Is Xeon necessarily better?

[PDizzz]

At the moment, I have an i3-4170 3.7 GHz, which was the best 1150 CPU I could afford at the time of build that supported ECC. This is in my Supermicro X10SLL-F with 16gb ECC. I'm thinking about replacing this CPU with a Xeon 1220 v3. Why? Mostly because I feel like my proper server should have a proper server-grade CPU, aka Xeon. It's a good price on Amazon right now. But, it doesn't spec well against my i3.

So the question is, is it worth it? Does a Xeon CPU get me anything that I don't already get? Not having any real knowledge of these sorts of hardware matters, all I'm working on is a general notion that Xeon is somehow more correct for a server than an i3.

 

[Jessep]

It would only be differences in the CPU specs, you wont see any difference between and i3 and E3 for server features that would impact FreeNAS.

So the differences are:

2 core 4 thread 3.7Ghz no turbo
vs.
4 core 4 thread 3.1Ghz, 3.5Ghz turbo

Overall a wash.

 

[Chris Moore]

Something like this might make more of a difference: Intel Xeon E3-1231 v3 @ 3.40GHz
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+E3-1231+v3+@+3.40GHz&id=2246

It depends on how you are using the server. Are you using it for Plex transcoding? Is it falling short of expectations?