Intel Releases First Skylake Xeons In Form Of Entry-level E3-1200 v5 Series

Intel’s just-released Xeon E3-1200 v5 series of processors might be “entry-level”, but they’re the first in the entire Xeon lineup to sport the company’s latest microarchitecture, Skylake, under the hood. Built on a 14nm process, Skylake brings with it performance and power improvements, support for both DDR3L and DDR4, as well as support for the latest Thunderbolt standard, 3.0.

As entry-level models, these E3-1200 v5 Xeons are designed for 1-socket motherboards and come in quad-core variants only. All but three models found at the bottom of the lineup support HyperThreading to deliver an effective 8 threads.

As seen in the shot above, prices range from $193 (per 1,000) all the way up to $612, with there being a lot of wiggle room in between. You’ll also notice that not all of the models feature integrated graphics, so if that’s important to you, you’ll want to opt for a model that ends in “5” (eg: E3-1245). Specifics, such as core counts, are not mentioned for the GPU, but it is shown that 4K/60Hz is supported through DisplayPort.

Of all the models, I find the E3-1275 and E3-1270 to be quite attractive. Both scale up to 4GHz, which is excellent for a Xeon at this price-point ($339), making it a great choice for a workstation. For headless home server / data store uses, the E3-1220 also stands out as a great value.

These new Xeons are designed to be paired up with the C236 chipset, and some vendors, such as Supermicro, are already offering products including it.

It’s also worth noting that there exist two mobile and four embedded variants of the E3-1200 v5 series as well, which should become available soon from vendors that support those sorts of products.