Intel Xeon W-3175X: 28 cores of blistering performance
Intel’s crazy-ass 28-core Xeon W-3175X isn’t a CPU built for you, me, or most of us. Sure, Intel pitches it as a high-end workhorse: “Built for handling heavily threaded applications and tasks, the Intel Xeon W-3175X delivers uncompromising single and all-core world class performance for the most advanced professional creators and their demanding workloads.”
But make no mistake, the 28-core Xeon W-3175X is a chip made to do one thing: make waves and push back at an increasingly assertive AMD. And it delivers—for a pretty penny. Fasten your seat belts, because you’re about to see some huge motherboards, a huger number of benchmarks, and the hugest desktop CPU price ever.
WHAT IS XEON W-3175X?
If you’ve read reviews of Intel’s previous 18-core Core i9-7980X or 18-core Core i9-9980X that replaced it, you already know something about the Xeon W-3175X. Like them, it’s essentially a Skylake-SP aimed at a high-performance crowd. It’s built on a 14nm process and has a stock TDP of 255 watts. To keep its cores fed, it features support for six channels of DDR4 memory in ECC or non-ECC trim.
Perhaps its most important feature may be its unlocked status. As always, Intel doesn’t actually condone overclocking, the same way Lamborghini doesn’t tell you to break local speed limit laws.
What’s in the name? Why isn’t this a Core i9? Or, maybe a Core i11? Intel didn’t say why it chose to keep the Xeon name, but in the end it doesn’t matter much. With a list price of $3,000, it’s how it performs that matters.
CRAZY-POWERFUL MOTHER BOARDS
One look at the first two motherboards designed for Xeon, and you know this isn’t for someone to run a SQL database to manage the inventory for a supermarket. Gigabyte’s AX1 features nothing less than a 28-phase power circuit for the new Xeon W-3175X.
Hell, the Asus Xeon W-3175X motherboard weighs 10 pounds alone. Like the AX1
