Anyone have legit benchmark statistics comparing the two? Tried Googling it and just got a bunch of forums comparing them but nothing that seemed too legit.

Xeons are for servers and workstations, and i7's are more for performance and gaming.
 
That's all you need to know, really. You probably want an i7.

The Xeons are the highest end batches of whatever is the current desktop series. Spec-wise, they are the same as their corresponding i7s. However they're meant to run for much longer periods of time (max load 24/7 for months) and also carry a high priority high quality tech support channel with Intel (or so I've heard). Their superior steppings also reduce heat and voltage requirement, allowing for maximum overclocking, which is why most PCmark and 3Dmark world records are set on Xeons. They are also capable of going multisocket, or they may have more cores (up to 8 or 12 at the moment compared to the conventional 4 in the desktop variants). There are also hardware coded features such as ECC (error correction coding) that are beneficial in high throughput environments. The price is obviously much higher for all of these features though.  
 
Other Xeons might be exactly the same as their desktop counterparts, e.g. W3520 and Core i7 920 and are simply marketed differently. 

From what I've seen, the difference between an i5 and i7 is very small.

" From what I've seen, the difference between an i5 and i7 is very small. "

Moved topic to the PC forum.

" @mosdl: It has nothing to do with Xeon vs i7?  But yeah, you don't want a Xeon unless you want to run a high end server or something. "

" The Xeons are the highest end batches of whatever is the current desktop series. Spec-wise, they are the same as their corresponding i7s. However they're meant to run for much longer periods of time (max load 24/7 for months) and also carry a high priority high quality tech support channel with Intel (or so I've heard). Their superior steppings also reduce heat and voltage requirement, allowing for maximum overclocking, which is why most PCmark and 3Dmark world records are set on Xeons. They are also capable of going multisocket, or they may have more cores (up to 8 or 12 at the moment compared to the conventional 4 in the desktop variants). There are also hardware coded features such as ECC (error correction coding) that are beneficial in high throughput environments. The price is obviously much higher for all of these features though.  
 
Other Xeons might be exactly the same as their desktop counterparts, e.g. W3520 and Core i7 920 and are simply marketed differently.  "

Have a mate who ran a server chip for a while (Opteron), overclocked like a beast.

I think the problem with going with Xeon is that the memory is hella expensive.   So it's probably not practical for the normal consumer.