The Intel Xeon W-3175X Review: 28 Unlocked Cores, $2999
by Ian Cutress on January 30, 2019 9:00 AM ESTTest Bed and Setup
As per our processor testing policy, we take a premium category motherboard suitable for the socket, and equip the system with a suitable amount of memory running at the manufacturer's maximum supported frequency. This is also typically run at JEDEC subtimings where possible. It is noted that some users are not keen on this policy, stating that sometimes the maximum supported frequency is quite low, or faster memory is available at a similar price, or that the JEDEC speeds can be prohibitive for performance. While these comments make sense, ultimately very few users apply memory profiles (either XMP or other) as they require interaction with the BIOS, and most users will fall back on JEDEC supported speeds - this includes home users as well as industry who might want to shave off a cent or two from the cost or stay within the margins set by the manufacturer. Where possible, we will extend out testing to include faster memory modules either at the same time as the review or a later date.
We changed Intel's reference system slightly from what they sent us, for parity. We swapped out the storage for our standard SATA drive (mostly due to issues with the Optane drive supplied), and put in our selection of GPUs for testing.
| Xeon W-3175X System As Tested | |
| Item | |
| CPU | Intel Xeon W-3175X |
| CPU Cooler | Asetek 690LX-PN |
| Motherboard | ASUS Dominus Extreme |
| Memory | 6 x 8GB Samsung DDR4-2666 RDIMM |
| Storage | Crucial MX200 1TB |
| Video Card | Sapphire RX 460 2GB for CPU MSI GTX 1080 Gaming 8GB for Gaming |
| Chassis | Anidees AI Crystal XL AR |
| Power Supply | EVGA 1600W T2 Titanium |
Other systems tested followed our usual testing procedure.
| Test Setups | |||||
| Intel HEDT | i9-9980XE i9-7980XE |
ASRock X299 OC Formula |
P1.40 | TRUE Copper |
Crucial Ballistix 4x4GB DDR4-2666 |
| AMD TR4 | TR2 2970WX TR2 2920X |
ASUS ROG X399 Zenith |
1501 | Enermax Liqtech TR4 |
Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 4x8GB DDR4-2933 |
| TR2 2990WX TR2 2950X |
ASUS ROG X399 Zenith |
0508 | Enermax Liqtech TR4 |
G.Skill FlareX 4x8GB DDR4-2933 |
|
| EPYC SP3 | EPYC 7601 | GIGABYTE MW51-HP0 |
F1 | Enermax Liqtech TR4 |
Micron LRDIMMs 8x128GB DDR4-2666 |
| GPU | Sapphire RX 460 2GB (CPU Tests) MSI GTX 1080 Gaming 8G (Gaming Tests) |
||||
| PSU | Corsair AX860i Corsair AX1200i |
||||
| SSD | Crucial MX200 1TB | ||||
| OS | Windows 10 x64 RS3 1709 Spectre and Meltdown Patched |
||||
| VRM Supplimented with SST-FHP141-VF 173 CFM fans | |||||
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tamalero - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link
Aaah yes.. the presenter "forgot" to say it was heavily overclocked..arh2o - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link
Hey Ian, nice review. But you guys really need to stop testing games with an ancient GTX 1080 from 1H 2016...it's almost 3 years old now. You're clearly GPU bottle-necked on a bunch of these games you've benchmarked. At least use a RTX 2080, but if you're really insistent on keeping the GTX 1080, bench at 720p with it instead of your IGP. For example:Final Fantasy XV: All your CPUs have FPS between 1-4 frames of difference. Easy to spot GPU bottleneck here.
Shadow of War Low: Ditto, all CPUs bench within the 96-100 FPS range. Also, what's the point of even including the medium and high numbers? It's decimal point differences on the FPS, not even a whole number difference. Clearly GPU bottle-necked here even at 1080p unfortunately.
eddman - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link
Xeons don't even have an IGP. That IGP in the tables is simply the name they chose for that settings, which includes 720 resolution, since it represents a probable use case for an IGP.Anyway, you are right about the card. They should've used a faster one, although IMO game benchmarks are pointless for such CPUs.
BushLin - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link
I'm glad they're using the same card for years so it can be directly compared to previous benchmarks and we can see how performance scales with cores vs clock speed.Mitch89 - Friday, February 1, 2019 - link
That’s a poor rationale, you wouldn’t pair a top-end CPU with an outdated GPU if you were building a system that needs both CPU and GPU performance.SH3200 - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link
For all the jokes its getting doesn't the 7290F actually run at a higher TDP using the same socket? Intel couldn't have just have taken the coolers from the Xeon DAP WSes and used those instead?evernessince - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link
How is 3K priced right? You can purchased a 2990WX for half that price and 98% of the performance. $1,500 is a lot of extra money in your wallet.GreenReaper - Thursday, January 31, 2019 - link
Maybe they thought since it was called the 2990WX it cost $2990...tygrus - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link
1) A few cases showed the 18core Intel CPU beat their 28core. I assume the benchmark and/or OS is contributing to a reduced performance for the 28 core Intel and the 32 core AMD (TR 2950 beats TR 2990 a few times).2) Do you really want to use 60% more power for <25% increase of performance?
3) This chip is a bit like the 1.13GHz race in terms of such a small release & high cost it should be ignored by most of us as a marketing stunt.
GreenReaper - Thursday, January 31, 2019 - link
Fewer cores may be able to boost faster and have less contention for shared resources such as memory bandwidth. This CPU tends to only win by any significant margin when it whenuse all of its cores. Heck, you have the 2700X up there in many cases.