which is better...? xeon E3-1220 v5 or i5? i7?

[lieutenantfrost]

a few people have recommended I get xeon E3-1220 v5 for my workstation pc, do podcasts,video streaming, uploads etc and some occasional gaming. Im not familiar with this chip at all. is it superior to an i5 6600? or an i7 4th gen? Which is the better buy?

 

[KieranPCGamer]

If you need a workstation build i would go with the i7 5820k with its 6cores and 12 threads.

 

[Rogue Leader]

I wouldn't get the 1220v5 it does not have hyperthreading. It sounds like you will be multitasking quite a bit which would make that useful. I would get the E3-1230v5. 4 cores, 8 threads, new skylake architecture, very power efficient, you don't need a crazy expensive motherboard to run it (like an X99 for an i7-5820k). Its a great buy, it will cost you a bit more than the i5-6600 but the i5 doesn't have hyperthreading either. You'd need to move up to the i7-6700 for that. The Xeon is cheaper than the i7.

 

[synphul]

There are several x99 motherboards that run around the same price as c232/236 for the skylake xeon. The 5820k would be a good choice for heavier multitasking and streaming as well as for video editing and conversion/encoding. It also runs ddr4 so skylake doesn't have the edge there.

At 4c/4t that 1220v5 isn't much different other than maybe a couple technical details from an i5 which explains the price. Previous xeon recommendations were for xeons which were hyper threaded like an i7. For instance previous versions like the 1231v3 on haswell/1150. For people recommending the 1220v5 for a workstation pc it sounds like they're blindly suggesting it because it's a 'xeon' without knowing it lacks hyper threading. It does support ecc memory which most people don't use anyway. Like the skylake k series though there's no stock cooler for the 5820k so you'll need a cooler for it.