General Intel HEDT Xeon/i7 Discussion

[CommanderAlex]

Ok the article is from a couple days ago, but did anyone else see it??? Intel possibly making a comeback in the HEDT space?

 

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-return-to-hedt-xeon-w9-3495x-hits-geekbenched

[Crunchy Dragon]

1 minute ago, CommanderAlex said:

Ok the article is from a couple days ago, but did anyone else see it??? Intel possibly making a comeback in the HEDT space?

 

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-return-to-hedt-xeon-w9-3495x-hits-geekbenched

This is the first I'm hearing of this news.

 

Hopefully they expand into the enthusiast space a little bit instead of 56-core chips that us mortals will never be able to obtain while they're modern.

[CommanderAlex]

2 hours ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

This is the first I'm hearing of this news.

 

Hopefully they expand into the enthusiast space a little bit instead of 56-core chips that us mortals will never be able to obtain while they're modern.

Yeah that's the thing that got me worried a bit when I read the article initially as they appear to be marketing it towards workstations with the Xeon processors. 

[Crunchy Dragon]

40 minutes ago, CommanderAlex said:

Yeah that's the thing that got me worried a bit when I read the article initially as they appear to be marketing it towards workstations with the Xeon processors. 

I mean, to be fair, X58, X79. X99, and X299 were all workstation platforms as well. They essentially just served the role of "people who needed workstation hardware but couldn't buy supercomputers" or "people who needed cores and performance in their home".

 

Workstation hardware isn't exactly my issue, that's nearly what we all run in this thread anyway. My worry is that instead of occupying the workstation space, these new Xeons will reside in the server space or the very high end workstation space. Think Epyc or the imaginary tier between Threadripper and Epyc.

 

Seems like the Xeons are more targeted at the server space rather than the consumer workstation HEDT space that X58/X79/X99/X299 were all aimed at.

[CommanderAlex]

7 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

I mean, to be fair, X58, X79. X99, and X299 were all workstation platforms as well. They essentially just served the role of "people who needed workstation hardware but couldn't buy supercomputers" or "people who needed cores and performance in their home".

 

Workstation hardware isn't exactly my issue, that's nearly what we all run in this thread anyway. My worry is that instead of occupying the workstation space, these new Xeons will reside in the server space or the very high end workstation space. Think Epyc or the imaginary tier between Threadripper and Epyc.

 

Seems like the Xeons are more targeted at the server space rather than the consumer workstation HEDT space that X58/X79/X99/X299 were all aimed at.

They did deviate from that path as we got into X99 and X299 with their extreme Core processors. They were basically the streamer's platform/high-end gaming when Intel kept us locked in at 4C/8T until Ryzen came along. 

 

This part (in bold), I feel will indeed be the case with this HEDT generation coming from Intel. 

[CommanderAlex]

3 hours ago, CommanderAlex said:

Ok the article is from a couple days ago, but did anyone else see it??? Intel possibly making a comeback in the HEDT space?

 

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-return-to-hedt-xeon-w9-3495x-hits-geekbenched

More information in case anyone wants to dive further into the W790 chipset: 

 

https://wccftech.com/intel-w790-desktop-workstation-hedt-cpu-platform-detailed-up-to-8-channel-ddr5-oc-support/

 

This article is similar to the wccftech article above: https://appuals.com/official-specs-for-w790-leak-out/

 

https://videocardz.com/newz/supermicro-next-gen-intel-w790-xeon-hedt-motherboard-pictured-up-close

 

 

[Pasi123]

Intel will probably try to compete with the really expensive Threadripper Pro platform since AMD doesn't have any consumer Threadrippers anymore.

So if you need more PCIe lanes or more RAM and memory bandwidth than what the mainstream platforms offer you have to spend thousands for a CPU

[Crunchy Dragon]

14 minutes ago, CommanderAlex said:

They did deviate from that path as we got into X99 and X299 with their extreme Core processors. They were basically the streamer's platform/high-end gaming when Intel kept us locked in at 4C/8T until Ryzen came along. 

 

This part (in bold), I feel will indeed be the case with this HEDT generation coming from Intel. 

One can hope. I would still choose X299 over a lot of modern platforms.

 

Nothing wrong with the Core i7 Extreme Edition processors. Kaby Lake-X was a major flop and we don't need that again, but stuff more along the lines of Haswell, Broadwell, Skylake, that's the good stuff.

 

All I really want is decent power efficiency with a bunch of cores at a solid frequency on a workstation platform. The one downside of current Intel HEDT is that they're all dead sockets, and there isn't really an upgrade path that allows you to stay on Intel without venturing into the server space.

[Crunchy Dragon]

3 minutes ago, Pasi123 said:

Intel will probably try to compete with the really expensive Threadripper Pro platform since AMD doesn't have any consumer Threadrippers anymore.

So if you need more PCIe lanes or more RAM and memory bandwidth than what the mainstream platforms offer you have to spend thousands for a CPU

Yeah, this was more or less my concern.

[CommanderAlex]

2 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

One can hope. I would still choose X299 over a lot of modern platforms.

 

Nothing wrong with the Core i7 Extreme Edition processors. Kaby Lake-X was a major flop and we don't need that again, but stuff more along the lines of Haswell, Broadwell, Skylake, that's the good stuff.

 

All I really want is decent power efficiency with a bunch of cores at a solid frequency on a workstation platform. The one downside of current Intel HEDT is that they're all dead sockets, and there isn't really an upgrade path that allows you to stay on Intel without venturing into the server space.

Really, even with the lackluster single core performance on X299 compared to consumer chips?? 

 

Skylake-X, Cascade Lake-X were great for the time being. 

 

Perhaps, we'll be lucky in receiving an X socket chipset for us enthusiasts further out from when W790 releases.

6 minutes ago, Pasi123 said:

Intel will probably try to compete with the really expensive Threadripper Pro platform since AMD doesn't have any consumer Threadrippers anymore.

So if you need more PCIe lanes or more RAM and memory bandwidth than what the mainstream platforms offer you have to spend thousands for a CPU

This is all hypothetical, so take it with a grain of salt: Intel's Q4 2022 missed projections where the consumer market has weakened slightly, while server market has remained strong. I think Intel has the ability to undercut Threadripper PRO as they can afford to do so to remain competitive against AMD. I think their main focus right now is to remain in control with workstation platforms that need the processing power. Will they be cheap, no, of course not. Maybe even poorer binned Xeons will become the new Extreme Edition X(E) overclockable processors down the road (getting back to what I said above with maybe an X series socket for desktop enthusiasts). 

[Crunchy Dragon]

24 minutes ago, CommanderAlex said:

Really, even with the lackluster single core performance on X299 compared to consumer chips?? 

 

Skylake-X, Cascade Lake-X were great for the time being.

I honestly don't do nearly enough single threaded stuff at this point to care. Core i7-7820X will be fine for a while.

When I rebuilt my PC into X299, I did it with the idea of turning it more into a workstation and a potential flight sim. RAM was cheap, so I went big with 64GB just to make sure I'd cover all my potential bases for at least a couple years.

 

I'm learning programming again with the intention of getting into AI at least as a hobbyist, so I snagged a cheap GPU upgrade to help me do AI and machine learning a little more efficiently.

 

As a result of several factors, I'm doing less and less video gaming these days and looking at more intensive tasks, so I'm not worried if my CPU won't get the best possible performance in the newest titles.

Additionally, my motherboard not being Windows 11 Ready means that I can continue to use my PC in peace without Microsoft bothering me to upgrade. Might not be an optimal choice, but that's certainly a major selling point for me.

[CommanderAlex]

3 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

I honestly don't do nearly enough single threaded stuff at this point to care. Core i7-7820X will be fine for a while.

When I rebuilt my PC into X299, I did it with the idea of turning it more into a workstation and a potential flight sim. RAM was cheap, so I went big with 64GB just to make sure I'd cover all my potential bases for at least a couple years.

 

I'm learning programming again with the intention of getting into AI at least as a hobbyist, so I snagged a cheap GPU upgrade to help me do AI and machine learning a little more efficiently.

 

As a result of several factors, I'm doing less and less video gaming these days and looking at more intensive tasks, so I'm not worried if my CPU won't get the best possible performance in the newest titles.

Additionally, my motherboard not being Windows 11 Ready means that I can continue to use my PC in peace without Microsoft bothering me to upgrade. Might not be an optimal choice, but that's certainly a major selling point for me.

X299 is Windows 11 compatible unless the BIOS doesn't have fTPM(?), so is the 7820X. Microsoft may come knocking soon. 

 

If I ever have time to tinker and have more parts without ripping them out of my current PC, I'd screw around on my X299 stuff. Tbh, growing up, I was really thrilled by everything with HEDT at the time, you know all the extra cores, PCIe lanes, 8 DIMMs vs 4 DIMMs, which was the reason I decided to upgrade from Z79 to X299 at the time. It just caught my imagination as a kid with that platform when a friend of mine had an Alienware Area-51 with a 5820X installed. Lol, have the times changed. 

[Crunchy Dragon]

10 minutes ago, CommanderAlex said:

X299 is Windows 11 compatible unless the BIOS doesn't have fTPM(?), so is the 7820X. Microsoft may come knocking soon.

I'd have to be running the latest BIOS to know for sure, and I can't be bothered to update that just yet.

 

12 minutes ago, CommanderAlex said:

Tbh, growing up, I was really thrilled by everything with HEDT at the time, you know all the extra cores, PCIe lanes, 8 DIMMs vs 4 DIMMs, which was the reason I decided to upgrade from Z79 to X299 at the time. It just caught my imagination as a kid with that platform when a friend of mine had an Alienware Area-51 with a 5820X installed. Lol, have the times changed. 

I wasn't into PCs much growing up, but I got on the HEDT train when I discovered Linus Tech Tips just in time for the 5960X to be the best CPU on the market. A lot of the older LTT videos surrounding X99 were instrumental to how I approached the PC world, even now. HEDT hardware will always look cooler than regular consumer stuff.

 

I love that my motherboard has two EPS connectors and a supplementary PCIe power for when the slots themselves need that extra boost. Little stuff like that really tickles my nerd brain in a way few things do.

[Kilrah]

I'd want something with better single core performance at this point.

 

And while X99 is cool it kinda hurts when my 25W, 1.1kg 5700U laptop trumps my OCd 5960X at 1/10th of the power.

[Zando_]

12 hours ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

I honestly don't do nearly enough single threaded stuff at this point to care.

^^ same here. I don’t really do anything that needs fast cores, they’d be neat but not required. At this point I just game, and I only shoot for 60fps which is incredibly easy. Fallout 76 is the only title I have that even requires much of an overclock, purely due to being functionally single-threaded and having a lot going on (fallout 4 is fine despite being nearly the same engine). For any other tasks I can just do the ole “throw cores at it”. 

6 hours ago, Kilrah said:

And while X99 is cool it kinda hurts when my 25W, 1.1kg 5700U laptop trumps my OCd 5960X at 1/10th of the power.

Yeeep. I’ve been eyeing an i3 12100 setup to use over the summer, due to the sheer amount of heat my 7980XE dumps into my lounge. My killawatt broke, but going off other people’s numbers it’s probably somewhere around 400W. 

12 hours ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

Additionally, my motherboard not being Windows 11 Ready means that I can continue to use my PC in peace without Microsoft bothering me to upgrade. Might not be an optimal choice, but that's certainly a major selling point for me.

Should be. You have a FTW-K IIRC, don’t see why my Dark would be fine with W11 and the FTW wouldn’t. 

12 hours ago, Pasi123 said:

Intel will probably try to compete with the really expensive Threadripper Pro platform since AMD doesn't have any consumer Threadrippers anymore.

So if you need more PCIe lanes or more RAM and memory bandwidth than what the mainstream platforms offer you have to spend thousands for a CPU

+1 for this worry. I want actually attainable HEDT, not “server lite” workstation type stuff. Not sure why both AMD and Intel abandoned that sector, I guess the private folks buying HEDT themselves weren’t profitable enough vs large companies that can slurp up nauseatingly expensive machines with ease. Must be, as AMD promised support for sTRX4 and then killed it off after one generation of CPUs, TR community doesn’t seem large enough to raise enough of a row over that. I imagine if they had done the same with AM4 there’d be an incredible outcry. 

[CommanderAlex]

25 minutes ago, Zando_ said:

Not sure why both AMD and Intel abandoned that sector, I guess the private folks buying HEDT themselves weren’t profitable enough vs large companies that can slurp up nauseatingly expensive machines with ease. Must be, as AMD promised support for sTRX4 and then killed it off after one generation of CPUs, TR community doesn’t seem large enough to raise enough of a row over that. I imagine if they had done the same with AM4 there’d be an incredible outcry.

I think mainly, AMD is to blame with the introduction of Threadripper to compete again Intel's HEDT Core Extreme CPUs. Then once AMD saw the following of their products and also with the introduction of consumer high-core count chips of 8C/12C/16C, that they really didn't need to have a "cheap" enthusiast TR anymore; they made it binary in a sense of if your a professional or not demanding high core count CPUs, distinguishing Ryzen and Threadripper PRO now. Intel hasn't been able to compete with Skylake-X and X299 in general so they receded from the market with chips such as the 9900K introducing 8C/16T onto the consumer platform thru present day. 

[Crunchy Dragon]

12 hours ago, CommanderAlex said:

I think mainly, AMD is to blame with the introduction of Threadripper to compete again Intel's HEDT Core Extreme CPUs. Then once AMD saw the following of their products and also with the introduction of consumer high-core count chips of 8C/12C/16C, that they really didn't need to have a "cheap" enthusiast TR anymore; they made it binary in a sense of if your a professional or not demanding high core count CPUs, distinguishing Ryzen and Threadripper PRO now. Intel hasn't been able to compete with Skylake-X and X299 in general so they receded from the market with chips such as the 9900K introducing 8C/16T onto the consumer platform thru present day. 

This would also explain why Ryzen has ECC support, even on the consumer socket.

 

12 hours ago, Zando_ said:

Should be. You have a FTW-K IIRC, don’t see why my Dark would be fine with W11 and the FTW wouldn’t.

Probably either needs a BIOS update or TPM to be enabled in BIOS. Either way, Microsoft isn't bothering me with pressure to update and I'm fine keeping it that way. My greatest worry is that I'll accidentally update my OS when installing other random system updates

19 hours ago, Kilrah said:

And while X99 is cool it kinda hurts when my 25W, 1.1kg 5700U laptop trumps my OCd 5960X at 1/10th of the power.

I really don't want to think about how much more power efficient my MacBook Pro with a 9750H is compared to my 7820X. Sure it has fewer cores and a worse cooling solution, but I have little doubt in my mind that with some good cooling, this mobile Core i7 could wipe the floor with my LGA 2066 behemoth.

 

12 hours ago, Zando_ said:

^^ same here. I don’t really do anything that needs fast cores, they’d be neat but not required. At this point I just game, and I only shoot for 60fps which is incredibly easy. Fallout 76 is the only title I have that even requires much of an overclock, purely due to being functionally single-threaded and having a lot going on (fallout 4 is fine despite being nearly the same engine). For any other tasks I can just do the ole “throw cores at it”.

Yup. DCS: World is a game I've been thinking about getting into a little bit, and while that game is CPU-heavy, it needs cores. More importantly, it needs fast storage and a lot of RAM. This was the main driving force behind me getting a boost in both departments(5820K to 7820X, 16GB to 64GB RAM). Now I just need to eat the cost of head tracking and a HOTAS....

 

The games I've played the most in the past 6 months are CS:GO and Minecraft, neither of which really require a ton of power. Counter Strike runs perfectly fine at 1080p75, my biggest issue is load times in that regard. Minecraft, though horribly optimized, has no trouble running at 75 FPS the entire time and I really don't mind the decrease I take when I throw on a shaderpack for screenshots.

 

Having more CPU cores available was my main concern for when I get into some heavier tasks and if I ever need to edit videos again for any reason, it would make the rendering go a little bit faster.

[Kilrah]

Here it's FS2020 that's very single-thread performance constrained

[Zando_]

13 hours ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

Probably either needs a BIOS update or TPM to be enabled in BIOS. Either way, Microsoft isn't bothering me with pressure to update and I'm fine keeping it that way. My greatest worry is that I'll accidentally update my OS when installing other random system updates

I updated to W11 on purpose, prefer most of the UI changes. The right click menu is a lil goofy but NanaZip (a version of 7zip) puts the 7zip menu in the normal spot and that's 99% of my right click usage, so it's quite nice. And task manager is dark mode now, which means I don't flashbang myself opening it on a 27" 4K panel (with the brightness up because otherwise games are too dark) in the middle of the night. That alone makes the few small quirks worth it. Overall though, W11 is just W10 with a nicer aesthetic. 

13 hours ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

Now I just need to eat the cost of head tracking and a HOTAS....

Get HOTASAS so you can play Star Citizen too .

13 hours ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

Having more CPU cores available was my main concern for when I get into some heavier tasks and if I ever need to edit videos again for any reason, it would make the rendering go a little bit faster.

The most hilarious bit about this is that if you use Adobe stuff, Intel's own mainstream chips clap the HEDT stuff due to QuickSync. It is weird Intel never put an iGPU bit on the HEDT chips just for that, no need for display output itself purely QuickSync acceleration. Given accelerators are the name of the game on their new server stuff, I wonder if they will implement something like that for the rumored HEDT/WS hardware.

On 2/1/2023 at 9:37 AM, CommanderAlex said:

Intel hasn't been able to compete with Skylake-X and X299 in general so they receded from the market with chips such as the 9900K introducing 8C/16T onto the consumer platform thru present day. 

Pretty much. X299 was competitive with Zen/Zen+ TRs in a lot of stuff, but Zen 2 was basically unbeatable. Also yeah mainstream stuff has gotten nutty for CPU performance. I get a flat 25k or so in CB R32 at 4.5Ghz allcore w/2400Mhz RAM, a friend pushed his 13900K to 6GHz on 4 cores, quite fast still on the rest, pulled a flat 40,000 with a 324W mainstream chip. Even stock (pulling 253W) it absolutely trounces.

[Kilrah]

28 minutes ago, Zando_ said:

The most hilarious bit about this is that if you use Adobe stuff, Intel's own mainstream chips clap the HEDT stuff due to QuickSync. It is weird Intel never put an iGPU bit on the HEDT chips just for that, no need for display output itself purely QuickSync acceleration. Given accelerators are the name of the game on their new server stuff, I wonder if they will implement something like that for the rumored HEDT/WS hardware.

You can get an ARC card now tho

[Zando_]

3 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

You can get an ARC card now tho

Having an iGPU is still an improvement: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/intel-arc-a750-a770-content-creation-review-2376/. Resolve charts because at the time Puget did this article, Premiere Pro didn't support hardware decode on ARC yet: 

 

[Crunchy Dragon]

4 hours ago, Zando_ said:

I updated to W11 on purpose, prefer most of the UI changes. The right click menu is a lil goofy but NanaZip (a version of 7zip) puts the 7zip menu in the normal spot and that's 99% of my right click usage, so it's quite nice. And task manager is dark mode now, which means I don't flashbang myself opening it on a 27" 4K panel (with the brightness up because otherwise games are too dark) in the middle of the night. That alone makes the few small quirks worth it. Overall though, W11 is just W10 with a nicer aesthetic.

I never upgrade operating systems quickly. I'll give it a few years to mature and then maybe consider leaving 10. I ran Windows 7 until my hardware literally didn't support it anymore, and that was the sole reason I upgraded to 10.

[CommanderAlex]

Appears to be a rumor, so take with a grain of NaCl.

 

https://videocardz.com/newz/intel-xeon-w-2400-workstation-hedt-cpus-are-launching-in-march-reviews-on-february-22nd

[Crunchy Dragon]

2 hours ago, CommanderAlex said:

Appears to be a rumor, so take with a grain of NaCl.

 

https://videocardz.com/newz/intel-xeon-w-2400-workstation-hedt-cpus-are-launching-in-march-reviews-on-february-22nd

Doubtful but interested

[CommanderAlex]

Just now, Crunchy Dragon said:

Doubtful but interested

Who knows...knowing how Intel encounters issues and delays their product lines multiple times. 

 

I did create a Tech News article in case anyone is interested. It just seems like more and more leaks are coming out pointing to a launch, so I felt it was worthy as Tech News.