- AMD left the enthusiast community hanging
and I took that personally
because based on their promised upgrade path
I invested heavily in Threadripper workstations
only for AMD to quietly, completely abandon
the high-end desktop space that
prosumers and small businesses depend on.
It's not that they didn't have
a socket compatible successor product
they just made the business decision not to launch it.
But what's this?
Intel is launching their Sapphire Rapid Xeon W processors
and, get this, offering 64 lanes of PCI Express Gen 5
for just $30 more than a mainstream Core i5.
Is the high-end desktop back?
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I understand AMD's decision to abandon the HEDT
or high-end desktop market.
Some of it is rooted in pretty solid logic.
Their mainstream 16 core CPUs are enough
for just about any multi-threaded prosumer workload
and very few people will fully
appreciate the other benefits of HEDT.
Like, who needs two terabytes
of memory in their gaming system
or half a dozen PCI express expansion cards.
But that's never what HEDT was about.
It was about making those features available
for those who do need them or even just want them.
I'm talking about the folks building home labs
the hobbyists and enthusiasts who are just getting started
with scientific or simulation workloads.
The small businesses who need
the performance and the features
but can't afford the premium for
certified hardware from big vendors like Lenovo.
That's who AMD abandoned.
Why?
Well, because it was much more
profitable to slap Pro on the box
and sell that same silicone for way more money.
But then, I mean, how'd they get away with that, right?
Well, to give you some idea how competitive
Intel's last HEDT lineup was with Threadripper 3000
here's what they cost at launch
and here's what they're still worth today.
That complete smack down of Intel's attempt at competition
happened three years ago, which coincidentally
is also the last time that AMD bothered
to launch a product in this segment.
It's almost like we need competition
and no corporation is going to innovate without it.
Thankfully, it really does seem to be here.
Intel's announcement today is taking
a page straight out of AMD's book and attacking
not just the ridiculously expensive Threadripper Pro...
Which they may or may not be competitive with.
We'll have that link below.
But also the hole in the market
that was left open by the death
of the non-pro Threadripper lineup
with an honest to goodness HEDT lineup
that starts at, no lie, under $400.
Now, can you get a better CPU for $400?
Probably, especially when you factor
in the cost of the motherboard.
Six cores, hardly impressive no matter how fast they are.
But would that other CPU have 64 PCIE Gen 5 lanes
and support for two terabytes of VCC memory?
I didn't think so.
So for the right customer, this is an absolute godsend
and it's been a long time coming.
Seriously.
For the uninitiated, these chips have been stuck
in development hell for over five years
due in large part to teething pains
for Intel's infamous 10 nanometer node
which has now been renamed Intel seven.
Now that the production woes seem to have been ironed out
and wait for yields are presumably good enough though
Intel's finally announced hard details
on these next-gen workstation processors
split into six tiers named Xeon W-3 through W-9
and then separated into mainstream workstation
and expert workstation segments.
Regardless of the tier though, all these new chips
are based on the Golden Cove architecture
that Intel used for their Performance Cores
in their 12th gen mainstream processors, meaning that
we understand the performance characteristics pretty well
and that gets us pretty excited.
And there's some bonuses.
They've restored the missing AVX512 support
and they've added advanced matrix extensions
for accelerated deep learning.
They also come for support with DDR5 with ECC
and Intel vPro with an 8x DMI 4.0 link to the W790 chip set
which adds capacity for an additional PCIE 16 Gen 4 slot
plus up to five 20 gigabit per second USB three ports
integrated two and a half gig networking, and WiFi 6E.
Over half the lineup is also unlocked for over clocking too
making these actual spiritual
successors to the Core X family.
Now the mainstream, or 2400 series
provides 64 PCIE Gen 5 lanes direct from the CPU
with support for any combination of up to four GPUs
or eight NVMe storage devices.
To go with that allotment you get up to
24 cores for the W7 chips, which are unlocked
or as few as six cores.
But I suspect that most people
won't be interested in the base models
and it seems like Intel agrees
since anything under 12 cores is going to be OEM only.
The pricing for what you can buy though is pretty exciting.
Since the 16 and 24 core chips are priced more in line
with OG Threadripper than new Threadripper Pro.
You aren't getting as many cores as Threadripper
but we already know these cores are fast
and you're getting support for two terabytes
of quad-channel memory
to go along with that massive PCIE allotment.
Or to go with your massive
all black Stealth edition LTT desk pad.
All sizes are the same price.
You can get them at lttstore.com.
I can't say the same for Intel's expert line.
They are more expensive, but for good reason.
Intel is finally rolling out their EMIB interconnect
in a four tile arrangement.
So, their first desktop chiplet processor.
But while it is superficially similar
to the way that OG Threadripper arranged its processor dies
they are much closer together
which should reduce the latency
in communicating between the chiplets.
Now, the pricing for these chips
mainly lines up with Threadripper Pro
which I get seeing as its PCIE lane count
and four terabytes of eight channel
memory support are comparable as well
but I'm still a little disappointed.
Either way, sitting at the top of the stack is the w9-3495X
which tops out at a whopping 56 unlocked cores
with over a hundred megabytes of level three cache
and a stock turbo of 4.8 gigahertz.
AMD's Threadripper Pro 5995WX meanwhile
can claim more cores and cache
but we already know from Ryzen 5000 versus 12th gen Core
that Intel is likely to crush any current Threadripper
in single-threaded tasks
especially thanks to DDR five memory.
And while Threadripper Pro's PCIE lane count is comparable
the speed is not.
I did a double take when I saw these numbers.
The entire W-3400 expert line offers up
112 PCI Express Gen 5 lanes.
That is just shy of double the total bandwidth
of AMD's 128 Gen 4 lanes and allows for any combination
of up to seven GPUs or 28 NVeSSDs.
All that raw power, of course, though means
that it's not going to sip current from the wall
with Intel advertising a massive 350 watt base power
and up to 420 watts, nice, max turbo power
compared to Threadripper Pros 280 watts.
Now, these numbers are not directly comparable.
You're gonna have to wait for the
full review for us to measure them
but needless to say you are going to need some
pretty hefty cooling to keep these things under control
especially if you're using it in a rack mount chassis
and especially if you are planning to overclock.
Now, obviously a lot of what we've
said so far is based on speculation.
Source, me.
Intel didn't even publish any performance figures
relative to AMD, so all we can do is extrapolate
based on what we know about the architecture of these chips
and the advertised clock speeds.
But as it looks right now
Intel is gearing up to take a serious bite
out of the lucrative workstation business
that AMD has built up for itself over the last few years
and ride in as a savior for those of us
who have been waiting on something, anything
to fill the gap that AMD's
one gen wonder TRX 40 platform left in our hearts.
On that note, something that may go
underappreciated here with Sapphire Rapids
is the fact that both the mainstream and expert series
use the same socket, both as each other
and the new Sapphire Rapids Xeon scalable CPUs, LGA 4677.
This wasn't always true of previous gen CoreX
Xeon W or Xeon scalable CPUs.
Now, we're pretty sure this is gonna cause some confusion.
You might see, for example, motherboards
that are really designed for 112 lane CPUs
and don't fully work with 64 lane chips.
Or Intel may arbitrarily lock down chip compatibility
whether it's by chipset model or a motherboard firmware.
But if we assume that they execute
this in a somewhat reasonable way
they can provide not only a clear upgrade path
if you wanna buy into the platform
with a basic chip today and upgrade later
but a better accessory ecosystem
for both their workstations and servers.
Especially when it comes to coolers.
Being able to just move them around.
That would be great.
All of which is not to say that AMD is in danger just yet.
It's just that competition has
finally returned in this specific segment
and they might need to, oh, I don't know
actually bother to launch a compelling product.
Or maybe they just won't.
The business unit they've been gaining
the most ground in over Intel this past year
is one that is far more important to both of them than HEDT.
Server and data center.
Unfortunately for Intel, fourth gen EPYC Genoa
has been living up to its name
with up to 96 cores in a single chip.
And they are not slow cores.
You actually need two of Intel's brand new
Xeon Platinum 8468V processors to match that thing
and that comes in at about a 20% higher price
with the added overhead of managing two Neumo domains.
So if EPYC Genoa is a taste
of what Threadripper 7000 could bring to the table
Intel's victory here could be
short-lived or even entirely hypothetical.
We'll see.
Sapphire Rapid Xeon W is gonna be
available beginning in March
with pre-orders available now from system integrators.
Not that we would ever recommend pre-ordering.
And AMD meanwhile has yet to release their Zen 4 based
Storm Peak Threadrippers, so now the ball is in their court.
Those have been rumored for launch in September this year
but if we're lucky, perhaps these Sapphire Rapid Xeon Ws
will make AMD see fit to expedite their plans
and rumor has it they'll be returning to the HEDT space
with non-pro Threadrippers as well.
Though, it's also rumored that they'll continue
to have separate TRX and WRX motherboards.
Unlike Intel, we're gonna have to wait
for AMD to confirm this or deny it.
We're gonna have gonna have to wait and see
how the performance lines up
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- If you guys enjoyed this video
and you're looking for something else to watch
check out our video from just about a year ago
on the release of the Threadripper Pro 5000 series
and the lack of Threadripper non-pro 5000 series chips.
That is what a lack of competition looks like
and it turns out, it's the same
no matter which team is on top.
So don't root for either of them.
Root for both.