News Intel's new workstation chips look to smash AMD's Threadripper, but Xeon W9-3595X refresh appears on Geekbench with underwhelming performance figures

[Admin]

Intel's upcoming W9-3595X Fishhawk Falls refresh flagship has been benchmarked on Geekbench 6, and it appears to fall short in performance — losing to its predecessor, the W9-3495X.

Intel's new workstation chips look to smash AMD's Threadripper, but Xeon W9-3595X refresh appears on Geekbench with underwhelming performance figures : Read more

 

[Deleted member 2731765]

The new chip is, however, slower than its predecessor, the W9-3495X (with 58 core) in both single- and multi-core benchmarks

The W9-3595X seen in the Geekbench 6 listing has 60 cores (vs. the W9-3495X's 58 cores) and more cache.

Two additional cores won't do much to alleviate Intel's current issues, but it's better than nothing.

W9-3495X has 56 cores, NOT 58. So a total of 4 cores difference. Correct the info in the article, including the table/chart as well.

It is a shame that the newer part is slower than its predecessor in this particular benchmark, but it is obvious that the W9-3595X spotted in Geekbench 6 is a prototype of some sort.

Why is it a shame ? This is a very early engineering sample, so don't expect the performance to be at par with any final silicon chip. This is normal. Also, more importantly, clock speeds in the Geekbench log seem to range from 4.1-4.5 GHz, so there is definitely still some tuning to go in place.

ALSO, the next-gen Xeon Workstation lineup isn't expected to be a very huge upgrade over existing chips. These are just "Refresh" chips. And they are also compatible with existing LGA 4677 socket mobos such as the ASUS Pro WS W790-ACE model this particular chip was tested in the leak.

Comparison, Xeon W9-3595X vs Xeon W9-3495X:

• 60 Cores / 120 Threads vs 56 Cores / 112 Threads (roughly +7% Increase)
• 120 MB L2 Cache vs 112 MB L2 Cache (+7.12% Increase)
• 112 MB L3 Cache vs 105 MB L3 Cache (+6.7% Increase)

AMD's workstation-focused flagship, the 7995WX, features a whopping 96 cores and 129 threads.

That's 192 threads, not 129 !

 

[jeremyj_83]

Ah yes Geekbench 6 the absolute best test for these CPU...(extreme sarcasm)

 

[emike09]

I'm half tempted to finally switch over to AMD. My first CPU was an Athlon X2, been with Intel ever since. Currently rocking an i9-10920X on X299, OC'd to 4.8GHz. X299 was and is an incredible platform that delivered massive performance and expandability at a respectable price. But it's getting a bit old, still on PCI-e 3.

I'm just not really convinced Intel or AMD's new workstation platforms justify the very steep cost for the performance I'd gain. Sure, it's faster, but I'd be looking at $3000 for a new CPU, Mobo, and RAM with the AMD 7960X while not gaining all that much.

As a comparison for Intel, my 2019 12-core i9-10920X gets a score of 1705 on single core and 12058 on multi-core in GeekBench, vs the 1611/17118 score on the w9-3595X, a 60-core CPU 5-years newer than mine. I know it's an engineering sample and I know Geekbench isn't the best way to benchmark systems like these, but it is a benchmark regardless. Extremely disappointing progress, the only thing that's progressing is price $$$$. That thing's going to be around $6k for a CPU!?! I bought my 10920x for $650. And the power consumption is insane. I max out around 200w on mine. 350w TDP is ludicrous.

I think I'll wait and see what happens next year.

 

[endocine]

These refreshed workstation parts aren't based off of Emerald Rapids, but a rework for Saphire Rapids? Are you sure about that?

 

[ace6558966]

The top chip in AMD's mainstream Threadripper 7000 series lineup, the 7980X, has 64 cores — six more cores than the W9-3495X, which is aimed at workstation builds. AMD's workstation-focused flagship, the 7995WX, features a whopping 96 cores and 129 threads


7980x... 8 more cores....7995wx 96core/192 threads...

 

[jeremyj_83]

I'm half tempted to finally switch over to AMD. My first CPU was an Athlon X2, been with Intel ever since. Currently rocking an i9-10920X on X299, OC'd to 4.8GHz. X299 was and is an incredible platform that delivered massive performance and expandability at a respectable price. But it's getting a bit old, still on PCI-e 3.

I'm just not really convinced Intel or AMD's new workstation platforms justify the very steep cost for the performance I'd gain. Sure, it's faster, but I'd be looking at $3000 for a new CPU, Mobo, and RAM with the AMD 7960X while not gaining all that much.

As a comparison for Intel, my 2019 12-core i9-10920X gets a score of 1705 on single core and 12058 on multi-core in GeekBench, vs the 1611/17118 score on the w9-3595X, a 60-core CPU 5-years newer than mine. I know it's an engineering sample and I know Geekbench isn't the best way to benchmark systems like these, but it is a benchmark regardless. Extremely disappointing progress, the only thing that's progressing is price $$$$. That thing's going to be around $6k for a CPU!?! I bought my 10920x for $650. And the power consumption is insane. I max out around 200w on mine. 350w TDP is ludicrous.

I think I'll wait and see what happens next year.

Going to a Threadripper 7960X would give you double the threads AND at least 30% higher IPC.

 

[thestryker]

If these specifications are accurate it's unfortunate that the workstation parts aren't going to get any of the increased cache some of the server parts did. I doubt the pricing on the W-3500 series will be any different than the W-3400 series is, but the W-2500 series has a chance to be lower priced. Curious when Intel will actually talk about these parts as there are new server and desktop parts coming later this year and I'd imagine they would want this release to steer clear of those.

 

[btmedic04]

It's too bad that Aaron can't math and Toms can't proof and edit Aarons articles before posting them.

 

[TerryLaze]

And the power consumption is insane. I max out around 200w on mine. 350w TDP is ludicrous.

The i9-10920X has just 12 cores... divided by 250 that's ~17W per core
350w divided by 60 cores is 6W per core, your CPU is almost at 3 times as much power per core.

 

[bit_user]

with the AMD 7960X while not gaining all that much.

According to whom? The GB6 scores for it are like 2,822/19,461 (Windows).

my 2019 12-core i9-10920X gets a score of 1705 on single core and 12058 on multi-core in GeekBench, vs the 1611/17118 score on the w9-3595X, a 60-core CPU 5-years newer than mine. I know it's an engineering sample and I know Geekbench isn't the best way to benchmark systems like these, but it is a benchmark regardless.

Why are you even looking at the score for the ES CPU, when you can just look at the w9-3495X and be reasonably certain the new one will be faster? We know they're both based on Sapphire Rapids, so the new version should probably just be a slight overclock.

As for the existing CPU, you can take the article's numbers (2088/18,872), but I have no idea where they got those. If you look at the GB6 online results browser, there are plenty of scores above (and below that). I see a cluster for Dell workstations around 2193/18854, and that's not even the highest score (I ignore the outliers, since they're probably overclocks - also, try to compare within the same OS).

Extremely disappointing progress, the only thing that's progressing is price $$$$.

As you said, GB6 is pretty horrible for such a system. See if you can find some Xeon W-2400 series benchmarks, from an actual review of one of those workstations.

That thing's going to be around $6k for a CPU!?! I bought my 10920x for $650. And the power consumption is insane. I max out around 200w on mine. 350w TDP is ludicrous.

Then get a 2400-series. The w9-2495X has 24 cores and a base power of 225 W. Also, lower platform cost, since it supports only 4 memory channels.

P.S. you never said why you need/want a more powerful machine.

 

[bit_user]

The i9-10920X has just 12 cores... divided by 250 that's ~17W per core
350w divided by 60 cores is 6W per core, your CPU is almost at 3 times as much power per core.

That's why base freq of the w9-3495X are just 1.9 GHz, though. The i9-10920X has a base freq of 3.5 GHz.

A better comparison would be to look at a 28 core Cascade Lake. So, the Xeon W-3275 has 28 cores, a TDP of 205 W, and a base freq of 2.5 GHz. If we do the same math, 205 / 28 = 7.3 W per core. And if they're running at 2.5 GHz instead of 1.9 GHz, that even compensates for a lot of the IPC difference. So, at this point, we're talking about similar efficiency - but the w9-3495X will be faster (while using more power), due to > 2x as many cores.

From the sound of it, @emike09 doesn't really want a w9-3400, but would be better off with a 2400/2500-series (if sticking with intel).

 

[TerryLaze]

That's why base freq of the w9-3495X are just 1.9 GHz, though. The i9-10920X has a base freq of 3.5 GHz.

A better comparison would be to look at a 28 core Cascade Lake. So, the Xeon W-3275 has 28 cores, a TDP of 205 W, and a base freq of 2.5 GHz. If we do the same math, 205 / 28 = 7.3 W per core. And if they're running at 2.5 GHz instead of 1.9 GHz, that even compensates for a lot of the IPC difference. So, at this point, we're talking about similar efficiency - but the w9-3495X will be faster (while using more power), due to > 2x as many cores.

From the sound of it, @emike09 doesn't really want a w9-3400, but would be better off with a 2400/2500-series (if sticking with intel).

So the
w-3275 has 7.3W per core with 28 cores the
3495x about 6w per core with 60 cores and the
10920 about 17W per core with 10 cores...
What was your point?!
That more cores = less clocks? Did anybody even remotely say anything different?

 

[bit_user]

w-3275 has 7.3W per core with 28 cores the
10920 about 17W per core with 10 cores...
What was your point?!
That more cores = less clocks? Did anybody even remotely say anything different?

Yeah, the lower power per core is largely achieved by throttling back the clocks more, on higher core-count CPUs. You left out that part. We can just look at the two Cascade Lake models and clearly see that. Correspondingly, the performance per core also drops. You didn't say otherwise, but by only looking core count and power per core, it did gloss over that part.

 

[emike09]

From the sound of it, @emike09 doesn't really want a w9-3400, but would be better off with a 2400/2500-series (if sticking with intel).

The 2400/2500 series is definitely more in line with my needs, single core performance and frequency is more important than massive core count since it's a multi use system. I might jump to AMD though, who knows! I think I'm still waiting this generation out unless my hardware dies.

 

[TerryLaze]

Yeah, the lower power per core is largely achieved by throttling back the clocks more, on higher core-count CPUs. You left out that part. We can just look at the two Cascade Lake models and clearly see that. Correspondingly, the performance per core also drops. You didn't say otherwise, but by only looking core count and power per core, it did gloss over that part.

I responded to somebody that called the TDP insane and I put it in perspective, I didn't leave it out, it didn't need to be included because clocks are irrelevant to that part.
350W would be insane for a 12core part but it is not for a 60 core part.