ECC ram and multi-processor support. But yeah I see what you're saying and I agree.

ECC isn't just a gimmick nowadays?

Huh? ECC is necessary for anything but toy applications.

Is it? Or is that the old wives tale? Many very non-toy applications started on consumer hardware (including Google, and they turned out alright).

http://blog.codinghorror.com/to-ecc-or-not-to-ecc/

You'll note that Google grew ECC as soon as they started billing people for real money. This is no coincidence.

Check out row hammer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Row_hammer

They all seem to be an extremely incremental (to be kind) iteration on what was already out there as far as price goes. I have no idea why there are so many people that seem excited by them. The chips might be good, but the prices negate any of the gains.

There is no way Intel would be charging over $4000.00 for a chip if they had any competition in that space.

The Xeons support much more RAM.