Pentium B970 vs Xeon E5620

Primary details

Comparing Xeon E5620 and Pentium B970 processor market type (desktop or notebook), architecture, sales start time and price.

Place in the ranking	1815	2729
Place by popularity	not in top-100	not in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluation	0.08	no data
Market segment	Server	Laptop
Series	no data	Intel Pentium
Power efficiency	2.67	1.84
Architecture codename	Westmere-EP (2010−2011)	Sandy Bridge (2011−2013)
Release date	16 March 2010 (14 years ago)	1 January 2012 (12 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)	$35	$125

Cost-effectiveness evaluation

Performance per price, higher is better.

Detailed specifications

Xeon E5620 and Pentium B970 basic parameters such as number of cores, number of threads, base frequency and turbo boost clock, lithography, cache size and multiplier lock state. These parameters indirectly say of CPU speed, though for more precise assessment you have to consider their test results.

Physical cores	4 (Quad-Core)	2 (Dual-core)
Threads	8	2
Base clock speed	2.4 GHz	2.3 GHz
Boost clock speed	2.66 GHz	2.3 GHz
Bus type	no data	DMI 2.0
Bus rate	no data	4 × 5 GT/s
Multiplier	no data	23
L1 cache	64 KB (per core)	64K (per core)
L2 cache	256 KB (per core)	256K (per core)
L3 cache	12 MB (shared)	2 MB (shared)
Chip lithography	32 nm	32 nm
Die size	239 mm2	131 mm2
Maximum core temperature	78 °C	85 °C
Number of transistors	1,170 million	504 million
64 bit support	+	+
Windows 11 compatibility	-	-

Compatibility

Information on Xeon E5620 and Pentium B970 compatibility with other computer components: 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 configuration	2	1 (Uniprocessor)
Socket	FCLGA1366,LGA1366	FCPGA988
Power consumption (TDP)	80 Watt	35 Watt

Technologies and extensions

Technological solutions and additional instructions supported by Xeon E5620 and Pentium B970. You'll probably need this information if you require some particular technology.

Instruction set extensions	Intel® SSE4.2	Intel® SSE4.1, Intel® SSE4.2
AES-NI	+	-
FMA	-	+
Enhanced SpeedStep (EIST)	+	+
My WiFi	no data	-
Turbo Boost Technology	1.0	-
Hyper-Threading Technology	+	-
Idle States	+	+
Thermal Monitoring	-	+
Flex Memory Access	no data	+
Demand Based Switching	+	-
PAE	40 Bit	no data
FDI	no data	+
Fast Memory Access	no data	+

Security technologies

Xeon E5620 and Pentium B970 technologies aimed at improving security, for example, by protecting against hacks.

TXT	+	-
EDB	+	+
Anti-Theft	no data	-

Virtualization technologies

Virtual machine speed-up technologies supported by Xeon E5620 and Pentium B970 are enumerated here.

VT-d	+	-
VT-x	+	-
EPT	+	-

Memory specs

Types, maximum amount and channel quantity of RAM supported by Xeon E5620 and Pentium B970. Depending on the motherboard, higher memory frequencies may be supported.

Supported memory types	DDR3	DDR3
Maximum memory size	288 GB	16 GB
Max memory channels	3	2
Maximum memory bandwidth	25.6 GB/s	21.335 GB/s
ECC memory support	+	-

Graphics specifications

General parameters of integrated GPUs, if any.

Integrated graphics card	no data	Intel® HD Graphics for 2nd Generation Intel® Processors
Graphics max frequency	no data	1.15 GHz

Graphics interfaces

Available interfaces and connections of Xeon E5620 and Pentium B970 integrated GPUs.

Number of displays supported	no data	2
eDP	no data	+
DisplayPort	-	+
HDMI	-	+
SDVO	no data	+
CRT	no data	+

Peripherals

Specifications and connection of peripherals supported by Xeon E5620 and Pentium B970.

PCIe version	2.0	2.0
PCI Express lanes	no data	16

Synthetic benchmark performance

Various benchmark results of the processors in comparison. Overall score is measured in points in 0-100 range, higher is better.

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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.

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Pros & cons summary

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Performance score	2.26	0.68
Recency	16 March 2010	1 January 2012
Physical cores	4	2
Threads	8	2
Power consumption (TDP)	80 Watt	35 Watt

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Should you still have questions on choice between Xeon E5620 and Pentium B970, ask them in Comments section, and we shall answer.

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