The Intel Xeon W Review: W-2195, W-2155, W-2123, W-2104 and W-2102 Tested
by Ian Cutress & Joe Shields on July 30, 2018 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Xeon
- Workstation
- ECC
- Skylake-SP
- Skylake-X
- Xeon-W
- Xeon Scalable
Conclusion: Is Intel Serious About Xeon W?
In this review, we have covered the performance on three of the more popular Xeon W processors, as well as two off-roadmap parts, and discussed that the Intel’s decision to bifurcate the way its workstation and consumer processors work has put more questions on the table for prospective buyers.
This ultimately comes down to the question: Is Intel Serious About Xeon W? If we ask Intel about this, of course the answer to them is yes – they want to have target markets and have a product portfolio that they feel will fit with that user base. However I am not so sure.
Xeon W was launched a lot later than both the Xeon Scalable platform and the equivalent Skylake-X consumer platform. The messaging behind Xeon W is unclear to a large degree, with only a limited amount of PR invested into it, unlike Xeon Scalable or Skylake-X. The decision to split the market between consumer and workstation, despite having a common socket, has minimized the accessibility of the workstation platform: fewer discussions are being had about the hardware, because there’s little room for a truly mix-and-match scenario as with previous generations. At no point in Intel’s messaging were we offered review samples for example, which is usually an indication that the product line is not one that the product managers are looking to promote. Only Intel’s latest Xeon E designs, released 10 months after the first equivalent consumer parts, beats Xeon W in terms of how un-exciting it can be to try and discuss talking about a platform. Intel does not want to sample Xeon E, either.
So will Intel lose workstation market share to AMD? If I am being so pallid, what are the financial ramifications for this market? AMD’s Threadripper looks like an appealing platform for workstation users for sure, but AMD is not without its own issues. Intel is the incumbent, and has embedded itself with a large number of OEMs and end-users for years, making it difficult for AMD to break that market. AMD’s chiplet design will take a few generations to get used to, so users might stick with ‘what they know’, regardless of any cost/benefit analysis. There is also the discussion of ECC support on Threadripper, for which the messaging has been somewhat unclear: technically it should support up to ECC LRDIMMs, however it does depend a lot on whether the motherboard vendor has qualified their product for RDIMMs or LRDIMMs – most of them are not, complicating the issue. If AMD wanted to tackle this space, they need an ASUS or a GIGABYTE to build a ‘workstation focused’ motherboard, with confirmed ECC and co-processor support. GIGABYTE’s Designare line and MSI’s upcoming X399 Creation might be aimed at this, but it really does require a razor-sharp message to get through.
All this confusion means that while AMD can be competitive in most tests, Intel is expected to remain the market leader for the foreseeable future.
I’m Sold on Xeon W: Tell Me About Performance
As our benchmarks are anything to go by, there is a lot of parity in performance between Intel’s Xeon W and Intel’s Skylake-X product lines. Xeon W takes a hit in memory workloads, because of the memory support: ECC RDIMMs are typically run at base JEDEC sub-timings, and so our DDR4-2666 memory was run at 19-19-19, compared to the 16-16-17 on the consumer platform which is more typical.
Our Xeon W results are skewed a bit towards the low-end processors, mostly because three of the five units we managed to acquire were quad-core processors. At this level, Intel’s now EOL Kaby Lake-X processors fared better, or the consumer Coffee Lake-S look like the better option, unless the user needs ECC or more PCIe lanes than the consumer products provide. The obvious counterpoint here is that if a user needs ECC, and is happy with 64 GB maximum memory support, then Intel’s own Xeon E is also an option, however we have not tested those parts yet (if any OEM can sample them to us, please let us know).
On the high-end, we do see the W-2195 sit behind the Core i9-7980XE in almost all benchmarks, which also means that for embarrassingly parallel workloads, it also sits behind the Threadripper 1950X. It still holds that Intel’s single threaded performance of the Xeon W, despite the lack of Turbo Boost 3.0, still gives it a significant advantage in single threaded workloads over AMD.
For users worrying about Spectre and Meltdown patches affecting performance, in our SYSMark tests we saw a 2-6% decrease over all the tests, with the hardest hit tests seeing a 12% decrease due to the correlation with storage.
Why Buy Xeon W?
The obvious reasons to buy Xeon W processors are just tick boxes: ECC memory, PCIe lanes, co-processor verification. If these are needed, the number of options for the rest of the system (particularly the motherboard) becomes slim, especially when factoring in price and total cost of ownership. A lot of the workstation market works on development cycles and high-throughput compute: the faster the compute, the quicker the prototyping. The fastest processors for a lot of that work, if CPU bound, are won by the consumer Core i9 or Threadripper, however if the above boxes are ticked, then Xeon W would be needed. Or Xeon Scalable, depending on budget.
A small side note to end: If anyone has access to any of the Apple-only Xeons (like the W-2150B) and would kindly let us borrow it for a review, please let me know over email.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
74 Comments
View All Comments
Ian Cutress - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
If we ever get a Xeon Scalable system up and running for proper benchmarking, I'll run through some tests.JoJ - Saturday, August 4, 2018 - link
Hi Ian,I beg you to consider the futility of approaching HPE, to obtain a Z station and 56 Scalable cores, max RAM etc, may not may be wholly as anticipated.
I have a very high profile media production job coming, that could warrant a room of fully loaded such machines. Truly high profile. I have been always able to establish nearly immediate rapport with the marketing folk who are not apparently thought about by the UK online tech media, as warmly as I think it fair, but then I deal in printed worlds of very controlled readerships, and possibly by reflex alone I'm treated like I have more to say than I often do. But approaching the twenty five years mark, I probably ran out of lines some nineteen years ago anyway...
I care about hurling around heavily laden InDesign files, often without any media placeholders to include 409MB Hassleblad captures straight from the photographer. This project is going to be filled with custom adverts not run in any other media ever. (It took longer to agree copy for Rolls Royce than to sell the deal, in our first encounter with this project. VWAG owned both marques including Bentley, then.) Advertisers may visit, our job to produce for them their first display copy ever, because of interest from services who are in the word of mouth referral ecosystem this publication represents. We are effectively building a advertising studio, to accommodate the needs presented by, eg a long established security company, beyond public profile not by necessity or plan but rather not seeing the circle squared to deliver satisfactory result, without establishing unwanted capacity or staffing. So founder directors shall descend, for interview and portrait, the deal being approved by them signing a proof of the pages, in person, ideally we are able to complete 60% of the interview and layout remotely in advance.
I want to suggest to you that HPE could genuinely be intrigued by the client base of our project, and want to be exposed to them... mostly boutique banks and funds. A typical user is running a dozen Bloomberg Professional windows, Excel, with live updates and a lot of libraries for giving cell results, will have a terabyte or so of core textual references, between academic papers, email threads, online discussion (usually scraped) , and the job is to fill very specialist magazines with content and advertisers who don't play in the spray and pray brand game, but care everything about how they're found by a prospective new customer. So atop the trappings of a financial trader's desktop, will be layered Word, sure, but a TeX compositor, Visual studio, InDesign, PS...WHY? Because if we can get the message right, we can trade quickly to fill a matching campaign of the same redundancy as big ad buyers get, at even sharper prices. They come for creative, stay for flow execution.
It's realistic, even commonplace, for a Xeon Scalable workstation to find itself in front of board member powers, in this way.
Looking at the decisive commitment required to purchase current generation high end workstations, I assume that HPE, Dell et.al. just lean on their direct sales forces.
but strip away our Corporate veneer, and we're indistinguishable from any of your readers.
Individual buyers of workstation class computers, commonly inhabit the front line trenches of high end media production. London seethes with freelancer artists, driven by insufficient investment by employers, to fly solo simply to stay current with the tools and turnaround of their art. I can't win any argument about how far from the public imagination of the game, is the typical MB Pro user, sat elegantly in a WeWork chair, I thought my first sight of the Barbican WeWork office, was a film set... (whereas we're actually building a film set where to conduct our FOH business, because I can't vouch for the appearance of our actual digs. (Mr CIO left of his own accord, incapable of tolerating our disinterested views of fancy workspaces... the fact that our dev team is 80% founder level partner, actually never came into play, but the non attendance at his"corporate development" meetings, was protest against the idea of competing for hires with luxuries. Pity, in this one respect alone, the one character aspect we didn't believe necessary to investigate in interview, so patent is our third world architectural infrastructure, relations truly soured only because the guy was so good in every way otherwise. We just couldn't please with such capital commitments, not looking at the impending A grade glut just completing in the City. Such dangerous words; "absolutely, in the future, if you take us there, we will want a statement head office for sales etc". Just not on any immediate plans..
sorry, Ian, I am avoiding saying that I think I certainly could sell a HPE on the facts we know very well, where they'll be getting sales, in this sector at least, more from physical exposure to buyers and influencers, directly demonstrated the new generation capability by entirely non conveniently situated independent professionals and outside service companies, but absolutely nothing to look at in the kind of performance review I can't really understand is so homogeneous online, because this sort of evaluation hardly relates to the real use at all.
I am adamant that the entire presentation of high end desktop bixes is hostile and increasingly damaging to sales of performance workstations to corporate office buyers of all kinds.
Wall to wall gamer imagery has diluted the public perception of utilitarian power of computers beyond homeopathic insignificance.
Nothing, not a single word for twenty years- it seems to me - has conveyed any part of this crucial message: "With this new Intel computer, and the latest developments in the most advanced quantitative tools for generations, I WHOOP MY COMPETITIONS REAR!'
By all means, running a renderer matters in the industry that we inhabit. But the reason why we'll shell out for a 56 core beast, is so we can quickly previs a scene, while still working through the latest circulation data dump for the 200,000 or so publications we trade advertising on. Most days, we're rendering visuals of the data we don't want to take our concentration aeay from, again the reason why we're looking at the new HPE Z station Scalable workstations.
i have to be distracted but I'll conclude with guaranteed brevity upon my short return. There's plenty of angles here to get a vendor to cough up a couple of fully loaded machines for you, and I am entirely serious I'll invest the necessary time to get you a shot if you think I'm not batshii crazy. bfn
Elstar - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
To be fair, the top end Core X and Xeon W have different TDP values.HStewart - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
So does TDP values make bigger impact than actual Frequency - on same chip of course.BurntMyBacon - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
It is more that TDP and frequency can no longer be separated. If you completely ignore TDP and fix the frequencies to their maximum, then TDP only matters in as much as you have the proper cooling solution to manage it. However, the actual running frequency of Intel's processors are tied into processor temperature, power, number of active cores, etc. On the same chip, a larger TDP means the processor can spend more time at higher frequencies or have more cores active at the same frequency.mode_13h - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
The difference relative to X-series is probably due to thermal throttling due to dual AVX-512 and heat buildup under the non-soldered IHS.HStewart - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
That would also be interesting test - I believe AVX-512 can be turned off in bios - not sure since I don't have one.JlHADJOE - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
Lack of Turbo Boost 3.0 maybe?stanleyipkiss - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
Besides the VM situation on Threadripper, why would anyone spend $2500+ for this?duploxxx - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
what VM situation?