Intel Announces Xeon W-3175X: 28-Core Processor for Extreme Workstations
by Anton Shilov on October 8, 2018 10:54 AM EST
Intel on Monday officially introduced its 28-core processor for extreme workstations that it teased first back in June. The new chip comes with unlocked multiplier and can run at up to 4.3 GHz in burst mode.
The Intel Xeon W-3175X CPU is based on the Skylake/Cascade Lake microarchitecture and is compatible with motherboards featuring Intel’s LGA3647 server-based socket. The CPUs runs at 3.1 GHz stock, but can increase its frequency to 4.3 GHz, it features a six-channel DDR4 memory controller that supports up to 512 GB and a massive 38.5 MB cache. Since the chip uses a new socket, it is naturally not compatible with any motherboards available on the market. Meanwhile, to date, only ASUS and GIGABYTE have confirmed plans to offer mainboards for Intel’s Xeon W-3175X.
The new 28-core processor has a massive TDP of 265 W and considering the fact that it comes with an unlocked multiplier and can be overclocked, that power draw may get even higher. That said, the Xeon W-3175X will require a very robust cooling system, preferably a liquid-based one. At least, Intel itself demonstrated the chip with a cooler featuring two fans and a 240-mm radiator.
Intel aims the Xeon W-3175X primarily at content creators, which is why the platform offers 68 PCIe lanes (44 on the CPU + 24 on the chipset), enough to install more than one graphics card, numerous high-end NVMe SSDs, and whatever special-purpose accelerator is required.
The newly unveiled ASUS ROG Dominus Extreme is specifically designed for use with the new Xeon W-3175X processor which is the newly announced 28-core processor, which given official specification are currently unavailable we know is going to require a large amount of power draw. To compliment this the ROG Dominus Extreme features not just one, but two 24-pin ATX power connectors along with four 8-pin and two 6-pin 12 V ATX power connectors to provide enough power. The ROG Dominus Extreme is based on the EEB ATX form factor and has a total of twelve DDR4 slots which should support for up to a maximum of 192 GB of system memory.
On the bottom half of the board there’s a total of four full-length PCIe 3.0 lanes which should support four-way SLI and CrossFire for one of the most Goliathan gaming systems going; bearing in mind that this platform is designed primarily for professional workstation users, the ROG branding indicates otherwise. The PCB is covered by a wave of armor which looks clean and featured on this is a large ROG logo. Underneath this looks to be a chipset cooling fan which it’s likely will run warm due to the nature of this particular board.
In the top right-hand corner is a set of buttons which look to include a power, reset and potentially a clear CMOS switch. Also featured is an LED debug and to the left of the ROG DIMM.2 slot for M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 SSDs is a quadruplet of dip switches; these are most likely to enable or disable the individual PCIe 3.0 x16 slots.
This is a breaking news. We update the story as we get more information.
Related Reading:
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
32 Comments
View All Comments
LMonty - Monday, October 8, 2018 - link
I'm going out on a limb and predict that this can't touch the Threadripper 2990wx in terms of performance/price ratio. The question is, will it beat the 2990wx in terms of raw speed, and if yes, how much more will it cost? This 28-core is more niche than even the super-niche 32-core AMD proc./s: But where is the 5Ghz 28-core? Will it be a surprise announcement a-la Steve Jobs' "Oh and one more thing..."? /end of sarcasm
duploxxx - Monday, October 8, 2018 - link
it can run only 4.3ghz single core max turbo... the intel turbo core scaling madness....44+245 PCi-e lanes.... oh reaaaaaalllllllyyyyyyy as long as you have enough *16 and think you have the full performance lanes people will think they have it all :)
twtech - Monday, October 8, 2018 - link
It might be a really great chip for code compiling. It has enough cores to handle a lot of files at once for the compile phase itself, plus a high turbo for linking, etc., that bottlenecks down to one or a few cores.I'll wait to see the benchmarks, but this what I'd probably suggest if I were getting a new workstation - and it'll probably end up being cheaper than the dual-processor system I'm using now on top of it.
maroon1 - Monday, October 8, 2018 - link
Maybe performance/price ratio (which is not that important for rich people). But performance wise, W3175X should completely destroy 2990wx in every dimension.If you care about performance ratio, then there is no reason to buy 2990WX over 2950X. It has double the price but perform only 1.5x faster than 2950X and thats in multi-threaded benchmarks that scale well with cores like cinebench
bubblyboo - Monday, October 8, 2018 - link
"W3175X should completely destroy 2990wx in every dimension"Maybe if you had at least 500W of CPU cooling.
twtech - Monday, October 8, 2018 - link
If someone buys this for gaming, then yes I'd agree - it's a completely unnecessary toy. It will be fun to look at all the cores/threads in Task Manager, and get high multi-core benchmark scores, and that's about it.This is primarily aimed at people who are going to use it for work however. The reason why I'm on here writing messages on AnandTech during work hours, and reading articles about potentially faster CPUs, is because I'm currently waiting on my workstation to finish what it's doing. I made a change to a fairly frequently included header file in a large C++ project, and as a result a large portion of the code has to be recompiled, which will take about 15 minutes using nearly 100% CPU for the majority of that time.
Currently I'm using a dual-8 core (16 cores total) @ 3.5GHz Xeon workstation that is about 2 years old. It's fairly powerful and yet, depending on the task(s), I often still spend a large portion of my day waiting. Considering how much time I spend waiting for my computer to finish doing things, even an expensive CPU could be "cheap" in terms of work-hours saved if it significantly reduced that amount of time - it might even only take a few months for something like this to pay for itself in time-savings.
AshlayW - Tuesday, October 9, 2018 - link
It will not "completely destroy" the 2990WX. Both overclocked to their limit with extreme cooling systems and you're probably looking at a 15-20% advantage in multi-core performance for 2-3x the price knowing Intel. The only "destroying" that will be done here is if AVX2 or AVX512 is used. Otherwise the 2990WX will be less than half the price, and offer more CPU-based platform I/O and similar multi-core performance, and likely, better power efficiency.Darcey R. Epperly - Monday, October 8, 2018 - link
Does it need Helium cooling using AVX-512 with 4.3 GHz on all cores?Inteli - Monday, October 8, 2018 - link
Does it include a chiller, too?mapesdhs - Monday, October 8, 2018 - link
#include <burn.h>:D