Two years after the last workstation CPUs of the upper class, Intel is now launching Ice Lake as the Xeon W-3300 with many changes. They take over most of the features of the Ice Lake-SP, but are intended for single-socket operation. Senseless restrictions from the previous series are lifted.
Intel's memory limitation of the predecessor to 1 Tbyte in the normal model to get an identical variant for support of 2 Tbyte only for an additional charge of 80 percent has now come to an end. This limitation was recently lifted with the normal Xeon-SP, which is mainly due to AMD, whose CPUs always support the maximum and Intel is currently causing the biggest headaches. And so it is said today with the Xeon W-3300 up to 4 TByte DDR4-3200 via an eight-channel memory interface, even for the smallest model.
Xeon W-3300 against its predecessor Xeon W-3200 according to the manufacturer (picture: Intel) On paper, the consumption of the new CPUs is now increasing with up to 38 cores instead of the previous maximum 28 cores clearly. 205 watts were always set as the maximum in the Skylake SP generation, a new, larger socket together with completely new chips and, among other things, 8-channel memory and 64 PCIe Gen4 lanes allows the TDP to be increased to 270 watts. That also fits the market environment: The rival AMD Threadripper Pro is on the move with 280 watts.
Overview of the models
The workstation CPUs also inherit the relatively low clock rates from Ice Lake . The base remains roughly the same, but the maximum 1-core clock drops significantly. In terms of price, the generation takes a step forward like the SP models, but in this case indirectly, there is much more equipment for the same money.
As with the Xeon-SP, the flagship of the product line will not be the most important model, but one below. In this case, however, this no longer means 38 cores, but only 32 cores. 3,500 US dollars are still a high price for this, the rival with the same number of cores, the AMD Threadripper Pro 3975WX, is significantly cheaper, with similar platform features. AMD also has the wild card up its sleeve: After the launch of the Epyc 7003, code-named Milan, a Threadripper 5000 for the segment could follow at any time. The extent to which the new Xeon W-3300 will be a success should also depend on the competitor's appearance.
Intel manufacturer benchmarks (Image: Intel)