
2012
6 cores / 12 threads, 130 Watt
5.29

Xeon E5-1660 provides acceptable benchmark performance at 5.29% of a leader's which is a 96-core EPYC 9655P.

Summary

Intel started Xeon E5-1660 sales 6 March 2012 at a recommended price of $290. This is a Sandy Bridge-E architecture desktop processor primarily aimed at office systems. It has 6 cores and 12 threads, and is based on 32 nm manufacturing technology, with a maximum frequency of 3900 MHz and a locked multiplier.

Compatibility-wise, this is FCLGA2011 processor with a TDP of 130 Watt. It supports DDR3 memory.

Primary details

Xeon E5-1660 processor market type (desktop or notebook), architecture, sales start time and pricing.

Place in the ranking1186
Place by popularitynot in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluation3.98
Market segmentServer
Power efficiency3.85of 100.00 (Ryzen Z1 Extreme)
Architecture codenameSandy Bridge-E (2011−2013)
Release date6 March 2012 (12 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)$290of 17,906 (Xeon Platinum 8280L)

Cost-effectiveness evaluation

Performance per price, higher is better.

Detailed specifications

Basic microprocessor parameters such as number of cores, number of threads, base frequency and turbo boost clock, lithography, cache size and multiplier lock state. These parameters can generally indicate CPU performance, but to be more precise you have to review its test results.

Physical cores6 (Hexa-Core)
Threads12
Base clock speed3.3 GHzof 4.7 GHz (FX-9590)
Boost clock speed3.9 GHzof 6.2 GHz (Core i9-14900KS)
L1 cache64 KB (per core)of 80 KB (EPYC 9965)
L2 cache256 KB (per core)
L3 cache15360 KB (shared)of 1152 MB (EPYC 9684X)
Chip lithography32 nmof 3 nm (Apple M3 Max 16-Core)
Die size435 mm2
Maximum core temperature64 °Cof 110 °C (Atom x7-E3950)
Number of transistors2,270 millionof 135,240 million (EPYC 9684X)
64 bit support+
Windows 11 compatibility-

Compatibility

Information on Xeon E5-1660 compatibility with other computer components and devices: motherboard (look for socket type), power supply unit (look for power consumption) etc. Useful when planning a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. Note that power consumption of some processors can well exceed their nominal TDP, even without overclocking. Some can even double their declared thermals given that the motherboard allows to tune the CPU power parameters.

Number of CPUs in a configuration1of 8 (Opteron 842)
SocketFCLGA2011
Power consumption (TDP)130 Wattof 500 Watt (Xeon 6960P)

Technologies and extensions

Technological capabilities and additional instructions supported by Xeon E5-1660. You'll probably need this information if you require some particular technology.

Instruction set extensionsIntel® AVX
AES-NI+
AVX+
Enhanced SpeedStep (EIST)+
Turbo Boost Technology2.0
Hyper-Threading Technology+
Idle States+
Thermal Monitoring+
Flex Memory Access-
Demand Based Switching+

Security technologies

Processor technologies aimed at improving security, for example, by protecting against hacks.

TXT+
EDB+

Virtualization technologies

Supported virtual machine optimization technologies. Some are specific to Intel only, some to AMD.

VT-d+
VT-x+
EPT+

Memory specs

Types, maximum amount and channel number of RAM supported by Xeon E5-1660's memory controller. Depending on the motherboard, higher memory frequency may be supported.

Supported memory typesDDR3
Maximum memory size256 GBof 6 TiB (EPYC 9124)
Max memory channels4of 12 (Xeon Platinum 9221)
Maximum memory bandwidth51.2 GB/sof 460.8 GB/s (EPYC 9124)
ECC memory support+

Graphics specifications

General parameters of a GPU integrated into Xeon E5-1660.

Integrated graphics cardN/A

Peripherals

Specifications and connection types of supported peripherals.

PCIe version3.0of 5.0 (Core i9-12900K)
PCI Express lanes40of 128 (EPYC 7551P)

Benchmark performance

Single-core and multi-core benchmark results of Xeon E5-1660. Overall benchmark performance is measured in points in 0-100 range, higher is better.


Combined synthetic benchmark score

This is our combined benchmark performance rating. We are regularly improving our combining algorithms, but if you find some perceived inconsistencies, feel free to speak up in comments section, we usually fix problems quickly.

Xeon E5-1660 5.29

Passmark

Passmark CPU Mark is a widespread benchmark, consisting of 8 different types of workload, including integer and floating point math, extended instructions, compression, encryption and physics calculation. There is also one separate single-threaded scenario measuring single-core performance.

Xeon E5-1660 8407

GeekBench 5 Single-Core

GeekBench 5 Single-Core is a cross-platform application developed in the form of CPU tests that independently recreate certain real-world tasks with which to accurately measure performance. This version uses only a single CPU core.

Xeon E5-1660 598

GeekBench 5 Multi-Core

GeekBench 5 Multi-Core is a cross-platform application developed in the form of CPU tests that independently recreate certain real-world tasks with which to accurately measure performance. This version uses all available CPU cores.

Xeon E5-1660 2995

Gaming performance

Closest competitors

Xeon E5-1660's performance relative to its closest rivals among server CPUs.


AMD equivalent

According to our data, the closest AMD alternative to Xeon E5-1660 is Opteron 6386 SE, which is slower by 1% and lower by 10 positions in our ranking.

Here are some closest AMD rivals to Xeon E5-1660:

Opteron 6278 163.52
Xeon E5-1660 100
Opteron 6348 93.38
Opteron 6380 79.58

Similar processors

Here is our recommendation of several processors that are more or less close in performance to the one reviewed.

Recommended GPUs

People consider these graphics cards to be good for Xeon E5-1660, according to our PC configuration statistics.

These are the fastest graphics cards for Xeon E5-1660 in our user configuration statistics. There is a total of 143 configurations using Xeon E5-1660 in our database.

All comparisons with Xeon E5-1660

Community ratings

Here is the rating given to the reviewed processor by our users. Let others know your opinion by rating it yourself.


4.2 74 votes

Rate Xeon E5-1660 on a scale of 1 to 5:

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

Questions & comments

Here you can ask a question about Xeon E5-1660, agree or disagree with our judgements, or report an error or mismatch.