The Xeon Entry Quad-Core CPU Review: Xeon E-2174G, E-2134, and E-2104G Tested
by Ian Cutress on March 11, 2019 10:30 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Xeon
- Enterprise CPUs
- Coffee Lake
- Xeon E
- C246
Test Bed and Setup
As per our processor testing policy, we take a premium category motherboard suitable for the socket, and equip the system with a suitable amount of memory running at the manufacturer's maximum supported frequency. This is also typically run at JEDEC subtimings where possible. It is noted that some users are not keen on this policy, stating that sometimes the maximum supported frequency is quite low, or faster memory is available at a similar price, or that the JEDEC speeds can be prohibitive for performance. While these comments make sense, ultimately very few users apply memory profiles (either XMP or other) as they require interaction with the BIOS, and most users will fall back on JEDEC supported speeds - this includes home users as well as industry who might want to shave off a cent or two from the cost or stay within the margins set by the manufacturer. Where possible, we will extend out testing to include faster memory modules either at the same time as the review or a later date.
| Test Setup | |||||
| Intel Xeon | E-2186G E-2176G E-2146G E-2136 E-2174G E-2134 E-2104G |
Supermicro X11SCA-W |
v1 | TRUE Copper | Corsair Ballistix 4x4GB DDR4-2666 |
| E3-1280 v5 E3-1275 v5 E3-1270 v5 |
GIGABYTE X170-Extreme ECC |
F21e | Silverstone AR10-115XS* |
G.Skill RipjawsV 2x16GB DDR4-2133 |
|
| Intel | i9-9900K i9-9700K i9-9600K |
ASRock Z390 Gaming i7 |
P1.70 | TRUE Copper | Crucial Ballistix 4x4GB DDR4-2666 |
| Intel | i7-8086K i7-8700K i5-8600K i5-8400 |
ASRock Z390 Gaming i7 |
P1.70 | TRUE Copper | Crucial Ballistix 4x4 GB DDR4-2666 |
| AMD | Ryzen 7 2700X Ryzen 5 2600X |
ASRock X370 Gaming K4 |
P4.80 | Wraith Max* | G.Skill SniperX 2x8GB DDR4-2933 |
| GPU | Sapphire RX 460 2GB (CPU Tests) MSI GTX 1080 Gaming 8G (Gaming Tests) |
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| PSU | Corsair AX860i Corsair AX1200i |
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| SSD | Crucial MX200 1TB | ||||
| OS | Windows 10 x64 RS3 1709 Spectre and Meltdown Patched |
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| *VRM Supplimented with SST-FHP141-VF 173 CFM fans | |||||
Many thanks to...
We must thank the following companies for kindly providing hardware for our multiple test beds. Some of this hardware is not in this test bed specifically, but is used in other testing.
| Hardware Providers | |||
| Sapphire RX 460 Nitro | MSI GTX 1080 Gaming X OC | Crucial MX200 + MX500 SSDs |
Corsair AX860i + AX1200i PSUs |
 |
 |
 |
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| G.Skill RipjawsV, SniperX, FlareX |
Crucial Ballistix DDR4 |
Silverstone Coolers |
Silverstone Fans |
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29 Comments
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artk2219 - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
In what world is a GTX 1080 antiquated? Sure its not an RTX 2070+ but that doesn't mean its not in the same performance class. Especially since there is very little consumer software that supports raytracing.ondma - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
In the world of testing *CPU* performance, where you want to most powerful gpu available to minimize gpu limitations. The 1080 is almost 3 years old, and even worse it is a vanilla 1080, not even the most powerful of its own generation, much less the new generation.bananaforscale - Saturday, March 16, 2019 - link
It's also common to all the test setups. If the GPU was changed to an RTX 2080Ti AT would have to benchmark all the systems again. Also, Xeons don't go into gaming systems, so the benefit would be questionable. Sure, you are right, but in a way that's kinda irrelevant.Foeketijn - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
If only Supermicro/Tyan etc, would make an AM4 board. I would probably stop buying xeons. 24/7 build quality, IPMI, ECC and a 2D videocard and they have a new customer.I build two AM4 semi WS's and was reminded why I stopped messing around with consumer motherboards. Surprises everywhere. Bios hickups, misuse of power connections etc.
RSAUser - Monday, March 11, 2019 - link
These are Xeons, can't we add benchmarks like hosting a site and seeing how many requests it can handle? You know, things Xeons are actually used for (very rarely for gaming...)?That Wattage graph is great, no wattage/performance graph? Xeon lineup, as you stated, usually has strict power requirements, so I'd like to know the performance of those tests based on the power usage.
And why is there not Thread Ripper if that is the primary line-up these processors are competing with at that price range + ECC memory? (Even though the R5/7 seem to support ECC unofficially depending on the motherboard vendor)
SaturnusDK - Monday, March 11, 2019 - link
If in doubt. All Asrock AM4 MBs support unbuffered ECC RAM. All of them.mode_13h - Monday, March 11, 2019 - link
Thanks.GNUminex_l_cowsay - Monday, March 11, 2019 - link
Naming a level of graphics settings, IGP, was a bad idea. Frame rates in Civ6 are an uninformative metric of CPU performance, even for the purpose of playing Civ6.mczak - Monday, March 11, 2019 - link
The conclusion why the E-2104G doesn't reach its TDP is very much incorrect. Most of that delta to the other chips will be due to the low clocks (without turbo), only a small fraction of it will be due to missing HT.(And, FWIW, if you want to really see the max power, you'd also have to run a 3d app like furmark simultaneously, I don't think this was done. Possibly for the other chips it wouldn't make much of a difference, if they stick to their limits, but I'm pretty sure for the e-2104G the power draw would increase substantially. Of course though there's merit in full cpuload only power too, but this isn't the maximum the chip will use.)
mooninite - Monday, March 11, 2019 - link
You should add a section about how to buy these CPUs because they're not retail CPUs. Newegg had them listed for about a month before taking them off.Since these are marketed as workstation / entry-server chips why are there no video encoding, SQL, or Java/PHP processing benchmarks?
Video encoding in particular (VP9) using VAAPI would be helpful.