Intel Xeon W-3175X: Monster performance with a monster price tag
Intel has finally released the Xeon W-3175X workstation processor that it first announced back in October 2018 at Computex. This is Intel's first 28-core/56-thread processor and it is aimed squarely at those involved in professional content creation, and architectural and industrial design, which run highly-threaded and computing-intensive workloads. But this performance comes at a price that makes AMD's Threadripper processor look affordable.
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Intel Xeon W-3175X
The tech specs for the Xeon W-3175X are impressive.
- Cores/Threads: 28/56
- Architecture: 14-nanometer Skylake
- Clock Speed (base): 3.1GHz
- Maximum Single Core Turbo Frequency: 4.3GHz
- TDP: 255W
- Smart Cache: 38.5 MB
- Unlocked: Yes
- Platform PCIE Lanes: Up to 68
- Memory Support: Six Channels, DDR4-2666, up to 512 GB
- Standard RAS Support: Yes
- Chipset: Intel C621
- ECC Support: Yes
- Recommended Consumer Pricing: $2,999
Yes, you read that price right. $2,999. For those keeping track of things, that is $1,000 more that the Intel Core i9-9980XE chip, and over $1,200 more that AMD's top-tier 2nd Gen RYZEN Threadripper 2990WX 32-core monster.
It's also worth noting that you don't get a cooler for the price. Aestek have come out with an Intel-approved liquid cooler for the Xeon W-3175X – the all-new Asetek 690LX-PN – but that will add another $400 to the budget.
At this point it's less about how fast you want your PC to go, and more about how fast do you want to spend thousands of dollars.
The Xeon W-3175X also comes with a built-in USB 3.0 controller with support for up to 10 ports, an integrated Gigabit Ethernet controller, along with with support for Intel Virtual Raid on CPU (Intel VROC) and Intel Rapid Storage Technology (Intel RST), with support for RAID configuration on PCI Express and SATA storage devices.
For those who want to experiment with overclocking, every purchase of a Xeon X-3175X processor comes with Intel's Performance Tuning Protection Plan that allows for a one-time replacement processor if you kill yours by pushing it outside of Intel's published specs.
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