Intel Xeon E-2226G Review

The Xeon E-2226G is one of Intel's high-end Server processors. It was released in 2019 with 6 cores and 6 threads. With base clock at 4.7GHz, max speed at 4.7GHz, and a 80W power rating. The Xeon E-2226G is based on the Coffee Lake 14nm family and is part of the Xeon E series.

In our mind, the best processors are the ones that deliver outstanding performance at a reasonable price point. And, the Xeon E-2226G absolutely nails this concept.

Speaking of which, if you want a high-end desktop (HEDT) 8-core processor that can compete with the Intel Xeon E-2226G, you’re going to have to drop quite a bit more cash and get something like the $574 AMD Epyc 7251. And, even if you do go with this AMD chip, you won’t necessarily end up with the same level of performance.

That something is the Xeon E-2226G. Intel cranks the TDP dial up to 80W on this 6-core 6-thread chip, making it the high-performance counterpart to the 71W Xeon E-2224, which is basically the same 14nm chip built with the Coffee Lake microarchitecture, but with a lower TDP rating. That chip came away from our first look at the Coffee Lake series with an Editor's Choice award, going toe-to-toe with AMD's Epyc 7232P, so it's fair to say we have high hopes for the higher-performance model. Intel still hasn't sampled the chip to the press, so we bought one at retail to put it under the microscope.

We covered the deep dive details of the Coffee Lake chip design in our Intel Xeon E-2276M and Xeon E-2224 review, so head there for more information on the Xeon E-2226G's architecture, which is identical to the Xeon E-2224.

As the higher-priced version of the Xeon E-2224, the Xeon E-2226G has higher base and Boost frequencies of 4.7 and 4.7 GHz, respectively. That's an increase in base frequency and a bump to boost clocks, but the real advantage should lay in the higher Package Power Tracking (PPT) envelope, which is a measurement of the maximum amount of power delivered to the socket. The Xeon E-2224's PPT tops out at 71W, while the motherboard can pump up to 142W to the Xeon E-2226G at peak performance. That opens up much more aggressive boost behavior, on both single and multiple cores, that could widen the performance gap beyond what we see on the spec sheet.

The gaming tests with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti installed in the test system showed the Intel Xeon E-2226G was more capable than many might have expected. The basic high-end processor from Intel that can be picked up for $255 was able to out perform the Epyc 7251 that runs $574 shipped in the three games we tested on. We know that you can’t test on just three games and declare something the overall victor, but it just goes to show that 6-core processors can still manage to get by today. Being able to play current game titles and stream to Twitch on the Xeon E-2226G was something we give playable results, but we were pleasantly surprised. As games become more threaded the ‘value’ in a 6-core processor continues to go down, but you can still get by with something like the Xeon E-2226G in a pinch.

For a 6-core processor, Intel’s $255 flagship Xeon E-2226G processor seems downright cheap. On paper, the cost of those -2 extra cores is almost an afterthought when you stack it up against its direct competitor, the $790 8-core AMD Epyc 7232P.

With Xeon E, Intel continues to innovate on its new architecture and 14nm process. Like Xeon E, Intel has engineered Xeon E to operate on a FCLGA1151 chipset with all the modern amenities of computing. This includes support for DDR4 RAM, the fastest NVMe SSDs and Thunderbolt 3 ports.

Now the biggest question is can Intel’s Xeon E processor play games? The answer is simply yes as it got a respectable gaming score of 89% in our benchmarks.

While the 6-core and high-price of the Intel Xeon E-2276M seemed like overkill in certain respects, the Intel Xeon E-2226G feels like a no brainer for everyone from enthusiasts to artists and regular users who look for an extra bit of power. It’s an affordable and powerful chip for everything the modern gamer and creative needs, with extra headroom to grow.

Fresh from a successful roll-out of mainstream Xeon E CPUs, Intel's attack on AMD now extends down into the high-end with its Xeon E-2226G processors, which the company is making available as of 27 May 2019.