Intel Xeon E5-2680 Processor

2026-09-19

CPU Server

Intel Xeon E5-2680 Processor

Exhibit Type: Enterprise Hardware Specification & Architectural Dossier
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Microarchitecture: Sandy Bridge-EP (32 nm)
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Socket: Socket R (LGA 2011 / FC-LGA10)
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Museum Inventory: 3 Units (Verified SR0KH / C2 Stepping)
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Source Authority: TechPowerUp, Intel Ark & PassMark

1. Technical Overview & Key Specifications

Category	Property	Specification
Processor Identity	Model Name	Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2680 (SKU: 64583 • PassMark ID: 1221)
	Microarchitecture	Sandy Bridge-EP (Xeon E5 Family)
	Market Segment	Server / Workstation (Up to 2-socket SMP configuration)
	Launch Date	March 6, 2012 (Q1’12 launch • PassMark charts Q2’12)
	Part Numbers / S-Spec	`SR0KH` (C2 stepping • Verified Museum Inventory: 3 units), `SR0GY` (C1 stepping)
Physical & Manufacturing	CPU Socket	Socket R (LGA 2011, FC-LGA10 package, 2011-pin)
	Manufacturing Process	32 nm High-k Metal Gate (Intel Foundry)
	Transistor Count	2.27 Billion transistors
	Die Surface Area	435 mm²
Cores & Performance	Physical Cores / Threads	8 Cores / 16 Threads (Intel Hyper-Threading Technology)
	Base Clock Frequency	2.70 GHz (2700 MHz)
	Max Turbo Frequency	Up to 3.50 GHz (Intel Turbo Boost Technology 2.0)
	Base Clock / Multiplier	100 MHz BCLK / 27.0× (Multiplier Locked)
	Bus Interconnect	Dual Intel® QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) links at 8.00 GT/s
	Multi-CPU Scalability	Up to 2 Processors (2S symmetric multiprocessing)
Thermal & Electrical	Thermal Design Power (TDP)	130 W
Thermal & Electrical	Nominal Operating Voltage	1.35 V
Cache Hierarchy	Level 1 (L1) Cache	64 KB per core (32 KB Data + 32 KB Instruction) • 512 KB Total
	Level 2 (L2) Cache	256 KB dedicated per core • 2048 KB (2 MB) Total
	Level 3 (L3) Cache	20 MB Intel® Smart Cache (shared ring pool across all 8 cores)
Memory Controller	Memory Topology	Quad-Channel DDR3 memory interface (4 discrete channels)
	Supported Memory Types	DDR3-800 / 1066 / 1333 / 1600 MHz
	Max Capacity / ECC	Up to 384 GB (PassMark specification); ECC supported
	Module Compatibility	Registered DIMMs (RDIMM), Load-Reduced DIMMs (LRDIMM), Unbuffered (UDIMM)
PassMark Benchmarks	Average CPU Mark (Multithread)	9,284 (Median: 9,435 across 294 low-margin samples)
	Single Thread Rating	1,564 MOps/Sec
	Server CPU Category Rank	Rank #736 out of 1,261 Server CPUs in PassMark database
Expansion & Graphics	PCI Express Interface	PCI-Express Revision 3.0 (Gen 3) direct CPU root complex
Expansion & Graphics	Integrated Graphics Engine	None (N/A • requires discrete GPU or server motherboard onboard BMC video)

2. Silicon Topology & Sandy Bridge-EP Microarchitecture

Compute Die Scale

2.27B

Transistors across 435 mm² die surface

Physical Execution Engines

8 Cores / 16 Threads

2.70 GHz base clock with 3.50 GHz turbo boost

Shared Last Level Cache

20 MB

Intel Smart Cache on bi-directional ring bus

Internal Silicon Die Topology & Ring Interconnect

+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|                    INTEL XEON E5-2680 SILICON TOPOLOGY (SANDY BRIDGE-EP)              |
|                                                                                       |
|   +-------------+  +-------------+  +-------------+  +-------------+                  |
|   |   CORE 0    |  |   CORE 1    |  |   CORE 2    |  |   CORE 3    |                  |
|   | 32K+32K L1  |  | 32K+32K L1  |  | 32K+32K L1  |  | 32K+32K L1  |                  |
|   |   256K L2   |  |   256K L2   |  |   256K L2   |  |   256K L2   |                  |
|   +------+------+  +------+------+  +------+------+  +------+------+                  |
|          |                |                |                |                         |
|   === ring stop ======== ring stop ====== ring stop ====== ring stop ==============+  |
|   ||     |                |                |                |                     ||  |
|   ||  2.5MB L3         2.5MB L3         2.5MB L3         2.5MB L3                 ||  |
|   ||                                                                              ||  |
|   ||          BI-DIRECTIONAL RING INTERCONNECT (HIGH-BANDWIDTH BUS)               ||  |
|   ||                                                                              ||  |
|   ||  2.5MB L3         2.5MB L3         2.5MB L3         2.5MB L3                 ||  |
|   ||     |                |                |                |                     ||  |
|   === ring stop ======== ring stop ====== ring stop ====== ring stop ==============+  |
|          |                |                |                |                         |
|   +------+------+  +------+------+  +------+------+  +------+------+                  |
|   |   CORE 4    |  |   CORE 5    |  |   CORE 6    |  |   CORE 7    |                  |
|   | 32K+32K L1  |  | 32K+32K L1  |  | 32K+32K L1  |  | 32K+32K L1  |                  |
|   |   256K L2   |  |   256K L2   |  |   256K L2   |  |   256K L2   |                  |
|   +-------------+  +-------------+  +-------------+  +-------------+                  |
|                                                                                       |
|   [ INTEGRATED MEMORY CONTROLLER ]           [ I/O & INTERCONNECT CONTROLLER ]        |
|    - 4 x DDR3 Channels (Quad-Channel)         - Direct PCI Express 3.0 Root Complex   |
|    - ECC Registered / Unbuffered              - Dual QPI Links (8.00 GT/s each to 2S) |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

3. Quad-Channel Memory & QuickPath Interconnect (QPI)

Integrated Quad-Channel DDR3

Memory Channels: 4 discrete 64-bit channels integrated directly into processor silicon.
Speeds Supported: DDR3-800, DDR3-1066, DDR3-1333, and DDR3-1600 MHz.
Enterprise Reliability: Full hardware support for ECC (Error-Correcting Code) Registered RDIMMs and LRDIMMs.
Massive Memory Bandwidth: High memory throughput essential for multi-tenant hypervisor workloads.

Dual 8.00 GT/s QPI Links

Interconnect Type: Intel® QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) point-to-point packetized bus.
Bus Transfer Rate: 8.00 GT/s (Gigatransfers per second) per link direction.
Dual Socket Coherency: Dual QPI links enable ultra-fast cache-coherent communication with a secondary CPU in 2S configurations.
Scalability: Designed for seamless SMP operation across dual-socket enterprise motherboards.

4. Advanced Technologies, Virtualization & Security

Technology Category	Feature / Instruction Set	Functional Capability
Hardware Virtualization	Intel® VT-x	Hardware virtualization assistance with Extended Page Tables (EPT) for low hypervisor overhead
	Intel® VT-d	Virtualization for Directed I/O (PCI device passthrough to guest VMs in Proxmox / ESXi)
	Hyper-Threading (HTT)	Enables 16 logical execution contexts from 8 physical processing cores
Vector & Crypto Acceleration	Intel® AVX	Advanced Vector Extensions: 256-bit SIMD integer and floating-point acceleration
	Intel® AES-NI	Hardware-accelerated AES encryption and decryption for wire-speed VPNs and storage arrays
	SSE4.1 / SSE4.2	Streaming SIMD Extensions 4.1/4.2 plus SSSE3, SSE3, SSE2, SSE, and MMX instructions
Platform Security & Power	Intel® TXT & XD bit	Trusted Execution Technology and Execute Disable Bit memory buffer protection against malware
	Intel® Turbo Boost 2.0	Dynamic frequency scaling boosting core speeds from 2.70 GHz base up to 3.50 GHz under load
	Enhanced SpeedStep (EIST)	Intelligent voltage and frequency throttling to reduce idle server power draw

5. PassMark Benchmark Dossier & Synthetic Performance (PerformanceTest V10)

Multithread Rating (CPU Mark)

9,284

Median: 9,435 across 294 samples (Low margin for error)

Single Thread Rating

1,564

Single-core execution throughput (MOps/Sec)

Data Encryption (AES-NI)

2,902

MBytes/Sec sustained hardware cryptographic rate

PassMark PerformanceTest V10 Detailed Test Suite Results

Test Suite Routine	Average Result Metric	Operational Context
Integer Math	37,512 MOps/Sec	General core processing & kernel execution
Floating Point Math	13,884 MOps/Sec	Mathematical modeling and scientific simulation
Find Prime Numbers	47 Million Primes/Sec	Pure CPU computational pipeline throughput
Random String Sorting	23,795 Thousand Strings/Sec	Memory controller and cache indexing efficiency
Data Encryption	2,902 MBytes/Sec	Hardware AES-NI encrypted storage & IPsec/WireGuard VPNs
Data Compression	162,862 KBytes/Sec	ZFS LZ4 compression and backup archival pipelines
Physics Simulation	688 Frames/Sec	Real-time physics calculation across parallel threads
Extended Instructions	7,202 Million Matrices/Sec	Intel AVX 256-bit vectorized matrix transformations
Single Thread Performance	1,564 MOps/Sec	Single-threaded latency and serial task responsiveness

PassMark Relative Hierarchy: Sandy Bridge-EP Stack

Processor Model	Cores / Frequency	Average CPU Mark	Relative Variance
Intel Xeon E5-2687W	8C / 16T @ 3.10 GHz	10,028	+8.0%
Intel Xeon E5-2690	8C / 16T @ 2.90 GHz	9,713	+4.6%
Intel Xeon E5-2680 (Exhibit #2963)	8C / 16T @ 2.70 GHz	9,284	Baseline (0.0%)
Intel Xeon E5-2670	8C / 16T @ 2.60 GHz	8,875	-4.4%
Intel Xeon E5-2665	8C / 16T @ 2.40 GHz	8,287	-10.7%
Intel Xeon E5-2660	8C / 16T @ 2.20 GHz	7,982	-14.0%
Intel Xeon E5-2650	8C / 16T @ 2.00 GHz	7,416	-20.1%

6. Platform Synergy: Pairing with Supermicro X9SRi-F (Exhibit #2957)

Seamless Architectural Integration

The Intel Xeon E5-2680 processor is the ideal high-performance silicon match for the Supermicro X9SRi-F server motherboard cataloged in Exhibit #2957. Built on Intel’s Romley platform, the hardware subsystems integrate with zero architectural bottlenecks:

Hardware Interface	Intel Xeon E5-2680 (Exhibit #2963)	Supermicro X9SRi-F (Exhibit #2957)
CPU Socket	Socket R (LGA 2011, 2011-pin)	Single Socket R with 6-phase VRM rated up to 135W TDP
Memory Bus	Quad-Channel DDR3 memory controller	8 DIMM slots arranged in 4 channels (up to 256 GB RDIMM)
PCI Express Bandwidth	PCIe 3.0 (8.0 GT/s) direct root ports	Drives primary Slot 6 (x16) and Slot 4 (x8 in x16) natively
Display Output	No integrated graphics silicon (headless)	Onboard Matrox G200eW via Nuvoton BMC for local console

7. Curator’s Assessment & Homelab Applicability

Museum Hardware Provenance: Mateo’s Museum archive holds 3 verified physical units of the Intel Xeon E5-2680 processor. All three units feature production S-Spec SR0KH (C2 stepping), which incorporates critical hardware errata fixes and enhanced VT-d virtualization stability compared to earlier stepping revisions.
Enterprise Virtualization Value: Delivering an Average CPU Mark of 9,284 with 8 physical cores and 16 hardware execution threads at 2.70 GHz base / 3.50 GHz turbo, the Xeon E5-2680 remains a formidable compute foundation for homelab hypervisors running Proxmox VE, TrueNAS, or container clusters.
Exceptional Cryptographic Throughput: Hardware AES-NI instructions achieve 2,902 MB/s in PassMark encryption benchmarks, ensuring wire-speed IPsec and WireGuard VPN processing alongside full line-rate encrypted ZFS pool operations.
Quad-Channel Memory Bandwidth: Paired with registered DDR3 ECC memory, the processor provides four memory channels that eliminate memory bandwidth bottlenecks during concurrent multi-tenant virtual machine execution.
Robust I/O Virtualization (VT-d): Native support for Intel VT-d and PCIe 3.0 allows seamless PCI device passthrough, enabling direct assignment of SAS HBAs, 10GbE networking NICs, or compute accelerators directly into guest VMs.
Sweet Spot of the Generation: Within 4.6% of the top 135W Xeon E5-2690 (9,713) and beating the widely deployed E5-2670 (8,875) and E5-2660 (7,982), the E5-2680 represents the premier balance of multi-core throughput, clock frequency, and thermal efficiency for Socket 2011.