News Intel Overclockable Xeon W Workstation CPUs up to 56 Cores: a Return to HEDT-Class Chips

[Admin]

Intel released 15 new Xeon W workstation processors with several overclockable models included, perhaps marking a return to HEDT.

Intel Overclockable Xeon W Workstation CPUs up to 56 Cores: a Return to HEDT-Class Chips : Read more

 

[zecoeco]

Why don't they compare these against 5000 Threadripper Series? Afraid of Reality? XD

 

[-Fran-]

These read good on paper, for sure. I specially like the w7-3455. Even if it is locked, I think it's a good middle ground to be had in the line up.

That being said, I still think the floor is too high. The W motherboard are going to be expensive as well, so your minimum entry will be ~$4000 if you want to populate all 8 channels, at the minimum. This is assuming people buying these won't be populating them with regular DDR5 DIMMs (EDIT: I just realized they can't, LOL).

Also, this is not a return to HEDT as much as Intel just trying to fight AMD at the higher level. Otherwise, we'd see an X chipset for these and the return of the "X" class CPUs as well.

This is just Intel returning to the Workstation market to fight TR Pro.

Regards.

 

[Thunder64]

LoL at the mention of gaming. Not everything is meant for gaming guys. And I think it's obvious why they don't allow BCLK adjustments.

 

[kjfatl]

We could a few dozen Dual-Socket versions of this populated w/2 TB of DDR5 ECC RAM. (not a joke)..
This product is not aimed at gamers but for targeted business applications. The more ram the merrier. We need at least 128GB/user and assume most users keep under 64GB.

 

[jp7189]

Not the slam dunk I was hoping for. I'm definitely excited for the platform - tons of memory bandwidth and PCIe lanes, but I'm a little underwhelmed by the seeming price/performance of the CPUs themselves. We'll have to wait for independent benchmarks to know for sure.

 

[hotaru251]

Why don't they compare these against 5000 Threadripper Series?

"as the charts show the AMD alternative crushes our cpu even OC'd....but still buy ti as we have niche pcie 5.0 & ddr5"

 

[Vanderlindemedia]

Intel lists Processor Base Power (PBP), which is similar to the TDP rating, as stretching from 270W to 350W for the W-3400 series and 120W to 225W for the W-2400 series. These chips will consume more power under full load at their Maximum Turbo Power (MTP) rating, which is 1.2X the PBP. (For instance, the 350W model will peak at 420W, while the 300W model will reach 360W.)

I dont understand why intel cant get it right. Its peak power at 420W ~ 360W is quite more compared to a Threadripper or Epyc that lists their CPU at a maximum of 280W.

 

[truerock]

Why Xeons slower than Raptors?

 

[thestryker]

Unless the motherboards tailored to the 2400 series are a fair bit cheaper than the ones for 3400 (I'm expecting these to be similarly priced to ICL Xeon W boards) it seems like the price of entry for the platform is going to be quite high. I was really hoping the 2455X would be in the $700-800 range as that would put it closer to the 7950/13900 in price. Instead what we got was Intel playing the same game as AMD started with TR 3000 and making the entry price very high. I get why they're doing it, and I expected it to happen, but it is still disappointing.

I'm looking at the W680 platform to replace my old SNB Xeon server box a lot more seriously than before (was hoping for a lower core count 2400, but they're OEM only so availability will probably be a long ways out). I'm hoping there will be availability on the Asus PRO WS W680-ACE as it seems to have the configuration I need (it has has 2x m.2 and 2x PCIe x4 off the chipset) and the price is good.

Was hoping for the 2455X as a possible replacement for my current X99 setup, but it's looking like the price is just going to be too high so waiting for whatever comes next desktop wise and hoping to figure out a way around my PCIe lane usage.

 

[bit_user]

I'm annoyed they don't have a retail-boxed SKU for under $1k, but I don't really care because I can't really justify the expense of the CPU or the platform.

I might have considered the 8 or 10 core model, depending on how much motherboards cost, but that's because I'm already planning to buy a $450 LGA1700 workstation board. If the board were within 1.5x of that price, I might've considered stepping up to the W-2435 or W-2445.

I'm also annoyed at how they limit the clocks of the models with fewer cores. That strikes me as entirely artificial. About a decade ago, it was the other way around - you'd actually get higher clocks on the models with fewer cores (even ones based on the same die). We don't need to go back to that, but it'd be nice to at least have parity.

 

[bit_user]

Why Xeons slower than Raptors?

First, Intel always has a lag between desktop and server/workstation CPUs. These are based on Gen 12, not 13. Intel says they improved their "Intel 7" process for gen 13, but these are probably still made on the original Intel 7 process and lack the other tweaks that went into Raptor Lake. Emerald Rapids is supposed to launch by the end of the year, and that will be derived from Gen 13 (Raptor Lake). I have no idea if they'll refresh the Xeon W lineup for Emerald Rapids, though.

Second, Xeons are meant to be reliable and sustain 24/7 workloads for the warranty period, so they reduce clock speeds to benefit stability and data integrity.

Third, it's a bigger die with a bigger interconnect, more PCIe, more memory channels, etc. That overhead eats into the power budget.

Finally, these CPUs have the accelerators and features like AMX. Sometimes also bigger L3 cache slices. That also eats into the power budget. And, because servers are aimed at lower clockspeeds for efficiency reasons, their critical paths might be longer (i.e. not permitting them to be clocked as high).

If you want higher clockspeeds, sit tight and wait to see how well these overclock, and with what type of cooling. Otherwise, just buy Raptor Lake or a Ryzen 7950X (esp. if you really want AVX-512).

 

[bit_user]

I dont understand why intel cant get it right. Its peak power at 420W ~ 360W is quite more compared to a Threadripper or Epyc that lists their CPU at a maximum of 280W.

Intel 7 isn't as dense as TSMC N7, which has implications for power-efficiency.

 

[bit_user]

We could a few dozen Dual-Socket versions of this

Nope. It's single-socket only. I know the article says the C741 chipset will support dual-socket, but I think that's an error.

These use the same socket as the Scalable (i.e. server) CPUs but mysteriously support up to 112 PCIe lanes, while the Scalable models support only up to 80 lanes. What happened to the rest of the lanes? They got repurposed as UPI links - that's what. Intel did this same trick with a Cascade Lake Xeon W they made for Apple, so that it could have 64 PCIe lanes instead of the standard 48. Anyway, no UPI links means no multi-CPU, because that's how they communicate.

And, to confirm, all of the Xeon W models I've looked at in ark.intel.com list Scalability as 1S Only. Unfortunately, it seems the advanced search doesn't allow you to search on that field.

Anyway, if you want dual-socket, you'll have to use the Xeon Scalable server CPUs and even a few of those are single-socket.

populated w/2 TB of DDR5 ECC RAM.

According to ark.intel.com, the 3400-series seem to support 4 TB. For instance:

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/u...on-w93495x-processor-105m-cache-1-90-ghz.html

 

[bit_user]

LoL at the mention of gaming. Not everything is meant for gaming guys. And I think it's obvious why they don't allow BCLK adjustments.

Oh, but they're hoping a few suckers ...enthusiasts buy these as gaming machines.

In the "before" times, they had a separate HEDT line of CPUs and motherboards that were Xeon W in all but name and certain key features (e.g. ECC memory support). The HEDT versions allowed overclocking, while the Xeons did not.

That started to change with the Cascade Lake generation, which was the first to enable overclocking of Xeon W's. Nowadays, I think they've decided that the market for gaming & other non-professional use on such platforms is small enough (thanks, in part to the massive core count increases in the desktop platform) that they're content to just have the Xeon W platform and allow overclocking on it. Presumably, they expect anyone valuing reliability & data integrity wouldn't dare overclock.

 

[thestryker]

I'm also annoyed at how they limit the clocks of the models with fewer cores. That strikes me as entirely artificial. About a decade ago, it was the other way around - you'd actually get higher clocks on the models with fewer cores (even ones based on the same die). We don't need to go back to that, but it'd be nice to at least have parity.

Intel had a good opportunity to have two sets of SKUs for the 6/8 core versions (honestly the entire 2400 line should have just been unlocked) in lower and higher power consumption versions. Relatively speaking the power consumption on those chips is pretty low so if they were going to lock them a version with say 250W turbo power would likely be boosting around the 12900k.

 

[Demon of Elru]

This should be a good replacement for my X299 build. Looking forward to the W-2400 series will be watching it. Should do nicely as a gaming machine and video encoding and compression machine.