News IT distributor lists Intel's refreshed Xeon CPUs — Xeon W3500 Sapphire Rapids Refresh chips power new Lenovo workstations

[Admin]

EET Group lists Xeon W3500 chips on its website — opens orders for Intel's latest workstation processors to companies and businesses.

IT distributor lists Intel's refreshed Xeon CPUs — Xeon W3500 Sapphire Rapids Refresh chips power new Lenovo workstations : Read more

 

[Metal Messiah.]

The flagship SKU is still missing in action. The 60 cores/120 threads Xeon W9-3595X HEDT CPU, sporting 112MB L3 cache. Successor to the w9-3495X.

https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/4678570

Hardware detective momomo_us also shared the specs for the new Sapphire Rapids Refresh CPUs in the same month, showing us that the next-generation chips received at least four performance cores and a small bump in their TDPs.

Don't forget the extra L3 CACHE these chips sport as well, which is important. ! Also, the Xeon W9-3575X actually features an increase of 8 cores, not 4.

The max 'boost clock' speeds of these new chips would be slightly lower than the previous 3400X series though.

• 3595X vs 3495X = + 4 Cores
• 3575X vs 3475X = + 8 Cores
• 3565X vs 3465X = + 4 Cores
• 3555 vs 3455 = + 4 Cores
• 3545 vs 3445 = + 4 Cores
• 3535X vs 3435X = + 4 Cores
• 3525 vs 3425 = + 4 Cores

 

[hotaru251]

idk why anyone actually chooses to use XEON when EPYC exists unless its for some niche case where an application just favors intel more.

even when latest xeon released it was after the epyc, cost more (iirc), & performed worse.

 

[bit_user]

idk why anyone actually chooses to use XEON when EPYC exists unless its for some niche case where an application just favors intel more.

AMX is one thing they have which EPYC doesn't. Another is HBM, but not in the Xeon W models discussed in this article.

I think the main reason is just that some people, companies, and organizations are just Intel shops. My employer is like that. They don't even consider anything based on AMD, because the IT department responsible for making the decisions about what hardware configurations to support isn't the one funding the hardware purchases. Those come out of the budgets of the other departments. They literally have no incentive to provide more cost-efficient options and nobody apparently cares enough to fight them over it.

 

[Metal Messiah.]

Well, DELL has now listed support for these upcoming Xeon W-3500 and also the Xeon W-2500 CPU lineup for its Precision 7960 and 5860 workstation systems.

The company now offers drop-in upgrade for these chips via a BIOS update.

https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=W6T3F

https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=52RPV

 

[bit_user]

Well, DELL has now listed support for these upcoming Xeon W-3500 and also the Xeon W-2500 CPU lineup for its Precision 7960 and 5860 workstation systems.

The company now offers drop-in upgrade for these chips via a BIOS update.

FWIW, we have some Dell Precision desktops with Alder Lake CPUs, which we could not do a drop-in upgrade to Raptor Lake. Someone actually tried it and there's just a boot screen saying the CPU model isn't supported. Even with the latest BIOS.

I think it's probably because the power subsystem of the motherboard was updated for Raptor Lake. Someone on the Dell Support forums said it's definitely tied to the motherboard model/revision, even though both have the same chipset (W680).

 

[thestryker]

I'm moderately surprised these are still launching given that we're over 6mo from EMR Xeon refresh and GNR is on the horizon. Though I suppose that may be a sign workstation GNR isn't coming for a long while and it's always possible these will be OEM only to get rid of silicon.

Even though I don't really expect it I'm somewhat hoping that they'll lower pricing given the TR launch.

 

[TheJoker2020]

AMX is one thing they have which EPYC doesn't.

Isn't this the new (semi)-custom AI processor they are putting into desktops but designed to actually be used to run certain "Intel only" processes much faster, but with the caveat that they need to be reprogrammed to some unknown degree because I have not heard about "AMX" in the tech press for months, and even then all they had were some intel benchmarks and TBH, I had forgotten about this AMX tech entirely.

 

[Metal Messiah.]

FWIW, we have some Dell Precision desktops with Alder Lake CPUs, which we could not do a drop-in upgrade to Raptor Lake. Someone actually tried it and there's just a boot screen saying the CPU model isn't supported. Even with the latest BIOS.

I think it's probably because the power subsystem of the motherboard was updated for Raptor Lake. Someone on the Dell Support forums said it's definitely tied to the motherboard model/revision, even though both have the same chipset (W680).

That's sounds odd to me, but if the Dell support rep has confirmed this then this shouldn't be an isolated case, imo. But let me check and confirm this from others as well.

 

[bit_user]

That's sounds odd to me, but if the Dell support rep has confirmed this then this shouldn't be an isolated case, imo. But let me check and confirm this from others as well.

If you want, but please don't go to any trouble on my behalf!
: )

I'm pretty sure this is the thread I saw, where someone had tried it.

https://www.dell.com/community/en/c...u-13th-gen-intel-cpu/647fa3f6f4ccf8a8de9ff62a
​

 

[bit_user]

Isn't this the new (semi)-custom AI processor they are putting into desktops

No, I think what you have in mind is the NPU featured in their new Meteor Lake CPUs. AMX is something completely different and it's integrated directly into the Xeon SP and Xeon W cores, which are different (bigger) than the normal Golden Cove cores. AMX actually extends the x86 instruction set and registers to support a very small, specific subset of operations on tile data. Each of the 8 new registers is 1024 bytes (8192 bits)!

designed to actually be used to run certain "Intel only" processes much faster, but with the caveat that they need to be reprogrammed to some unknown degree because I have not heard about "AMX" in the tech press for months,

Intel published the details needed to use it in any software someone wants to write. It requires OS support, as well. The main software using it is probably Intel's OpenVINO AI framework, plus anything based on it or using it as a backend.

 

[jalyst]

Would anyone here, ever get CPU's+MB/RAM/PS etc like this (or the Epyc's) for Homelab/SOHO use?
Very expensive, are they not!? But perhaps it is justifiable, in certain niche scenarios?!

 

[bit_user]

Would anyone here, ever get CPU's+MB/RAM/PS etc like this (or the Epyc's) for Homelab/SOHO use?
Very expensive, are they not!? But perhaps it is justifiable, in certain niche scenarios?!

If you use your PC for income and what you do is either largely CPU-bound, eats up lots of PCIe slots (i.e. for multiple GPUs), or demands lots of memory, or Intel's AMX, then it might be justifiable. Don't forget about power and cooling requirements, both of which are elevated for this class of CPU.

In 2012, I built a workstation with an E5 Xeon (LGA2011 socket, quad-channel memory, I think something like 48 PCIe 3.0 lanes, etc.). A decade later, I could not justify the premium price of an equivalent motherboard + CPU, especially now that mainstream has become so much more powerful and capable. Even on the I/O front, mainstream CPUs and chipsets really are a lot better than in the bad old days of Haswell and Skylake.

Even if you want ECC memory, there are both Ryzen and Intel options that allow you to use it with their desktop CPUs. If you want that, start with a motherboard that supports ECC Unbuffered memory and then look at the CPU requirements for using it.