Now that Intel has finally launched its 3rd Generation Xeon Scalable 'Ice Lake' processors for servers, it is only a matter of time before the company releases its Xeon W-series CPUs featuring the same architecture for workstations. Apparently, some of these upcoming processors are already in the wild.
Puget Systems maintains a public database of test results, and recently a submission was posted to the database for a system based on the yet-to-be-announced Intel Xeon W-3335 processor clocked at 3.40 GHz using Gigabyte's single-socket MU72-SU0 motherboard, 128 GB of DDR4 memory (using eight 16GB modules), and Nvidia's Quadro RTX 4000 graphics card.
The exact specifications of the CPU are unknown, but given its '3335' model number, we'd speculate that this is an entry-level model. The submitted test result is for the PugetBench for Premiere Pro 0.95.1 benchmark.
The Intel Xeon W-3335-based system scored 926 overall points (standard export: 88.2; standard live playback: 126.1; effects: 63.6; GPU score: 63.6). For comparison, a system powered by AMD's 12-core Ryzen 5900X equipped with 16GB of RAM and a GeForce RTX 3080 scored 915 overall points (standard export: 100.9; standard live playback: 79.6; effects: 93.9; GPU score: 100.7).
Given that we do not know the exact specifications of the Intel X-3335 CPU, it is hard to make any conclusions about its performance, especially keeping in mind that the platform drivers may not be ready for an Ice Lake-W. Yet, at least we can now make some assumptions about the ballpark performance of the CPU.
Intel has not disclosed what to expect from its Xeon W-series 'Ice Lake' processors, but in general, the company tends to offer key features of its server products to its workstation customers as well. In the case of the Xeon W-3335, it is evident that the CPU maintained an eight-channel memory subsystem, though we do not know anything about the number of PCIe lanes it supports.
In any case, since we're seeing new benchmark submissions for the new Xeon W chips posted to public databases, we should expect the chips to hit the market shortly.
