These new lower end E5 16xxs are essentially Core i7s and priced about equivalently[1]. The 26xx's are much beefier (I think people were expecting 26xx's across

These new lower end E5 16xxs are essentially Core i7s and priced about equivalently[1]. The 26xx's are much beefier (I think people were expecting 26xx's across the line but matching specs[2], this is obviously not the case). I'd be pleasantly surprised if the 12C Mac Pro sold for less than $6K but as you can see the big ($1500!) bump is between the 6C/8C and they didn't talk pricing beyond the 6C so if they don't eat the cost you're looking at a $6K 8C and a $7K/$8K 12C. 4C exact match: $294 Xeon E5-1620 v2 4C 3.7GHz/3.9GHz 10MB L3 130W TDP 6C exact match: $583 Xeon E5-1650 v2 6C 3.5GHz/3.9GHz 12MB L3 130W TDP 8C closest match (underclocked?): $2057 Xeon E5-2667 v2 8C 3.3GHz/4GHz 25MB L3 130W TDP 12C exact match: $2614 Xeon E5-2697 v2 12C 2.7GHz/3.5 GHz 30MB L3 130W TDP Tom's Hardware did some superficial (mostly desktop workload) testing on the E5-2697 v2 a couple months ago: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ivy-bridge-ep-xeon-e5-2697-v2-benchmarks,3585.html http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ivy-bridge-ep-xeon-e5-26... [1] http://www.cpu-world.com/news_2013/2013091401_Intel_Xeon_E5-1600_v2_and_E5-2600_v2_CPUs_launched.html http://www.cpu-world.com/news_2013/2013091401_Intel_Xeon_E5-... [2] https://www.apple.com/mac-pro/specs/ https://www.apple.com/mac-pro/specs/ and the description text: "Intel Xeon E5 with 10MB L3 cache and Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz. Configurable to 3.5GHz 6-core processor with 12MB L3 cache, 3.0GHz 8-core processor with 25MB L3 cache, or 2.7GHz 12-core processor with 30MB L3 cache"