European IT distribution company EET Group just listed six Sapphire Rapids Refresh chips on their website, as shared on X by leaker momomo_us. These Sapphire Rapids Refresh chips all have Lenovo branding, so we could assume that these listings are for Lenovo workstations like the ThinkStation.
While Intel has yet to officially launch the Xeon W3500-series chips, which will compete with AMD’s Threadripper and Threadripper Pro processors, some companies would be eager to get their hands on the latest-generation Intel workstations, which will give them an advantage.
We previously reported on the benchmarks for these chips last February, showing the W5-3535X outperforming the fourth-gen Sapphire Rapids CPUs in multi-threaded workloads. Hardware detective momomo_us also shared the specs for the new Sapphire Rapids Refresh CPUs in the same month, showing us that the next-generation chips received at least four performance cores and a small bump in their TDPs.
Intel Xeon W3500 Series Specifications*
| Header Cell - Column 0 | Cache (MB) | Performance Cores | Processor Base Frequency (GHz) | TDP (Watts) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intel Xeon w5-3525 | 45 | 16 | 3.2 | 290 |
| Intel Xeon w5-3535X | 52.5 | 20 | 2.9 | 300 |
| Intel Xeon w7-3545 | 67.5 | 24 | 2.7 | 310 |
| Intel Xeon w7-3555 | 75 | 28 | 2.7 | 325 |
| Intel Xeon w7-3565X | 82.5 | 32 | 2.5 | 335 |
| Intel Xeon w9-3575X | 97.5 | 44 | 2.2 | 340 |
*Specifications are unconfirmed.
The additional cores on these new chips will give users who rely heavily on multi-threaded workloads additional performance, but they’re still heavily outclassed by AMD offerings. The top-of-the-line Threadripper Pro 7995WX boasts 96 cores—52 more than Intel’s most expensive offering.
The 96-core AMD Threadripper Pro is far more expensive than what Intel offers, with the costly 7995WX costing at least $10,998 on Amazon, versus Intel’s current top offering, the 36-core Intel Xeon W9-3475X, a little less than $4,000. However, AMD’s closest competitor, the 32-core Threadripper Pro 7975WX, offers a more reasonable price of $3,900.
Although Intel has already launched the next-generation Emerald Rapids processors for the most demanding applications, the Sapphire Rapids Refresh Xeon W chips are designed for creative professionals. These chips give them the power they need without the extra features (and corresponding higher prices) they won’t use anyway in their applications.
