I work for a company that builds forensic computers and one of the requested builds we have been given has stated that they require a Xeon E5649 processor. Looking at that it is a slightly older processor and my colleagues have suggested the Xeon E5-2630. On paper there are subtle differences and real world this may not make a huge difference but which would be the better option. Motherboards will be chosen to suit given a few specific requirements like SAS and RAM capacity but it mostly hinges around the processor choice. There is a price difference of around $100 dollars per processor. My attitude to this sort of thing is buy the newest but obviously cost is an issue in this build. Should they pay the additional for the newer processor or stick with the older. Kind regards, Tom
If they both have the same instruction set then it doesn't matter. If you need something like a specific type of virtualisation hardware support than you need to make sure to but the model that has it. Intel like to limit what instructions can be done on which model of their CPUs unlike AMD.
