Intel Introduces 28-Core Unlocked Xeon W-3175X

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By Andrew E. Freedman
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NEW YORK -- Intel today announced a 28-core chip, the Intel Xeon W-3175X. That surpasses its old record of 18 cores with the i9-7980XE Extreme Edition processor. It will begin shipping this December.

The 28-core 56-thread processor's clock speed starts at 3.1GHz and goes up to 4.3GHz. It has a TDP of 255W and is based on Intel's Skylake-X architecture. The processor also supports six channels of memory.

The unlocked chip offers 125GBps of memory bandwidth. This is, essentially, an overclocked server chip, so it will go into server-class motherboards rather than an X399 chipset.

Asus and Gigabyte will serve as the first motherboard partners for the W-3175X, the company said.

Intel invited Tangent Studios, the team behind the Netflix movie Next Gen, to explain how it worked powerfully with Blender. Few other details were announced on stage, so we're still waiting on price.

On a wall of motherboards outside of the presentation, the new boards from Asus, the ROG Dominus Extreme, and Gigabyte, the SKL-SP 15. These will likely launch with the W-3175. The motherboards feature the C621 chipset, bt there is no word on if these will be branded as X599 or not, and we haven't been able to get confirmation.

Andrew E. Freedman

Andrew E. Freedman is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware focusing on laptops, desktops and gaming. He also keeps up with the latest news. A lover of all things gaming and tech, his previous work has shown up in Tom's Guide, Laptop Mag, Kotaku, PCMag and Complex, among others. Follow him on Threads @FreedmanAE and Mastodon @FreedmanAE.mastodon.social.

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13 Comments Comment from the forums
  • TJ Hooker
    Intel today announced a 28-Core chip, the Intel Xeon W-3175X. That surpasses its old record of 18 cores with the i9-7980XE Extreme Edition processor.

    They've had a 28 core Xeon for a year already.

    https://ark.intel.com/products/120508
    Reply
  • Ninjawithagun
    ...yup, and I bet you that Intel will unlock the ceiling on the price too...LMAO
    Reply
  • jimmysmitty
    21384426 said:
    Intel today announced a 28-Core chip, the Intel Xeon W-3175X. That surpasses its old record of 18 cores with the i9-7980XE Extreme Edition processor.

    They've had a 28 core Xeon for a year already.

    https://ark.intel.com/products/120508

    Not quite the same as thats from the Purley platform which if for HPC. This is their first HEDT 28 core CPU that will run on LGA 2066 sockets.
    Reply
  • caqde
    21384526 said:
    21384426 said:
    Intel today announced a 28-Core chip, the Intel Xeon W-3175X. That surpasses its old record of 18 cores with the i9-7980XE Extreme Edition processor.

    They've had a 28 core Xeon for a year already.

    https://ark.intel.com/products/120508

    Not quite the same as thats from the Purley platform which if for HPC. This is their first HEDT 28 core CPU that will run on LGA 2066 sockets.

    No this isn't LGA 2066. This goes on an undisclosed socket with specific motherboards that only at this point in time support a single processor. The Xeon W-3175X has a six channel memory controller of which LGA 2066 only supports 4 channels. Not to mention all LGA 2066 motherboards would be incapable of handling this chips power requirements.

    Reply
  • velocityg4
    So, how many real PCIe lanes does it have to the CPU. Not the shared lanes of the chipset? It's probably still 44 real PCIe lanes plus 4 lanes shared via DMI. While Threadripper 2 is 60 lanes plus 4 shared. At least AMD is a bit more genuine. Rather than counting all the extra shared lanes of their chipset in the total they just count the number of lanes dedicated to the chipset.

    Should be interesting. I wonder how much more they are going to try to charge than Threadripper 2990WX.

    The TDP of this Xeon is a killer. That will need some heavy duty cooling. I wonder how many watts it will pull at full Turbo Boost. Since that is generally higher. At 255W, I can't imagine their will be much room for overclocking outside of custom loops and some of the best 280mm and 360mm AIO coolers.
    Reply
  • salgado18
    I hate Xeon's names.
    Reply
  • racksmith101
    And how many zeros are we going to see on the price?
    Reply
  • bit_user
    21384426 said:
    Intel today announced a 28-Core chip, the Intel Xeon W-3175X. That surpasses its old record of 18 cores with the i9-7980XE Extreme Edition processor.

    They've had a 28 core Xeon for a year already.

    https://ark.intel.com/products/120508
    What's definitely new about this is that it's being offered under the Xeon W-series branding. That and the fact that it's unlocked.

    Otherwise, it's anyone's guess whether anything under the hood is actually different. One would hope that the IHS is at least soldered.
    Reply
  • Soaptrail
    Xeon indicates this is for businesses. Do businesses want to overclock their servers?
    Reply
  • Gillerer
    21384921 said:
    And how many zeros are we going to see on the price?

    Maybe Intel can avoid having too many zeros by pricing it at $9,999.99. :-D

    21385091 said:
    Xeon indicates this is for businesses. Do businesses want to overclock their servers?

    I think the only businesses looking for these kinds of CPUs with overclocking would be financial traders.

    Other than that, this is a halo product to steal some of Threadripper's thunder, only used by extreme overclockers and rich people who have to have all the most expensive (computing/gaming) toys.

    The rationale behind naming it "Xeon" instead of "i11" probably has to do with the feature set - apart from overclocking - being more akin to the high-end Xeons, and the (probable) server socket it uses. They could have gimped this by removing support for some of the Xeon features, like ECC, but that would have diminished its already tiny niche even further. Now they can charge as much as - or more than - the equivalent regular Xeon by not having removed any functionality.
    Reply