The Intel Xeon W-3175X Review: 28 Unlocked Cores, $2999
by Ian Cutress on January 30, 2019 9:00 AM ESTGaming: Strange Brigade (DX12, Vulkan)
Strange Brigade is based in 1903’s Egypt and follows a story which is very similar to that of the Mummy film franchise. This particular third-person shooter is developed by Rebellion Developments which is more widely known for games such as the Sniper Elite and Alien vs Predator series. The game follows the hunt for Seteki the Witch Queen who has arose once again and the only ‘troop’ who can ultimately stop her. Gameplay is cooperative centric with a wide variety of different levels and many puzzles which need solving by the British colonial Secret Service agents sent to put an end to her reign of barbaric and brutality.
The game supports both the DirectX 12 and Vulkan APIs and houses its own built-in benchmark which offers various options up for customization including textures, anti-aliasing, reflections, draw distance and even allows users to enable or disable motion blur, ambient occlusion and tessellation among others. AMD has boasted previously that Strange Brigade is part of its Vulkan API implementation offering scalability for AMD multi-graphics card configurations.
AnandTech CPU Gaming 2019 Game List | ||||||||
Game | Genre | Release Date | API | IGP | Low | Med | High | |
Strange Brigade* | FPS | Aug 2018 |
DX12 Vulkan |
720p Low |
1080p Medium |
1440p High |
4K Ultra |
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*Strange Brigade is run in DX12 and Vulkan modes |
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
Strange Brigade | IGP | Low | Medium | High |
Average FPS | ||||
95th Percentile |
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Strange Brigade | IGP | Low | Medium | High |
Average FPS | ||||
95th Percentile |
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eastcoast_pete - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link
@Ian: Thanks for the review. I guess the "lower" price of this 28-core Xeon shows the benefit of having strong competition in the market - without the large Threadrippers, that price wouldn't have come down from the $ 8,000 mark.Two questions: I am still struck by how often the higher-end "consumer" grade CPUs beat the pants off the many-core monsters. Is high single-thread performance still that dominant in the applications in which the 9900K or 2700x lead the pack?
Second, did Intel really recommend to plug this monster directly into a wall outlet? If yes, wow. Guess you need a surge-protected, line-conditioned house line then, so not exactly standard equipment. Having encountered brownouts and voltage spikes, I wouldn't plug even a $ 500 PC straight into an unprotected household socket, never mind a $ 7,000 rig. I guess if that's what they recommend, it doesn't void the warranty when stuff happens.
My other comment is that this chip is really about workstation-type tasks, and while I know that coming up with more workstation-specific test suites is too specialized, that's where these Xeons and the big Threadrippers start making sense.
Regarding gaming: As you also hint at, much of that $ 3,000 budget for the CPU would be better spend on two or more high-end graphics cards (2080 GTX), all liquid cooling, a hand-selected eight core CPU, and a large, ultra-wide aspect fast refresh HDR-capable monitor.
zepi - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link
Ian is working in UK. He has most likely something like 230V single phase 80A feed-in to his house, if not 100 or even 120A, depending if he has electric heating or gas.One main fuse for that surely. Then that phase is split to some smaller circuits feeding into separate rooms & sockets etc. probably 8-16A fuses. Some stronger ones (30+A) if he has electric heaters in the taps / shower without using a boiler & heating circuits.
Then another fuse in each wall socket. And most likely a fourth fuse inside the actual cable.
And @230V, the cable "only" needs to support 7A, so it is actually nothing spectacular.
1500W devices are perfectly fine in Europe, mostly because of the 230V voltage. It just makes things much easier.
SaturnusDK - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link
Many if not most European households have 3 phase 230V 16A power, so you can power standard 400V appliances.BushLin - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link
In the UK a standard wall outlet is rated for 13A. Our kettles are nearly all 3KW. We value our tea and have built our homes around it.eastcoast_pete - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link
But then, your kettle doesn't require clean sine wave AC current, and won't suffer much if the voltage drops or spikes. In contrast, an expensive rig like this might. My comment wasn't about overall power need of this setup, but my surprise over the "unfiltered wall socket is fine" instruction from Intel.eastcoast_pete - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link
I am quite familiar with the situation in Europe. But, even there, I wouldn't just trust a regular power outlet (220 or 230 V) to provide clean sine power free from interference, voltage drops (brownouts) and voltage spikes, and neither do several friends of mine who live and work in Europe. They also use, at minimum, a good surge protector, and, for expensive systems, a UPS and line conditioner, just like we do here in the States.SaturnusDK - Thursday, January 31, 2019 - link
Surge protection is built into all regulatory fuse boxes so you don't need that in Europe since 2003 unless the building hasn't been updated to the current building code. Also before 2003 it was 220V in Europe and 240V in the UK. Now it's just 230V everywhere. Last there was a registered brown out in the area I live and work was February 1987... almost 32 years ago. In many areas of Europe it's not even worth considering as a risk anymore. You still need an UPS for obvious reasons though.maroon1 - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link
At least it is faster and has more consistence performance than 2990WX. Gaming performance also much better without the need to disable cores like you do for 2990WXtamalero - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link
I'm still scratching my head on who would buy this thing for "gaming" o_Oalacard - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link
Damn Ian you're on a roll with this on the heels of your incredible Intel's 10nm Cannon Lake and Core i3-8121U Deep Dive Review. Do you ever sleep?There's so much talent here that all you guys really should quit working for Purch and start your own independent tech site where the ads are reasonable and not exploitative. I can imagine everyone running straight to it and supporting it. Make it run on small ads and donations and you'd probably make out like kings.
Purch doesn't deserve you, period. Takes your talents elsewhere.