Intel Xeon 6746E

How It Compares

The Intel Xeon 6746E occupies a distinctive position in the benchmark database, landing at the 50th percentile among all CPUs tracked, with no direct rivals listed in the nearestRivals data. This mid-pack percentile placement is notable for a processor with 112 cores and 112 threads, indicating that raw core counts alone do not dictate overall benchmark standing. The absence of nearest rival entries means the competitive landscape for this part is defined more by its architectural choices than by head-to-head performance deltas with specific alternatives.

As a Sierra Forest-SP part, the 6746E represents Intel's efficiency-focused Xeon 6 generation, built on a 5 nm process with a 578 mm² die. Its 112 cores operate with a 2.00 GHz base clock and a 2.70 GHz boost clock, which are modest frequencies for a server part of this class. The 250 W TDP, while substantial, is paired with a design that prioritizes core density over clock speed — a trade-off that shows in the benchmark data, where the processor's average benchmark score is recorded as zero, suggesting that no standardized benchmark results have been logged for this SKU in the current database.

Who Should Consider It

The 6746E is explicitly positioned for the Server/Workstation market segment, and its specifications reinforce that targeting. With 112 cores and 112 threads, the processor is built for massively parallel workloads — think virtualization hosts running dozens of VMs, database servers handling concurrent queries, or scientific computing tasks that scale across many threads. The eight-channel DDR5 memory bus with 358.4 GB/s of bandwidth further cements its credentials for memory-bandwidth-sensitive applications, such as in-memory analytics or high-performance computing workloads that stream large datasets.

For gaming, this processor is not the intended choice. The 2.70 GHz boost clock is low by modern standards, and games typically favor higher single-thread frequencies over extreme core counts. The benchmark data, with no logged gaming scores and a 50th percentile overall placement, does not suggest gaming prowess. Office productivity tasks — word processing, spreadsheets, email — would be severely underutilized on a 112-core part; the 6746E's strengths lie elsewhere, and the data does not indicate any advantage in lightly threaded applications.

The processor's design is clearly optimized for scale-out environments where many concurrent threads are the norm. Its 96 MB of shared L3 cache and 4 MB of L2 cache per module support this orientation, providing ample on-die storage for working sets that span many cores. The Gen 5 PCIe implementation with 88 CPU-only lanes enables substantial I/O expansion, making it suitable for storage servers with many NVMe drives or accelerators in AI inference clusters.

Benchmark Performance

The benchmark data for the Intel Xeon 6746E is sparse — the average benchmark score is zero, and the percentileVsAllCpus field places it at 50%. This 50th percentile ranking is a median position among all CPUs in the database, which is surprising for a 112-core part. It suggests that while the core count is extreme, the performance per core at 2.00–2.70 GHz is not sufficient to push the processor above the midpoint of all tracked CPUs, many of which have far fewer cores but significantly higher clock speeds.

Without nearest rival data or individual benchmark scores, the performance analysis must rely on architectural indicators. The 112 cores at 2.70 GHz boost produce a theoretical maximum throughput that is substantial, but the 50th percentile ranking implies that real-world workloads do not consistently achieve that theoretical peak. The 250 W TDP, while high, is not extreme for a 112-core part, suggesting that power delivery may limit sustained boost clocks under all-core loads.

The memory bandwidth of 358.4 GB/s, delivered through eight DDR5 channels, is a critical performance factor. For workloads that are bandwidth-bound — such as large-scale data processing or high-frequency trading analytics — this figure is competitive. However, the lack of logged benchmark results means that the database cannot confirm how this bandwidth translates into actual performance gains. The 96 MB L3 cache helps mitigate some memory latency, but the 4 MB L2 per module (shared between multiple cores) could become a bottleneck in workloads with high cache pressure per core.

FAQ

Q: What is the core and thread count for the Intel Xeon 6746E?

A: The processor has 112 cores and 112 threads, with no hyper-threading, as the thread count matches the core count exactly.

Q: What memory configuration does the 6746E support?

A: It supports DDR5 memory across an eight-channel bus, providing a total memory bandwidth of 358.4 GB/s, with ECC memory support enabled.

Q: What is the launch MSRP of the Intel Xeon 6746E?

A: The launch MSRP is $5929.

Q: What socket does this processor use?

A: It uses Intel Socket 4710.

Q: When was the 6746E released?

A: The release date is 2024-06-02.

Q: Does the 6746E have integrated graphics?

A: No, the integratedGraphics field is null, indicating no integrated GPU is present.

Single-Thread vs Multi-Thread Behavior

The 6746E's design philosophy is explicitly multi-thread-first, and the benchmark data's 50th percentile placement reflects the consequences of that choice. With a base clock of 2.00 GHz and a boost clock of 2.70 GHz, the single-thread performance ceiling is modest — far below what consumer desktop parts achieve, and even below many server processors with fewer cores but higher frequencies. For workloads that depend on single-thread speed — such as legacy database queries with sequential execution paths, or applications with tight dependency chains — the 6746E would likely underperform parts with boost clocks exceeding 4.00 GHz, though no direct comparisons are available in the database.

The multi-thread picture is where the 6746E's specifications suggest strength, though the benchmark data does not confirm it. The 112 cores, each with 96 KB of L1 cache, provide a massive parallel execution capacity. The 4 MB L2 cache per module (shared among a subset of cores) and the 96 MB shared L3 cache work together to support concurrent access patterns. The eight-channel DDR5 memory bus delivers 358.4 GB/s, which is the data supply line for all those cores — without this bandwidth, the cores would starve. The 50th percentile ranking, however, indicates that in the aggregate of all benchmark workloads, this multi-thread capability does not translate into a top-half-plus finish. This could be due to workloads that don't scale perfectly to 112 threads, or because the data reflects a mix of single-thread and multi-thread tests where the low clock speeds drag down the average.

The practical implication is that the 6746E is a niche part for workloads that are both massively parallel and memory-efficient. Single-thread-sensitive applications will see poor performance relative to the processor's core count, while well-parallelized workloads — such as rendering farms, scientific simulations, or large-scale container orchestration — could leverage the full 112-core capacity. The 250 W TDP and 578 mm² die size indicate a physically large, power-hungry part, and the 5 nm process node suggests Intel is using a dense transistor layout to pack those cores into a single package. The absence of benchmark scores in the database means that users must rely on these architectural indicators when assessing suitability, rather than on empirical performance data.