Intel scoops out five flavours of Ice Lake Xeons for workstations
- Reference: 1627631952
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/07/30/intel_w_3300_workstation_xeons/
- Source link:
The W-3300 processors top out at 38 cores and 76 threads, with base clock speeds of 3.5GHz. Turbo mode can hit 4.0GHz in a single core in three of the five new CPUS Intel is offering. Other models in the range can sustain 3.7GHz Turbo operations across all cores.
The two big steps up from previous workstation-class Xeons concern memory and cache size.
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Memory capacity has climbed to four terabytes of eight-channel DDR4-3200, while memory bandwidth has reached 3200 MegaTransfers per second. Caches of up to 1.5MB per core are on offer.
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PCIe 4.0 is another upgrade from the Skylake-based W-3200 range.
Here's all the members of the Ice Lake range in detail:
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Intel's W-3300 Workstation Xeon range.
Click to enlarge
Obviously, Intel says the new models are faster than their predecessors and will therefore save you time when using the demanding applications that workstation users employ.
[5]Lenovo says it’s crammed a workstation into a litre of space – less than three cans of beer
[6]Lenovo refreshes workstation ThinkPads with 11th-gen Intel CPUs, RTX graphics, 5G
[7]Intel throws sand in the face of 'musclebooks' with 10nm Tiger Lake tech
[8]Intel announces AWS has become a client, Qualcomm likes its future tech, advances that as proof it's back in business
The CPUs should be on sale now from your favourite silicon-slinger or system builder. Chipzilla says that every time it launches new chips, but usually backs it up with a list of new machines from top-tier vendors.
On this occasion none of the big names – Dell, HP Inc and Lenovo – appear to have new models ready to roll with the W-3300 inside. That's almost certainly not a comment on the W-3300 range having landed with an unpleasant wet smack, but rather a reflection that the workstation market is not massive and system-makers' priorities are elsewhere.
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Word of the shiny new CPUs will, however, be welcome. The prospect of workstation upgrades gets resellers excited, because the nature of the workloads they run often drives other upgrades to a greater degree than PC replacements. ®
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[4] https://regmedia.co.uk/2021/07/30/handout_intel_w_3300_workstation_xeons.jpg
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/13/lenovo_small_entry_level_workstations/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/16/lenovo_workstation_refresh/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/11/intel_tiger_lake/
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4TB of ram?
The mind truly boggles over how many chrome windows could be open for remote users and still have ram left with that sort of ram.
On the flipside, do we have databases that could utilise that much ram?
But yes, the point about Thread ripper and Epyc above still count.
Re: 4TB of ram?
I use a lot of Virtual Machines at the same time - SQL, BI stuff all uses loads of memory.
Upgraded last month to an AMD Ryzen 9 - 12 Cores, 24 Cores with 64 GB RAM (upgradable to 128GB).
I'm not close to using all those cores with 5 VMs running. RAM at about 50%.
I looked at the closest Intel did - 50% more expensive.
I can see the use case for video editing though - that assumes you can get hold of a gfx card though.
Atom?
I fallen for Intel marketing years ago and got myself a sweet 28 core Xeon. It felt like having a cluster of Atom CPUs.
Quite underwhelming. I can imagine this "new" offering would be not much different. I am sure there are use cases for
having so many slow cores.
When I got an 8 core Ryzen afterwards, it was like a night and day difference.
I was going to turn my Xeon into a keychain, but then it would feel like an anchor slowing me down.
These don't seem to compete with exiting AMD!
Unless I'm missing something, these new chips, don't even seem to compete against the current Zen 2 Threadrippers that came out in 2020!
They seem to be slower clocked, with fewer cores for the top end part (38 vs 64), and more expensive. So basically more money for what will most likely be a worse performing part.
It might be possible that some single threaded applications could be faster on the Intel, as Zen 2 does have some weaknesses in that area, but how many people buy a workstation system if doing lots of single threaded tasks? You'd be better of with a fast desktop CPU in that use case, at least for some tasks.
Plus the Zen 3 Threadrippers are due out later this year (rumours for November), the expectation is same core counts as now, ranging from 12 through to 64, but with the improved Zen 3 architecture, which has better IPC than Zen 2, and improvements in things like the unified cache, which helped resolved the single core performance issues. This should give a nice boost to performance compared to the Zen 2 parts. It's also expected the new Threadrippers will use the same socket as now, so they'll be a drop in replacement for the current Zen 2 CPUs.
I'm sure there is probably a use case somewhere for these Intel parts, but I can't see it myself atm?