The Intel Xeon W-3175X Review: 28 Unlocked Cores, $2999
by Ian Cutress on January 30, 2019 9:00 AM ESTCPU Performance: Office Tests
The Office test suite is designed to focus around more industry standard tests that focus on office workflows, system meetings, some synthetics, but we also bundle compiler performance in with this section. For users that have to evaluate hardware in general, these are usually the benchmarks that most consider.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
For our graphs, some of them have two values: a regular value in orange, and one in red called 'Intel Spec'. ASUS offers the option to 'open up' the power and current limits of the chip, so the CPU is still running at the same frequency but is not throttled. Despite Intel saying that they recommend 'Intel Spec', the system they sent to us to test was actually set up with the power limits opened up, and the results they provided for us to compare to internally also correlated with that setting. As a result, we're providing both sets results for our CPU tests.
PCMark 10: Industry Standard System Profiler
Futuremark, now known as UL, has developed benchmarks that have become industry standards for around two decades. The latest complete system test suite is PCMark 10, upgrading over PCMark 8 with updated tests and more OpenCL invested into use cases such as video streaming.
PCMark splits its scores into about 14 different areas, including application startup, web, spreadsheets, photo editing, rendering, video conferencing, and physics. We post all of these numbers in our benchmark database, Bench, however the key metric for the review is the overall score.
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Chromium Compile: Windows VC++ Compile of Chrome 56
A large number of AnandTech readers are software engineers, looking at how the hardware they use performs. While compiling a Linux kernel is ‘standard’ for the reviewers who often compile, our test is a little more varied – we are using the windows instructions to compile Chrome, specifically a Chrome 56 build from March 2017, as that was when we built the test. Google quite handily gives instructions on how to compile with Windows, along with a 400k file download for the repo.
In our test, using Google’s instructions, we use the MSVC compiler and ninja developer tools to manage the compile. As you may expect, the benchmark is variably threaded, with a mix of DRAM requirements that benefit from faster caches. Data procured in our test is the time taken for the compile, which we convert into compiles per day.
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3DMark Physics: In-Game Physics Compute
Alongside PCMark is 3DMark, Futuremark’s (UL’s) gaming test suite. Each gaming tests consists of one or two GPU heavy scenes, along with a physics test that is indicative of when the test was written and the platform it is aimed at. The main overriding tests, in order of complexity, are Ice Storm, Cloud Gate, Sky Diver, Fire Strike, and Time Spy.
Some of the subtests offer variants, such as Ice Storm Unlimited, which is aimed at mobile platforms with an off-screen rendering, or Fire Strike Ultra which is aimed at high-end 4K systems with lots of the added features turned on. Time Spy also currently has an AVX-512 mode (which we may be using in the future).
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GeekBench4: Synthetics
A common tool for cross-platform testing between mobile, PC, and Mac, GeekBench 4 is an ultimate exercise in synthetic testing across a range of algorithms looking for peak throughput. Tests include encryption, compression, fast Fourier transform, memory operations, n-body physics, matrix operations, histogram manipulation, and HTML parsing.
I’m including this test due to popular demand, although the results do come across as overly synthetic, and a lot of users often put a lot of weight behind the test due to the fact that it is compiled across different platforms (although with different compilers).
We record the main subtest scores (Crypto, Integer, Floating Point, Memory) in our benchmark database, but for the review we post the overall single and multi-threaded results.
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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.