Intel announces Xeon w5, w7 and w9 CPUs as spiritual successors to hedt chips

Intel is introducing two series of Xeon W processors with up to 56 cores. They use the same Sapphire Rapids MCC and XCC dies as the recently released server chips, but are intended for use in workstations.

You can effectively see the Xeon W-2400 and Xeon W-3400 series as the spiritual successor to the so-called hedt processors, which Intel used to market as Core X CPUs. With the surge in cores and bandwidth of mainstream platforms, such hedt platforms became less and less relevant for even demanding consumers. Just like AMD, Intel now focuses this type of chips, in fact server CPUs made suitable for desktop use, completely at professional use. This is also noticeable in the price tags, because the top model with 56 cores should cost no less than $ 5,889.

All new Xeon W processors use socket 4677 and support both DDR5 memory and PCI Express 5.0. The type of cores is similar to the P-cores in the thirteenth generation of consumer Core processors, the main difference being that AVX512 acceleration is enabled in the Xeons.

The Xeon W-2400 series has a quad-channel memory controller and 64 PCIe 5.0 lanes. This series offers up to eight cores on the w3 models, sixteen cores on the w5s and twenty-four cores on the w7s. Of the w5 and w7 models, those ending in an X are even overclockable. The tdps range from 120 to 225W.

The Xeon W-3400 series doubles the number of memory channels to eight and also has much more PCIe 5.0 bandwidth with 112 lanes. This series includes w5 models with up to 16 cores, w7s with up to 28 cores, and w9 SKUs with up to 56 cores. Also in the W-3400 series there are overclockable X models. The tdps start at 270W and go up to 350W for the top model.

In the table below you will find all specs and prices of the new Xeon W processors. Dell, HP and Lenovo, among others, will introduce workstations with the new processors, while ASRock, ASUS, Gigabyte and Supermicro will market separate W790 motherboards. Cooler Master, EKWB and Noctua are working on coolers for socket 4677.