The Intel Broadwell Xeon E3 v4 Review: 95W, 65W and 35W with eDRAM

Our Broadwell coverage on the desktop has included reviews of the two consumer processors and a breakdown of IPC gains from generation to generation. One issue surrounding Broadwell on consumer platforms was that the top quad-core model was rated at one third less power in comparison to previous Intel quad core processors. Specifically, Broadwell is 65W against 84-95W in past generations. This puts Broadwell’s out-of-the-box peak performance at a TDP (and frequency) disadvantage. However in a somewhat under-the-radar launch, Intel also released a series of Broadwell Xeons under the E3-12xx v4 line. We sourced three socketed models, the E3-1285 v4 at 95W, the E3-1285L v4 at 65W and the E3-1265L v4 at 35W to get a better scope of Broadwell's scaling across different power requirements.