The Intel Xeon W-3175X Review: 28 Unlocked Cores, $2999
by Ian Cutress on January 30, 2019 9:00 AM ESTGaming: Civilization 6 (DX12)
Originally penned by Sid Meier and his team, the Civ series of turn-based strategy games are a cult classic, and many an excuse for an all-nighter trying to get Gandhi to declare war on you due to an integer overflow. Truth be told I never actually played the first version, but every edition from the second to the sixth, including the fourth as voiced by the late Leonard Nimoy, it a game that is easy to pick up, but hard to master.
Benchmarking Civilization has always been somewhat of an oxymoron – for a turn based strategy game, the frame rate is not necessarily the important thing here and even in the right mood, something as low as 5 frames per second can be enough. With Civilization 6 however, Firaxis went hardcore on visual fidelity, trying to pull you into the game. As a result, Civilization can taxing on graphics and CPUs as we crank up the details, especially in DirectX 12.
Perhaps a more poignant benchmark would be during the late game, when in the older versions of Civilization it could take 20 minutes to cycle around the AI players before the human regained control. The new version of Civilization has an integrated ‘AI Benchmark’, although it is not currently part of our benchmark portfolio yet, due to technical reasons which we are trying to solve. Instead, we run the graphics test, which provides an example of a mid-game setup at our settings.
| AnandTech CPU Gaming 2019 Game List | ||||||||
| Game | Genre | Release Date | API | IGP | Low | Med | High | |
| Civilization VI | RTS | Oct 2016 |
DX12 | 1080p Ultra |
4K Ultra |
8K Ultra |
16K Low |
|
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
| Civilization VI | IGP |
| Average FPS |  |
| 95th Percentile |  |
We had issues running Civilization beyond IGP, we're looking into exactly why.
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abufrejoval - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link
So with the limited edition production numbers, quite clearly the price can be symbolically low, just so Intel can claim bragging rights: They are not interested in satisfying market demands, especially since far too many workstation and server customers might switch over from a Xeon Scalable offering, they just want to claim victory... everywhere... including 10nmJust pathetic!
And honestly, you shouldn't even report about it. Your mission is to inform consumers on products they can buy. If consumers cannot buy it, you should treat it very, very differently, if at all.
You're just being abused by Intel to push a brand that suffers for reasons.
SH3200 - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link
This product cannibalizes half the current Xeon lineup as it provides ecc/rdimm at a fraction of the cost. I’d be amazed if FSI customers don’t prebuy every single one ever made before it even hits the public.br83taylor - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link
I find it odd Ian is happy to run and report benchmarks with this processor going against Intel recommendation for bios settings, yet would not do it for the AMD processors with their PBO setting. Both of which seem to do very similar things. Letting the 2990WX run with PBO would give it a much fairer chance against this.GreenReaper - Thursday, January 31, 2019 - link
It's not unressonablr to test the system as given to you, especially when it is provided as a complete system, so may represent what end-users get. That said, it seems like he kinda called that out in the sideways manner by highlighting the fact that the system Intel had shipped to him was not actually using those specifications.outsideloop - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link
This reminds me of the FX-9590. Massively overclocking silicon to keep up. Except now, the shoe is on the other foot.wow&wow - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link
Xeon W-3175X: $2999+$1500= $4499Ryzen TR 2900WX: $1799+$300= $2099
Is Intel trying to market it for “stupids” or those whose left brains being not right and right brains having nothing left :-D
ksec - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link
I think we need some new innovation in Thermal Cooling, how we could cool more with less, ease and cheaper. We pushed to near 600W for CPU and GPU alone.mapesdhs - Saturday, February 2, 2019 - link
Ye cannae beat the laws of physics. :D Thermal density is a hard problem. Check out AdoredTV's video on the subject, it explains things nicely.The_Assimilator - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link
This is Pentium 4 days all over again.bananaforscale - Thursday, January 31, 2019 - link
Kitty approves of heat output.