The New Intel Xeon Platform: A Game-Changer for Workstations

Intel has recently launched its new x-series Xeon platform, which is poised to revolutionize the workstation market. With eight CPUs available, four in quad-channel and four in eight-channel configurations, this platform offers a significant upgrade over its predecessors. The new platform boasts improved performance, power efficiency, and features that make it an attractive option for workstations.

One of the key benefits of the new platform is its ability to overclock. Intel has introduced various features in the BIOS, including XMP 1.0, DDR5 6000 MHz, and multi-channel enhancement. These features enable users to remove all limits and push their system to extreme heights, with a maximum temperature limit of 90 degrees Celsius. This level of flexibility is not available on competing platforms.

The CPU performance of the new platform is impressive, particularly in workloads that require power efficiency. While it may not surpass some benchmarks, it is still an excellent option for workstations where power is a concern. Additionally, Intel's platform can dissipate more power than its competitors, making it well-suited for workloads that require heavy processing.

The Falcon Northwest system is one of the top-of-the-line offerings from Intel, featuring the 56-core Xeon processor. However, the 36-core variant is also worth considering, as it offers a significant power savings without sacrificing performance. This makes it an attractive option for users who want to balance their workload with power efficiency.

One area where Intel could improve is in its feature set. The new platform lacks certain accelerators, such as QAT and Dynamic Load Balancer, which have been a source of some benchmark wins. However, this is not necessarily a strategic mistake, as AMD has long struggled to match Intel's feature set in workstations.

The Future of Workstations: A Look Ahead

As we look ahead to the future of workstations, it's clear that Intel is facing stiff competition from AMD. The upcoming Genoa Threadripper Pro is expected to bring significant performance improvements, and with its DDR5 memory and PCIe 5.0 connectivity, it's likely to outperform even the most powerful current offerings.

The Gap Between Generations

While the new platform offers impressive performance for a workstation, there is still a gap between generations of processors. This gap will only narrow as Intel continues to improve its platforms and features. However, until then, the best option for users is to purchase their workstation now and take advantage of the latest and greatest technology.

Pricing Considerations

One of the most significant factors in choosing a workstation is pricing. While $15,000 may seem like an astronomical amount, the Falcon Northwest system offers a level of performance and features that justify its cost. In comparison, other options from HP or similar vendors come with inferior GPUs, memory, and support at a significantly higher price tag.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the new Intel Xeon platform is a game-changer for workstations. With its improved performance, power efficiency, and features, it offers an attractive option for users who want the best of the best. While there are still some limitations to consider, the platform's flexibility and overclocking capabilities make it an excellent choice for those looking to push their system to extreme heights.

As we look ahead to the future, it's clear that Intel is facing stiff competition from AMD. However, with its impressive feature set and performance improvements, the new Xeon platform is well-positioned to remain a leader in the workstation market. For now, users who want the best of the best should consider purchasing their workstation from Falcon Northwest or similar vendors.

For those interested in exploring the capabilities of this platform further, there are many online forums and communities where enthusiasts can share their experiences and offer advice. From overclocking techniques to configuration recommendations, these resources can provide valuable insights for anyone looking to take their workstation to the next level.

Whether you're a seasoned professional or just starting out, the new Intel Xeon platform offers an unparalleled level of performance and flexibility. With its impressive feature set, powerful processors, and robust cooling solutions, it's no wonder that this platform is generating significant excitement in the workstation market.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enforeign more like Falcon heavy I can't be the first one to have made that joke right in this system is Intel's latest and greatest their combination high-end Enthusiast overclockable Xeon high and desktop is back oh yeah it kind of is let's take a deeper look listen this is so hot off the assembly line warning do not power up system they're actually using packing insert foam which is something unusual and it's because the parts are so new yes this CPU literally just launched I don't think Intel sent any enthusiasts either the 2000 series or the 3000 Series xeons as a matter of fact I picked up at retail a 2000 series Xeon just to be able to do the testing because it's ddr5 but it's not desktop ddr5 it's Error correcting ddr5 which isn't physically compatible with regular ddr5 and this thing can best the 5000 series threadripper which I mean a ddr5 platform that shouldn't be like a big accomplishment right but oh I got to get you riled up so that you'll stick around for the whole video all right in the box is another box you know it's going to be legit because you've got the fancy 20 amp power cord oh look at that wait I can see something you can't see fancy a little bit humble to say we do this this is sort of it's over the top this is fancy and this is fancy for a lot of reasons not the least of which is the cooling solution that Falcon Northwest has baked in here which is a little bit of a custom solution okay actually kind of a lot of a custom solution it's not a custom loop it's an AIO but it's an AIO with a special cold plate because that's not an off-the-shelf cold plate silver Stone cooling that Rose to the challenge the challenge of cooling an overclocked Zeon yeah that's what we're doing we've got lots of fun little bits of blue tape here this is just to prevent it from rattling or doing something bad and shipping so this is the motherboard tray side of the case I've never in my entire life seen a cleaner cabling solution in a bill I didn't think this level of cleanliness was possible our system comes configured to us with 128 gigabytes of memory an RTX 4090 and pcie5 storage from micron and this material metal it's unlike anything you've ever seen before well I mean okay maybe you've seen metal but check out this finish it's molecular bonded to the Shell no really it actually is it's UV LED printed directly onto the metal or glass depending on what you've got it's guaranteed against cracking fading deteriorating in any way because yeah that's just how they roll I definitely prefer a metal finish I mean this case is surprisingly small considering it's packing 56 cores up to 1500 watts 1600 watts of Madness if you prefer a rack configuration for your workstation Falcon Northwest can make that happen as well and for you very impressive our motherboard it's extra huge it's got the sideways socket if you haven't seen our other content w790 why you got to be weird we took a look at the ace version of this motherboard that has the other CPU orientation which is the four ddr5 memory Channel configuration this is eight memory channels this is the higher end CPU in the 3000 Series so we have the horizontal or landscape CPU orientation if you will your first clue that there's something different with the CPU orientation it makes the motherboard physically wider and that is a little bit of a problem for Falcon Northwest in this case the right angle front connections which include four SATA ports three slim SAS ports and a couple of other connections at the front they're kind of crowded by the front fan you see we've got the the AIO plus the fan that goes with the AIO and all of that crammed in the front doesn't really work if I get offset Mount the 280 millimeter cooler for the front or had a slightly wider thicker case you would still be able to access the slim SAS and other Connections in the front but my own personal experience is trying to get pcie4 to work at slim SAS without using an actual dedicated backplane you're better off not trying to use those connectors in the first place trust me it's not great you could probably Jam in the slim SAS to say the connection if you needed four SATA connections and of course Falcon Northwest is going to hook you up if you can customize the build to include those kinds of things but if you're thinking aftermarket you might do it you have to be a little careful with those kinds of things they've also customized the case with an extra intake fan at the rear intake yeah well it helps the GPU just a little bit the motherboard for this build we've reviewed separately the w790 sage I mean this is the workstation 790 series chipset version this version of the motherboard unlike the ace comes with a built-in management adapter built-in ipmi dual 10 gig and quite a bit more upgrades at the rear for one there's only two USB 2.0 ports but we've got an extra USB type-c 10 gigabit port in addition to our type c 20 gigabit Port VGA out for the onboard console and the standard bios flashback bios reset and audio connections that we've come to know and love from Asus especially on their hiring products sort of a fun note there is literally no RGB headers of any kind on the Asus motherboard a lot of people like that foreign already at 321 Watts let's see what's behind door number two oh on behalf of Falcon Northwest I would like to thank you when you're spending this amount of money on a machine it kind of makes sense like you get a you get a mug oh it's a fancy mug don't actually use your 10 000 ish dollar machine plus as a place to keep your coffee it's not great don't want to Temp temp fate there they knew I was going to make that joke light roast Falcon Fuel Coffee there's sea sonic power supply had a lot of extra cables so those are in the bag and the rest of the accessories that you might need for this build are in here temperature sensor you got your stock RTX 4090 4-pin connector uses the power supply connector as it should a bunch of SATA cables it's your reinstallation flash drive Falcon Northwest rescue Drive good work fellas get your windows 11 key which I'm not going to show you because it's real and some of the other mounting accoutrement that you might expect if you were to pick up this motherboard directly from Asus for example for our CPU I've saved the best for last 56 cores 112 threads yes the w3495x we will be setting some world records with this system thank you a little longer than a few minutes later thank you foreign buckle up because things are going to get weird as I said Intel has been weird with their Xeon workstation launch at least for enthusiasts so far they've been left out and you know maybe somebody might interpret that as a kind of shyness around the new processor from Intel yeah we know it's like oh I don't know Intel shareholders might look around and say hey wait a minute these new Xeon workstation CPUs aren't better than Twitter Pro which has already been on the market for almost a year despite every Advantage I mean Intel's got the newer socket which can handle much higher power and much higher data rates I mean it's pure Gen 5 pcie E5 and ddr5 I mean our memory here is registered error correcting server memory it's it's running cool and stable at ddr5 6000 which is unusual this is a Kingston kit yeah registered error correcting ddr5 and the experience on this platform with ddr56000 is Head and Shoulders above ddr5 6000 on a desktop platform it's the Renegade Pro kit and that's different than desktop memory but it still runs at 6000 the fact that it's so stable and amazing and plug and play is kind of unprecedented it's sort of the best ddr5 experience right now if ddr5 on the desktop was this easy I would say that it's worth the premium to have registered air correcting ddr5 on the desktop and our storage in this is a crucial t700 Gen 5 SSD and that SSD has some impressive scores class leading I would say Falcon Northwest manages to keep it cool without throttling and without resorting to a micro fan just with their case design so it stays pretty awesome I hope that storage vendors can push the envelope with Gen 5 just a little more with the low Q depth performance but our scores here from Crystal dismark and everything else are the best you can get from nand flash storage devices period our sequential speeds up to 13 gigabytes per second or so I mean it's kind of a game changer with sequential things like game load files or loading data files etc etc I mean the very best PCI Egen 4 drives are only about half this speed and the golden Cove cores and Intel's latest and greatest CPUs I mean it's packaged here but it's packaged for server but sort of repackaged for workstation it's performance cores it's only performance cores you've heard of performance and efficiency cores this is only performance cores 56 of them and with that comes a little bit of a power draw yeah the power demands of faster ddr5 and PCI E5 and all those cores yeah it is thirsty for power no surprise is there in fact it's uh much the same story we've seen from our Sapphire rapid server Parts review the performance per watt just it isn't there and Intel is at a disadvantage for any jobs that can't use accelerators this is something we covered when we took a look at Sapphire Rapids in the server space but now Sapphire Rapids comes to the workstation space but I will say that these workstation Parts can use even more power than their server counterparts and we'll talk more about that in a second our Asus Sage motherboard lets the CPU run at 420 Watts all the time right out of the box as long as the CPU is kept cool and our Falcon Northwest system is certainly doing that with their custom design cooling solution and the performance is quite a bit better per core than the server Sapphire Rapids counterparts think about that 56 cores core for core these cores are faster than Sapphire rapid server cores yeah foreign w3175x system I've had it for ages it's true it's the 28 Core X Series Xenon from 2018. wow how time flies dual 360 millimeter radiators and this thing was obsolete fast but it's got an everyday OC of 4.6 gigahertz and it's been pretty solid since I swapped the motherboard for an EVGA dark sr3 good job EVGA putting this head to head with sapphire Rapids from this generation which was the absolute top of the stack for Skylake to the w3495x which is again the absolute top two and a half three doublings of performance that sounds insane but keep in mind there's about 40 to 60 months of difference in time depending on how you look at it between those two CPUs but the magic thing about this CPU is that it really sings because it's unlocked and you can dump a lot of power into it it's genuinely impressive how much power Intel silicon can take foreign so out of the box I amped up to 420 Watts things like grow Max and openvino all that runs like a bat out of hell yeah basically I mean chromex and open Vino are untouchably fast on this system can't be touched by 96 core Genoa systems which is an even newer generation of AMD epic can't be touched even by Intel's own Sapphire Rapids except maybe in a dual socket configuration and the server context for General performance here's where things get interesting out of the box Intel's really conservative with the defaults on this CPU the w3495x really can't match a 64 core threadripper in well pretty much any multi-core workload and on Windows it's really weird in high performance mode Xeon does better than the threadripper pro which tends to also want to opportunistically boost in the balanced mode so you have to sort of run it in different Power modes to get the best of both worlds that might be a Windows bug actually for Pure compute workloads the difference between the w3495x and the 64 core threadripper is about 10 at most a lot of things are parity we're talking multimedia workloads DaVinci Resolve etc etc if you do other more multimedia focused workloads I'd say real world about five to seven percent however for single core performance the Xeon really can shine at the wall these benchmarks represent approximately 20 percent more power usage under most load but keep in mind our threader Pro system is also powered by a custom Loop and very little in it is otherwise like for like we were able to match the 1600 watt EVGA power supply and the founders Edition 4090 and our Falcon Northwest system but other than that it's not really like for like now for workloads to take advantage of the accelerators as I said things like AI object detection that we see here in geekbench how does 175 percent faster sound I mean that's Baseline threadripper versus Baseline Sapphire Rapids and to be clear that 175 percent is Baseline for Baseline Let's uh let's Unleash the Beast just a little bit Falcon Northwest actually includes an OC profile in the Bios which is a very mild overclock this overclock is perfectly stable at least in my experience for everything that I threw at it in a week of testing now this will move the peak power draw of this system from 700 ish Watts more into the 1.2 kilowatt range 1.21 kilowatts yeah at least it's not 1.21 gigawatts gigawatts gigawatts odd and keep in mind when we're talking about 1.21 kilowatts we're talking about also having a fully loaded GPU it's testing heat load heat dissipation the system will run warm if it's quiet but it will run cool if you let the fans do their thing just depends on the workload and this is enough to flip the Gap the other way now our Falcon Northwest system can pull 10 to 20 ahead of the threadripper system in general in just about anything okay let's take it up to 1.5 kilowatts Behold our Falcon Northwest system that they put together for us for some testing maybe some early results so we got a there's a 40 90 in there okay 128 gigabytes of registered ECC Kingston memory it's special because registered ECC but our geekbench scores 25 11 and 26 283. that's uh that's pretty impressive let's go for multi-core um cinebench okay 900 watts 1500 watts 1600 Watts what was it wanted rating of this power supply again uh I like I like Falcon Northwest that's uh that's impressive uh we got a little bit of throttling because I might have Juiced it a little too much but I'm really liking the hundred thousand score that's legit of course in the Intel Arc page 4.8 gigahertz out of the box uh we could do that on more than most cores 420 Watts maximum Turbo Power well obviously we can go a little beyond that yeah okay 1.5 kilowatts uh it doesn't scale quite as well we only gained another two to three percent on top of our base scores The Sweet Spot for the w3495x seems to be about 600 watts plus or minus and if you think about it that's about 10 watts per core for the power budget and that's in line with the power budget for the performance cores in desktop class CPUs out of the box we could easily achieve 4.8 gigahertz on all the cores and with some manual tuning we could even push it to 5.0 gigahertz on some of the cores and lightly threaded workloads just sort of letting it kind of automatically do its thing with a couple of knobs tuned so yeah 1.5 kilowatts let's do super pursuit mode 105 000 Center bench a score on second thought let us not go to 1.5 kilowatts it is a silly Place back down here in 1.2 kilowatt land remember that AI object detection remember 175 percent versus our threadripper Pro System forget that 283 percent 283 percent better for our AI object detection workloads and now if we look at the other benchmarks or the other performance improvements just sampling geekbench we are Head and Shoulders above our threadripper Pro competition 17 faster single core 132 faster multi-core 56 cores fewer cores versus 64 cores uh it kind of makes sense and on cinebench well we can't maintain over a hundred thousand but we can maintain 95 000 all day long in this configuration oh and the temps in this configuration barely 83 degrees C in our worst case scenario just leave Center bench running all night long 83 84 degrees C it is well below Intel's recommended 99c TJ Maxx there's a lot more to do in terms of a deep dive for overall performance performance of this case heat load Etc I'm going to do some more Linux testing look for that over on the Linux channel it's going to be a little bit more of a deeper dive than this review oh and if you are going to go with the Falcon Northwest overclock profile do yourself a favor and install Intel XTU managing your overclock profile from Intel XTU versus the Asus bios way easier trust me and the Intel xcu will also help you find instability and figure out what you need to do to claw back some stability but I'll be surprised if you run into any stability issues at the relatively mild Falcon Northwest default overclock profile that profile sees the CPU actually running with a little bit of an undervolt and hey it's perfectly stable why not silicon Lottery the bottom line here is the new x-series Xeon in the stack there's eight of them four at the eight channel four in the four channel it's a more modern platform Intel doesn't need to be shy about it yeah sure there's a lot to learn and there's a lot to improve but not only isn't this bad this is way better than the w3175x launch miles better okay Asus AI tweaker in the Bios but it's this kind of a box yeah xmp1 in the Bios yeah ddr5 6000 in the Bios yeah multi-car enhancement yeah remove all limits 90 degrees C for this platform I have similar OC features for CPU and memory and have less teething issues being a new platform than their ddr5 desktop counterparts is extremely impressive I would say that the CPU performance you know while not as amazing as it could be especially around power efficiency it's not as bad as what has been made out to be in general for the workstation Market I think the morgue station buyers are more willing to trade power for performance and Intel's platform can certainly dissipate a lot more power for decent gains than the competing platform so for a workstation context there are going to be a lot of customers looking for that now remember on our Intel roadmap there's eight of those overclockable xeons this generation four in the quad Channel department and four in the eight channel department so our Falcon Northwest system has the top of the top of the top of the stack the 56 core but I'd say that the 36 core part is also worth a look that's going to free up a lot of your power budget because you've only got 36 cores total you'll probably be able to sustain a heavier uh lightly threaded relative to the 56 core workload maybe higher overall clocks and maybe that fits better with your workload maybe you don't need all the cores maybe you need something that's bursty with the the really amazing single core performance depends on what you're looking for if intel feels like they're on the defensive on this one one easy win is to just open up the accelerators on these workstation xeons this CPU does have AMX and DSA that's largely the source of those few Benchmark wins we talked about earlier but it lacks qat quick Assist Technology IIA Dynamic load balancer and maybe some other features that's a real bummer I think that's probably also a strategic Mistake by Intel now here's the interesting thought experiment for you we know from epic to threadripper that AMD is able to squeeze out a little bit more performance for a little bit more power for that workstation configuration as I mentioned they've never been able to get a Delta of more than about 100 watts and you know the 64 core 3995x is going to outperform the 64 core 7763 but General is out 12 memory channels up to 96 cores and we have a baseline for performance for that and it's you know we're due for a Genoa threadripper Pro it's coming we know it's going to have ddr5 and PCI E5 if intel is going to really surge ahead they know from Genoa how much performance they can expect from the new threadripper Pro and how much better than next CPU for this socket is going to need to be and that Gap is not much it's not as much as it might appear really for now I'm going to sit back and enjoy the breathtaking performance of this ddr5 platform from Falcon Northwest but the biggest question on my mind is how quick are even faster platforms coming down the pike is it six months away is it nine months away is it a year away I don't know at some point you just got to buy your workstation and get your work done as configured this is about a fifteen thousand dollar workstation from Falcon Northwest plus or minus a few thousand dollars depending on which accessories you take and and it is an excellent Exemplar of what the best of the best of the Intel Sapphire Rapids workstation platform is capable of not just on its own but also with the overclocking stuff it's nice now fourteen or fifteen thousand dollars for a system like this might sound insane but have you actually priced a system like this from somebody else like HP this system's actually cheaper and better look at the HP configurator we can't get the same GPU or we can't get the same memory the memory is inferior from HP in my opinion and the pricing is like four five six thousand dollars more Falcon Northwest is a large enough company your purchasing manager is not going to have a problem ordering from Falcon Northwest as opposed to HP the warranty is probably better and the support is definitely better and what all this is level one if you have any ideas for jobs you want to see run on this let me know I'm signing out you can find me in the level one forums\n"