Published: 6 October 2026
Intel's Xeon E5 v3 and v4 processors came out in 2014 and 2016. AMD's EPYC 9004 series, which we also sell, came out in 2022. On paper that is no contest. In practice, a large share of the work people rent dedicated servers for does not need the newest processor, and the price gap is big: our dual Xeon E5 servers start at €209 a month, our cheapest EPYC at €449. This post sets out where a dual Xeon E5 server is still the smart buy and where it is a false economy.
The two lines side by side
Prices are monthly with a guaranteed, unmetered 1 Gbps port. They exclude VAT and have no setup fee:
| Server | Per month | Per thread | Cores / threads | RAM | Storage included |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dual Xeon E5 2630 v3 | €209 | €6.53 | 16 / 32 | 128 GB DDR4 | 240 GB SSD |
| Dual Xeon E5 2690 v4 | €229 | €4.09 | 28 / 56 | 128 GB DDR4 | 240 GB SSD |
| Dual Xeon E5 2699 v4 | €299 | €3.40 | 44 / 88 | 256 GB DDR4 | 240 GB SSD |
| Single AMD EPYC 9254 | €449 | €9.35 | 24 / 48 | 128 GB DDR5 | 2 × 1 TB NVMe |
| Dual AMD EPYC 9254 | €679 | €7.07 | 48 / 96 | 256 GB DDR5 | 2 × 1 TB NVMe |
| Dual AMD EPYC 9554 | €959 | €3.75 | 128 / 256 | 512 GB DDR5 | 2 × 1 TB NVMe |
Two things stand out. The dual E5 2699 v4 gives 88 threads and 256 GB of RAM for €299, cheaper per thread than anything else we sell except the 256-core EPYC 9754. And the E5 2690 v4 costs only €20 more than the entry server for 12 more cores.
What you give up with Xeon E5
Being straight about the trade-offs:
- Speed per core. A modern EPYC core does considerably more work per clock than a 2016 Xeon core, so a single thread finishes noticeably sooner on EPYC. Count threads only when your work can use them.
- Memory speed. The E5 servers run DDR4 at up to 2133 MHz; the 2630 v3 runs its memory at 1866. The EPYC servers run DDR5 at 4800 MHz with far more memory bandwidth, which matters for in-memory analytics and large databases.
- Storage. The E5 servers take up to six SATA SSDs. The EPYC servers ship with NVMe, and the larger models take up to 24 NVMe drives. For heavy random disk access, NVMe is in another class.
- Instruction sets. E5 v3 and v4 support AVX2 but not AVX-512. Some scientific, compression and machine learning code runs faster with AVX-512, which the EPYC 9004 series has.
- Side-channel mitigations. Haswell and Broadwell chips need the L1TF and MDS mitigations. If you rent virtual machines to people you do not trust, the safe setting is Hyper-Threading off, which halves the thread count. EPYC 9004 is not affected by those two.
- Port ceiling. E5 servers go up to 20 Gbps. From 25 to 100 Gbps you need the Gold 6148 or an EPYC, and 200 Gbps is EPYC only.
Where Xeon E5 is still the right buy
Most of what people rent an entry dedicated server for is limited by the network, the disks or the number of threads rather than by speed per core. Our post on the €209 entry server walks through these jobs in detail:
- Web hosting and many small sites. PHP sites, WordPress, small databases and mail spend most of their time waiting on the network and the disk, not the CPU.
- Virtual machine hosts for your own workloads. Virtualisation needs threads and RAM. The 2699 v4 with 88 threads and 256 GB hosts dozens of small VMs, and Proxmox VE 9.1 is on the order form.
- Anything where the port is the product. Downloads, file distribution, video delivery and backup targets are limited by the network, not the processor. A guaranteed port is a guaranteed port whatever chip sits behind it, and the E5 line reaches 20 Gbps for €1,159 a month.
- Build and batch work. Compile farms, test runners and nightly jobs split well across threads. The E5s give the most threads per euro, but EPYC threads are faster, so compare jobs per hour per euro on your own build.
- When you need it today. Xeon servers in stock are typically delivered within about an hour, while EPYC builds can take up to 14 days.
Where EPYC is worth the money
- Databases with heavy random reads and writes, where NVMe pays for itself. See our post on high-IOPS PostgreSQL servers.
- Workloads that depend on single-thread speed, such as some game servers, trading tools and older software that cannot spread across cores.
- Memory-bound analytics and anything that needs more than 256 GB of RAM.
- Virtual machines for customers you do not control, where the E5's Hyper-Threading trade-off would halve your capacity.
- 200 Gbps, which only the dual EPYC 9754 takes. From 25 to 100 Gbps, the Gold 6148 is cheaper when the traffic is served from RAM.
The full EPYC range, from the 24-core 9254 to the 256-core 9754, is on the dedicated servers page.
Our recommendation
Start with the dual E5 2690 v4 at €229 if you are unsure. It is the best balance in the range: 56 threads for €20 more than the entry server. Choose the 2699 v4 when you need RAM or many virtual machines of your own, and go to EPYC when your workload is limited by disk speed, single-thread speed or memory bandwidth, or when you host other people's virtual machines.
All the Xeon and EPYC servers are on the dedicated servers page, available in ten European countries and in the United States at the same price.