News Intel Comet Lake Xeon W Listed Early: Server CPU Specs Surface

mikewinddale

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If these Xeon Ws use the mainstream LGA1200, I'd be curious to know if they'll be released alongside a new chipset to support ECC and/or buffered memory / load-reduced memory, unlike the mainstream LGA1200 mainstream.
 

bit_user

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Intel uses the "W" designation for its enterprise-class chips that typically live on the the HEDT platform, such as the LGA2066 CPU socket. It's weird to see a Xeon W chip on a mainstream platform, which in this case is the latest LGA1200 socket.
Could this mean that Intel is killing off the LGA2066 socket with no replacement? I guess that would also mean Xeon W is subsuming their E-series?

...or, maybe something else is going on. After they released LGA3647-socket Cascade Lake Xeons, branded as the W-3000 series, I can see a new pattern emerging. If W-2000 meant LGA2066 and W-3000 was LGA3647, then next-gen W-1200 could be their new branding of Xeons in the desktop platform, rather than Xeon E.

IIRC, Xeon E was the last Xeon line they rebranded, so maybe they felt that E didn't have a lot of intertia in the market, and W had more cachet. As odd as it sounds, remember: this is the company who brought Bronze/Silver/Gold/Platinum branding to server CPUs! So, I could believe that someone in their marketing department might think "E" summons notions of "Economy", which sounds low-end, and wanted to move away from it.
 

bit_user

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There were/are Z390 boards that support ECC, albeit only with the i3 CPU or Pentium...;
This has been the case through all of their i-series generations. I've seen only a handful of i3's that don't support ECC, but by and large, every generation's i3's and a few of its Pentiums (mabye even a couple Celerons) will feature ECC support.


The motherboards you need to use with them are the same ones that supported their Xeon E3 (and now Xeon E) series CPUs.
 

mikewinddale

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There were/are Z390 boards that support ECC, albeit only with the i3 CPU or Pentium...; I'd suspect ECC support survives the move to 400 series....

This has been the case through all of their i-series generations. I've seen only a handful of i3's that don't support ECC, but by and large, every generation's i3's and a few of its Pentiums (mabye even a couple Celerons) will feature ECC support.


The motherboards you need to use with them are the same ones that supported their Xeon E3 (and now Xeon E) series CPUs.

Oh, okay! Thanks to you both for explaining for me.
 
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