I am curious why Xeon W for same core count is typically slower than Core X - also I notice the Scalable CPU have much more functionally especially related to reliability. In essence to keep the system running 24/7. Also the Scalable CPU's also appear to have 6 channel memory instead of 4 Channel memory. I wonder when 6 channel memory comes to consumer level CPUs.
One test that would be is to see what same core processor for Xeon W vs the Scalar CPU with only one CPU.
Another test that could be interesting is a dual CPU scalable with say 2 12 cores verses 1 24 core of CPU on same level.
if you would know anything about cpu scalable systems you would not ask these questions. a 2*12 vs 1*24 will be roughly 20% slower if your application scales cross the total core count due to in between socket communication. Even Intel provides data sheets on that. No need to test.
as long as intel can screw consumers they will not invest anything, you wont get 6 mem lanes in xeon W or consumer unless competition does it and they get nailed. btw why on earth would you need that on a consumer platform?
If all things are equal, then what you say is true. There is a known performance drop due to intersocket communications. However, you may have more TDP headroom (depends on the chips you are using) and mostly likely more effective cooling with two sockets allowing for higher frequencies with the same number of active cores. If the workload doesn't require an abundance of socket to socket communications, then it is conceivable that the two socket solution may have merit is such circumstances.
Why ARM is just digging its buggers watching the game where it can beat Intel ? Where are ARM server and supercomputer chips? ARM processors soon surpass Intel in transistor count. And for the same amount of transistors ARM is 50-100x cheaper then duopoly Intel/AMD. As an additional advantage for ARM these two segments will soon completely abandon Microsoft.
ARM is RISC which is completely from CISC so applications and os are limited. Microsoft server os has really evolved in every aspect in the last few years that may take RISC years to catch up on the software side.
ARM is Fujitsu's choice of successor core to SPARC64+, a architecture Fujitsu invested decades of research and development and testing to offer both commercially and at a national laboratory supercomputing level. ARM is therefore not a knee jerk choice of direction for a very interesting super builder.
Obviously you exaggerated a little bit, saying ARM is "50 - 100 times cheaper than AMD/Intel".
I wish I could shake my belief that pedantic literalism in Internet forums in general wasn't preventing broad discussion - we exaggerate in real life without any socially degrading effects, why not online?
OR ate your conversation parties sniffing that obviously -- any person who inadvertently speaks technically inaccurately despite forming perfectly understandable inquiry... as if they are unwashed know nothings, and turning on their heels to end the discussion.....a bit like HN's "we don't tolerate humor here" reactions to innocent attempts at lightening the thread...
but I digress, my point here is your comment above raised a couple of interesting questions, that I feel haven't been answered only because I think readers by themselves first over react to hyperbole, then infil the accepted wisdom to answer your questions, despite you ask about pertinent value critical concerns. I feel that by supplying the answer and dismissing the comment as uninformed, the most important thing happening is the reader voluntarily self reinforcing given marketing positions, and not engaging with the subject at all. I work in advertisingand am actually studying this, because advertising buyers adore this kind of"mind share" but we think that is at odds with the advertising buyers wanting"open minded, engaging, adaptable, innovative" customers.
1. have a look at Serve The Homes review of the Cavium ARM server generations. This architecture is definitely viable and competitive now in a increasing number of application areas.
2. Microsoft Azure has ARM deployed in my estimation at scale second only to Baidu. I am tempted to think it's actually politics that prevents a ARM Azure server machine offering to commercial users, little else. The problem with Microsoft, is user expectation of a all round performance consistency and intel and Microsoft have been working on that smooth delivery for decades.
3. ARM is bit cheaper if you need to do more than a quick recompile with a few architecture options selected. re when we will see a Azure ARM instance, I think could even be waiting for the ability for Cavium to actually deliver hardware, because unmet demand is a fatal blow to new technology, as well as successful realisation. All my"quality time" with our server fleet, is spent all hands on the thermal and power profiles of our applications. We will rewrite to gain fractions of a percentage point where it's a consistent number across runs. Since twenty five years ago, I crashed a colo cage by not considering the power on start surge of a huge half terabyte raid array, power loads obsessed me. Power usage in Cavium ARM looks like a winner for us.
4. BUT I said that,based on data mapping dense thermal sensor arrays, with the functional code paths of the actual application logic in flight across the fleet, at the time. If we're able to calculate the cost benefit of routing a new application function to a specific server, depending on the thermal load and core behaviour at the time of dispatch, I admit we're not very typical for a small scale customer. I think small is a server count below 10,000 here, including any peak on demand usage in case you're consumer retail and sell half price Gucci shoes on Black Monday. (we got surprised by the reliability of gains from very crude information. Originally we just wanted to see if we could balance the flows in the hot aisle, and even throttle hotspot buildup if we lost some cooling locally. For Intel, we got lots of gains, by sending jobs to not exceed the optimal max turbo clock of a processor, and immediately filling out the slower cores with background chores. AMD and Cavium ARM are not as sophisticated about thermal management, where Intel is keen on overkill recently, eg four nigh identical Xeon Gold SKUs. Just do really read that STH review about this"redundancy of the Xeon processor parts- I came away with a purchase order for the reviewed SKU, because we're so excited about the power management system roles in production deployment, as a competitive advantage.
5. REAL COST ADVANTAGE DEPENDS ON CHANNEL PENETRATION, WITH AMD AT 2%, yes, TWO percent is considered healthy for them today, AMD need to be shipping in far greater volume, to move the money dial to realise the kind of cost advantage SanX is excited about. Certification of countless applications is hardly begun... I want to use a ARM workstation, to eat my dog food. This necessitates nvidia Quadro cards support. Yes, I write for a living. I target CUDA for a ever increasing proportion of customer needs. SURE I can just remote machines at will. BUT IF YOU DON'T GIVE CRITICAL DEVELOPERS TRULY GREAT HARDWARE, YOU'RE ABANDONING THE PLATFORM FOR ANY IDEA OF GENERAL DEPLOYMENT.
6. Probably the last sentence should have been standalone here. I'll just say that we need a workstation as cool as the Silicon Graphics Indy of'93, to get a chance of getting a new GENERAL purpose platform in the mainstream soon.
7. I am constantly a both astounded by the simple fact that we have a chip that good to compete at all, yet scared because I am starting to wonder if we'll ever see sales above"bargaining power level" and platform insurance, and the niche market for companies able to extract whole value chains from controling their entire software ecosystem, something almost nobody in the real world can do.
I beg you to consider the futility of approaching HPE, to obtain a Z station and 56 Scalable cores, max RAM etc, may not may be wholly as anticipated.
I have a very high profile media production job coming, that could warrant a room of fully loaded such machines. Truly high profile. I have been always able to establish nearly immediate rapport with the marketing folk who are not apparently thought about by the UK online tech media, as warmly as I think it fair, but then I deal in printed worlds of very controlled readerships, and possibly by reflex alone I'm treated like I have more to say than I often do. But approaching the twenty five years mark, I probably ran out of lines some nineteen years ago anyway...
I care about hurling around heavily laden InDesign files, often without any media placeholders to include 409MB Hassleblad captures straight from the photographer. This project is going to be filled with custom adverts not run in any other media ever. (It took longer to agree copy for Rolls Royce than to sell the deal, in our first encounter with this project. VWAG owned both marques including Bentley, then.) Advertisers may visit, our job to produce for them their first display copy ever, because of interest from services who are in the word of mouth referral ecosystem this publication represents. We are effectively building a advertising studio, to accommodate the needs presented by, eg a long established security company, beyond public profile not by necessity or plan but rather not seeing the circle squared to deliver satisfactory result, without establishing unwanted capacity or staffing. So founder directors shall descend, for interview and portrait, the deal being approved by them signing a proof of the pages, in person, ideally we are able to complete 60% of the interview and layout remotely in advance.
I want to suggest to you that HPE could genuinely be intrigued by the client base of our project, and want to be exposed to them... mostly boutique banks and funds. A typical user is running a dozen Bloomberg Professional windows, Excel, with live updates and a lot of libraries for giving cell results, will have a terabyte or so of core textual references, between academic papers, email threads, online discussion (usually scraped) , and the job is to fill very specialist magazines with content and advertisers who don't play in the spray and pray brand game, but care everything about how they're found by a prospective new customer. So atop the trappings of a financial trader's desktop, will be layered Word, sure, but a TeX compositor, Visual studio, InDesign, PS...WHY? Because if we can get the message right, we can trade quickly to fill a matching campaign of the same redundancy as big ad buyers get, at even sharper prices. They come for creative, stay for flow execution.
It's realistic, even commonplace, for a Xeon Scalable workstation to find itself in front of board member powers, in this way.
Looking at the decisive commitment required to purchase current generation high end workstations, I assume that HPE, Dell et.al. just lean on their direct sales forces.
but strip away our Corporate veneer, and we're indistinguishable from any of your readers.
Individual buyers of workstation class computers, commonly inhabit the front line trenches of high end media production. London seethes with freelancer artists, driven by insufficient investment by employers, to fly solo simply to stay current with the tools and turnaround of their art. I can't win any argument about how far from the public imagination of the game, is the typical MB Pro user, sat elegantly in a WeWork chair, I thought my first sight of the Barbican WeWork office, was a film set... (whereas we're actually building a film set where to conduct our FOH business, because I can't vouch for the appearance of our actual digs. (Mr CIO left of his own accord, incapable of tolerating our disinterested views of fancy workspaces... the fact that our dev team is 80% founder level partner, actually never came into play, but the non attendance at his"corporate development" meetings, was protest against the idea of competing for hires with luxuries. Pity, in this one respect alone, the one character aspect we didn't believe necessary to investigate in interview, so patent is our third world architectural infrastructure, relations truly soured only because the guy was so good in every way otherwise. We just couldn't please with such capital commitments, not looking at the impending A grade glut just completing in the City. Such dangerous words; "absolutely, in the future, if you take us there, we will want a statement head office for sales etc". Just not on any immediate plans..
sorry, Ian, I am avoiding saying that I think I certainly could sell a HPE on the facts we know very well, where they'll be getting sales, in this sector at least, more from physical exposure to buyers and influencers, directly demonstrated the new generation capability by entirely non conveniently situated independent professionals and outside service companies, but absolutely nothing to look at in the kind of performance review I can't really understand is so homogeneous online, because this sort of evaluation hardly relates to the real use at all.
I am adamant that the entire presentation of high end desktop bixes is hostile and increasingly damaging to sales of performance workstations to corporate office buyers of all kinds.
Wall to wall gamer imagery has diluted the public perception of utilitarian power of computers beyond homeopathic insignificance.
Nothing, not a single word for twenty years- it seems to me - has conveyed any part of this crucial message: "With this new Intel computer, and the latest developments in the most advanced quantitative tools for generations, I WHOOP MY COMPETITIONS REAR!'
By all means, running a renderer matters in the industry that we inhabit. But the reason why we'll shell out for a 56 core beast, is so we can quickly previs a scene, while still working through the latest circulation data dump for the 200,000 or so publications we trade advertising on. Most days, we're rendering visuals of the data we don't want to take our concentration aeay from, again the reason why we're looking at the new HPE Z station Scalable workstations.
i have to be distracted but I'll conclude with guaranteed brevity upon my short return. There's plenty of angles here to get a vendor to cough up a couple of fully loaded machines for you, and I am entirely serious I'll invest the necessary time to get you a shot if you think I'm not batshii crazy. bfn
It is more that TDP and frequency can no longer be separated. If you completely ignore TDP and fix the frequencies to their maximum, then TDP only matters in as much as you have the proper cooling solution to manage it. However, the actual running frequency of Intel's processors are tied into processor temperature, power, number of active cores, etc. On the same chip, a larger TDP means the processor can spend more time at higher frequencies or have more cores active at the same frequency.
Just the fact that you need to map your VMs to stay on the same physical core, for best performance (i.e. so that the memory is local to it). If you do that, TR is actually a great VM solution.
That doesn't sound so complicated as to be a "situation" for someone dealing with VMs. :) Seems like a general setup config thing that you just check off when you do it once.
The day ARM announced it developed 8 and 16-core server and supercomputer chips at their usual price around $25 per 5 billion transistors, Intel Xeon prices would plunge 10-50x.
We used to have that info in the graphs, however people found it redundant when it was elsewhere, and price/power was requested instead. It's hard to put all the info of every part into every graph!
I'm with Infy2 on this one, not sure who protested, but I think something like (10/20) next to the model wouldn't be too distracting or cost too much screen space. I caught myself having to go back to the first page of the article to check the core count of the Xeon parts. That said - great content, you're one of my daily go-to sites.
Nice article, unless i missed it it would be really handy to know all core Turbo boosts you acheived as i don't' think Intel release this info any more? i am in a situation where our FEA/CFD applications beneifit from both frequency and GHz so it is tricky, even before you start taking into acount whether dual CPU is better with the potential for performance variance data being passed between two physical CPU's
I thought I had the information, but I do not. I've reached out to Intel - normally the enterprise side of the business gives out this info, but the consumer side does not. I'll update the review when we get the details.
Looks like it's time to update your benchmark suite and redo benchmarks. Octane 2.0 has long since been retired, WebXPRT 15 as well. I like chrome, but you can disable updates in Firefox fairly easily. 7zip is at (!) 18.05. The version you are using is from 2010.
We've got a new benchmark suite for our next review, I put the finishing touches to it recently. The time we had these CPUs, it was not ready in time (also for retesting - a new suite takes about a month to bed in with older hardware).
CONFIRMED! Ian is a double agent. Now that his cover is blown, he must commence emergency extraction procedures and call in a body double.
Or maybe people just get a little too upset when things don't go as expected ..... Nah, I like the double agent story better. You'll have to let us know what your call signs were.
He was an Intel fanboy undercover as an AMD shill who's in Intel's pocket.
He's a triple agent.
The only way to keep is cover is to not show bias, be objective and report the facts as they stand, otherwise his employers will figure out he's turned (and turned and turned) and they'll cut him loose.
As a Xeon / workstation user for many years, this is an interesting review, but seems eccentric to typical workstation buyers' tendencies.
There are three kinds of Xeon users based on the emphasis in applications: one, single thread performance such as 3D modeling, animation, and simulation, two, multi-threaded which includes CPU rendering, some well-threaded simulation, some aspects of video and photo-editing, and database, computational application, and three, a very common one in which the workstation has to be reasonably good at both single-threaded and multi-threaded. Solidworks is very useful to evaluate workstations as it's well-written and also demanding of both very high single and multi-thread performance. If you look at worsktation listings, the modeling units are i7-8800K A lot of Solidworks modelers are running i7-8800K systems- with the required Quadro. ECC is not as universal as it was five years ago. But, if the system is also used for the very well-threaded Solidworks rendering, they will use 10 or 12-core i7 or i9 that have high Turbo clock speeds.
My solution to reasonable performance in both single and multi-threaded work is a Xeon E5-1680 v2 which I run at 4.3GHz on all 8 cores. Yes, you can overclock E5-1680 v2, E5-1660 v2, and E5-1650 v2. A friend of mine using Solidworks and Maya runs an E5-1680 v2 at 4.7GHz using a large custom-designed external cooling tower. Because a fast 8-core is the sweet spot in single and multi- thread balance, I'm sorry the review did not include tests of the Xeon W2145 ([email protected]/4.5), also the W2135 ([email protected]/4.5), and especially, the i7-7820X ([email protected]/4.3) overclockable- there are a lot of 4.6-4.8GHz on Passmark and it's under $600 as compared to $1100 for the W-2145. The i7-7820X could be the perfect workstation CPU except for the limited PCIe lanes. The W-2145 has an excellent average single threaded mark of 2537 on Passmark, but that has a locked multiplier. The i7-7820X however at 4.8GHz has a calculated single thread up to 3100 and the top performer on Passmark at about 3185. This is even more interesting in comparison to the recent AMD Ryzen 2700X which has greatly improved Ryzen single thread performance. However, the highest CPU rating in Passmark calculates to about 2600- still really excellent: the average i7-7700K is 2583. The 2700X is tempting from a cost/performance standpoint, but those needing the highest possible single-threaded performance will stay with Intel.
Overall I'm very glad to see a review of Xeon W's, but in my view, the inclusion of the low end OEM 4-core models, the inclusion of the limited issue i7-8086K and the obsolete i7-7700k instead of the i7-8800K, plus the exclusion of the 8-core Xeon W-2145 and it's i7 counterpart i7-7820X makes it less useful to the typical workstation buyer. Some comparative tasks within workstation applications would be more informative too than synthetic benchmarks.
BambiBoom
P.S. In my view, Intel is making a huge mistake with the upcoming i9-9700K. It's 8-core and has high clock speeds- 3.6/4.9GHz and will be overclockable, but minus hyperthreading is going to send many, many workstation buyers to whatever the Ryzen 2800X turns out to be. The lack of hyperthreading will make it a gaming-only CPU and what games will make much if any use of all 8 cores?
A good workstation has more cores (and PCIe lanes) than desktop, but still good single-thread perf. It's mostly servers where you really care about aggregate performance more than single-thread.
>Overall I'm very glad to see a review of Xeon W's, but in my view, the inclusion of the low end OEM 4-core models, the inclusion of the limited issue i7-8086K and the obsolete i7-7700k instead of the i7-8800K, plus the exclusion of the 8-core Xeon W-2145 and it's i7 counterpart i7-7820X makes it less useful to the typical workstation buyer. Some comparative tasks within workstation applications would be more informative too than synthetic benchmarks.
1) Unfortunately these were the only 5 SKUs we were able to get ahold of. Please pester Intel if you want to see more reviewed. 2) We have many other CPUs tested in our database, www.anandtech.com/Bench 3) We can't test every overclockable CPU at every frequency. Overclocking is in itself a niche (as much as people talk about it online, and we only pull out OC data unless it's universal: Running our suite CPU X at Frequencies YXZ just multiplies our testing time. 4) Benchmarks: I've repeatedly asked in reviews over the years for users to get in contact with their preferred professional benchmarks. Some ideas were good (Agisoft, DigiCortex), some were not (licensable software doesn't scale over 5 systems testing simultaneously). But please keep emailing suggestions.
Please bear in mind, not 100% of benchmarks have to be specifically for you. I get so many complaints about 'why include benchmark X?' because it doesn't pertain to that user. There are other users who prefer other benchmarks. Even if 50% or 20% of the benchmarks are relevant to you, that's the take-home data for you, not the others. The others are for other people. Don't expect 100% of all the data points to be relevant for you.
I don't expect any review to have any particular content specific to me and don't understand your creating that inference.
My point was that the review was less relevant to buyers considering Xeon W's by omitting an important category of processors, the fast 6-core and moreso the W-2145 8-core. As those processors were unavailable, we'll look forward to seeing something about them perhaps another time.
It seems that those buying HP, Dell, Lenovo, Boxx, and Puget systems are going to buy quite a few W-2123, W-2125, W-2135, W-2145 plus the i7-and i9 alternatives including i7-8700K and i7-7820X and I would have liked to have seen those reviewed. Those with $2,000 can have good performance in both in 10, 12 and greater core count CPU's, but the 8-core is important in having a good balance at a comfortable cost. Tests have shown- e.g. the Puget Systems articles that demonstrate that multi-threaded applications often (e.g. Adobe) have peak core utiltization at 5-6 cores and so a fast 8- core is a good solution. As the Xeon W-2145 and i7-7820X are both 8-cores @ 3.7/4.5, it seemed that would be a good "center" for a Xeon W- review. I also don't expect a review to try every overclocked CPU, but in the example of comparing the W-2145 and i7-7820X, it seems interesting to note that the i7-7820X may be run at 4.8GHz for $500 less (-45%) than the 4.5GHz W-1245.
You seem to have stored up a good supply of impatience and anger towards readers making requests or suggestions. Keep in mind we're not as expert, have the range of technical or market knowledge, nor access to so many components as do you. Do you enjoy this work?
"You seem to have stored up a good supply of impatience and anger towards readers making requests or suggestions." You have to empathize with Ian, and the other reviewers. With every article / review they publish here there seems to be a small cadre of users that will criticize everything they write, deride them, belittle them. After a time it gets old, and starts to weigh heavily. All while working under intense pressure from deadlines.
Constructive criticism is a thing most people should read into. In my job as a photographer / trainer, the basic idea is "Okay, this is what is good about the image, this is what is wrong and here is how to improve upon it in the future." While your comment had much of the workings for a proper CC, I also don't see Ian's anger or impatience. I only see him reiterating a point he's had to make dozens of times.
As Anandtech is owned by Purch Group which has a marketing function; "to better reflect its growing portfolio of brands and products focused on purchasing decisions", one would think that mentioning median level products not reviewed but that were, in my view, probably more likely to be purchased by workstation buyers would have had a better reception. Instead of addressing the specifics of the content and intention of my comments, Ian's reply was almost entirely a general rant as to readers' unfair comments and those applied applied to me.
Reviewers/ critics that take every comment personally seem unhappy in their work. Yes, reviewing is difficult and under pressure of deadlines, but your idea of focusing on constructive criticism is the proper mode of response. In a professional media situation, applying general irritation based on past experience to an individual has no excuse. Ian could have simply said that the processors missing from the review would be reviewed when available and not use most of his comments repeating that I insist every review revolve around me.
I've been a reviewer / critic, having had a radio program in Los Angeles for six years. During that run I became used to criticism of my choices for review and comments, and once in a while this was vehement. I once had a fellow make semi-obscene comments and implied threats concerning something I said- about Mozart. Still, my perplexity and pique was never applied to any other caller.
To me it looks like forcibly introducing an i9 SKU and it's need for differentiation with an i7 messed up the whole lineup.
If they had stuck with the traditional lineup, then we could have had 8/16 i7, 6/12 i5, and 4/8 i3 and the entire line would have been much better across the board.
Their pricing is nuts! These can only make sense if you're desperate for PCIe lanes or lots of cores (and, for some reason, don't want AMD).
I have an older E5 Xeon and wanted to replace it with a W-series, but I can't justify this pricing (or the performance hit taken on the lower-core-count models, relative to desktop/E-series chips). I will have to opt for either an E-series Xeon or a Ryzen. At this rate, I see myself going for a 7 nm Ryzen, actually.
I think AMD is smart for using narrow AVX units. > 256-bit doesn't really make sense for much that wouldn't be better-served by a GPU. AVX-512 was a strategic misstep for Intel, and they're just going to have to live with it.
I'm not in the market for > 8 cores, but those who are will be disappointed by the rate of thermal throttling, due to this being their first (recent) workstation/HEDT chip with a non-soldered IHS.
That was honestly the one big reason I was looking at the Xeon. That's just a poor business decision. Xeon carries a price premium, they could at least guarantee the heat conductivity is going to be enough to keep it running cool and smoothly for the life of the chip.
I don't know this for a fact, but their Xeons are normally just binned HEDT processors without the special features fused off. So, I assume it's the same crappy TIM under that IHS.
Comparing thermal performance @ the same clock for 10+ core models vs the i9's would easily show whether this is true.
"I think AMD is smart for using narrow AVX units. > 256-bit doesn't really make sense for much that wouldn't be better-served by a GPU. AVX-512 was a strategic misstep for Intel, and they're just going to have to live with it."
AMD's AVX 2 is only 1/2 of Intel AVX 2 - that sound like they are using dual 128 bits instead 256 bits
Also keep in mind Intel CPU also have AVX 2 support your statement makes no sense.
The thing is - and this is somewhat critical for a workstation based board, you're NOT really going to be using it for single threaded tasks. You'll be using software which has for the most part SHOULD be multi-threaded. Considering that the Threadripper is a 16c/32t CPU in the gen1, and running for a street price of about $800ish, and the gen2 is going to be a 32c/64t beastie of a CPU at a price of $1500ish, why would you spend $2500 on a 18c/36t Intel CPU?
You could just as easily do some research to find people who have indeed put together some TR/ECC combos, and put a complete AMD system for the price of an Intel CPU alone.
That's nuts, dude. For software development, I want lotsa cores for parallel builds. When recompiling only a few files, I want fast single-thread perf.
The reality is that there are still lots of places in day-to-day computing where single-thread perf matters. I don't know how you can possibly believe you accurately represent the needs of all workstation users, but you don't.
It says “workstation” but is there any reason not to base an entry level server on these specs? Cheaper than server chips, ample of ram, ECC, vpro. Is there anything Intel will do to enforce a segmentation?
That is almost certainly one of the purposes of the custom 4-core editions. HP's MicroServer Gen8 had a two-core 2.3Ghz Celeron with ECC support - this has significantly more wattage but I'd expect to see it in hardware with a need for long-term highly-reliable duty like communications equipment.
This may be a stupid question, but how come my E3-1220 (3.1 GHz) from 2011 has 80 W TDP and this Xeon W-2104 (first table) has 120 W? I thought that power consumption went down per MHz... this is 50% increase.
I saw the numbers on page 2 about the real tests, but I don't have the ones for the E3-1220 to compare the actual values, so I was comparing only nominal TDP.
I'm lucky enough to be using a 10-core iMac Pro, so have the Apple-specific W-2150B. I'm afraid I'm not about to prise it out of the system so that you can test it, but here's the result of one anecdotal test: running the CPU portion of Cinebench 15 for macOS gives a mutithreaded score of 2012 and single-threaded of 182 — a spot below your figures for the W-2195. Also, Intel Power Gadget shows the CPU drawing 150W, with the cores hitting almost 100° during the multithreaded test.
I guess Intel wants to ensure AMD Threadripper gets the home-grown workstation market going forward…
Like you mention, previous generation CPUs, even high core count variants are floating around in the second hand market and I got myself an OEM variant of the E5-2699v3 (E5-2696v) about two years back for around $700 from China via eBay (“extremely affordable”). That’s an 18core chip that will clock a little higher than the 2699, 3.6GHz instead of 3.3 when fewer cores are used, while the all-core clocks and TDP (145 Watts) are the same.
I am running this in an X99 board with 128GB of ECC UDIMM (bought before the RAM prices hiked 100%) and operating it with a BCLK overclock of 103.8, which results in a clean 4GHz for low-core workloads, 3.8GHz with four cores active and 2.8GHz for all-core unless it’s AVX workloads (prime95), where it may drop to 2.6GHz, all with well below 140 Watts and generally quite cool with an unnoticeable Noctua fan inside a $60 cheapo tower.
It runs games rather well, clocking high on the few cores most game engines use and it also does well using lots of cores on things like massive compile jobs (make -j40) or machine learning tasks (helped along by GTX 1080ti where GPUs are better).
It gets 2552 on Cinebench R15, so it won’t quite beat the current generation Threadrippers or these Xeons, but at the premium prices Intel wants to charge for Xeon-W as well as current DRAM prices, I simply couldn’t afford something in this league for the home-lab.
The other reason why someone might consider the Xeon W (such as myself) - high memory and need a very fast single threaded performance.
The consumer parts are limited to 64 GB (ECC or not) of RAM whereas the Xeon W caps out at 512 GB.
Most "normal" people might not need that, but I can tell you right now that for some of the pre and post-processing work that I do, I'm looking now at either a 256 or 512 GB system with very fast single threaded performance.
I know you've heard it before, but just want to throw in my 2 cents.
Could you please try a newer version of Handbrake for H.256 benchmarks. I know when doing comparisons you need consistency and it's best to stick with one version, but x265 is becoming very popular, and the new version fixes previous x265 issues. Plus they have new Production presets which might be helpful. Thanks for any consideration.
Can you please provide your Handbrake x265 config? I would suggest providing a link to a page showing settings for your encodes. Your 4k speeds are much, much higher than I have gotten.
What I really hate about all these new CPUs / mainboards .. only Support for Win10 and alike, no Win7 anymore. Win10 has not the overall quality yet and EULA is against privacy.
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HStewart - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
I am curious why Xeon W for same core count is typically slower than Core X - also I notice the Scalable CPU have much more functionally especially related to reliability. In essence to keep the system running 24/7. Also the Scalable CPU's also appear to have 6 channel memory instead of 4 Channel memory. I wonder when 6 channel memory comes to consumer level CPUs.One test that would be is to see what same core processor for Xeon W vs the Scalar CPU with only one CPU.
Another test that could be interesting is a dual CPU scalable with say 2 12 cores verses 1 24 core of CPU on same level.
Just test to see what it with more cores vs CPU's
duploxxx - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
one threadripper 2.0 and you can throw all intel configs here into the bintricomp - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
YeaHHStewart - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
I wish people keep the topic to the subject and not blab about competitor productsduploxxx - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
if you would know anything about cpu scalable systems you would not ask these questions. a 2*12 vs 1*24 will be roughly 20% slower if your application scales cross the total core count due to in between socket communication. Even Intel provides data sheets on that. No need to test.as long as intel can screw consumers they will not invest anything, you wont get 6 mem lanes in xeon W or consumer unless competition does it and they get nailed. btw why on earth would you need that on a consumer platform?
BurntMyBacon - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
If all things are equal, then what you say is true. There is a known performance drop due to intersocket communications. However, you may have more TDP headroom (depends on the chips you are using) and mostly likely more effective cooling with two sockets allowing for higher frequencies with the same number of active cores. If the workload doesn't require an abundance of socket to socket communications, then it is conceivable that the two socket solution may have merit is such circumstances.SanX - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
Why ARM is just digging its buggers watching the game where it can beat Intel ? Where are ARM server and supercomputer chips? ARM processors soon surpass Intel in transistor count. And for the same amount of transistors ARM is 50-100x cheaper then duopoly Intel/AMD. As an additional advantage for ARM these two segments will soon completely abandon Microsoft.[email protected] - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
ARM is RISC which is completely from CISC so applications and os are limited. Microsoft server os has really evolved in every aspect in the last few years that may take RISC years to catch up on the software side.JoJ - Saturday, August 4, 2018 - link
ARM is Fujitsu's choice of successor core to SPARC64+, a architecture Fujitsu invested decades of research and development and testing to offer both commercially and at a national laboratory supercomputing level. ARM is therefore not a knee jerk choice of direction for a very interesting super builder.Obviously you exaggerated a little bit, saying ARM is "50 - 100 times cheaper than AMD/Intel".
I wish I could shake my belief that pedantic literalism in Internet forums in general wasn't preventing broad discussion - we exaggerate in real life without any socially degrading effects, why not online?
OR ate your conversation parties sniffing that obviously -- any person who inadvertently speaks technically inaccurately despite forming perfectly understandable inquiry... as if they are unwashed know nothings, and turning on their heels to end the discussion.....a bit like HN's "we don't tolerate humor here" reactions to innocent attempts at lightening the thread...
but I digress, my point here is your comment above raised a couple of interesting questions, that I feel haven't been answered only because I think readers by themselves first over react to hyperbole, then infil the accepted wisdom to answer your questions, despite you ask about pertinent value critical concerns. I feel that by supplying the answer and dismissing the comment as uninformed, the most important thing happening is the reader voluntarily self reinforcing given marketing positions, and not engaging with the subject at all. I work in advertisingand am actually studying this, because advertising buyers adore this kind of"mind share" but we think that is at odds with the advertising buyers wanting"open minded, engaging, adaptable, innovative" customers.
1. have a look at Serve The Homes review of the Cavium ARM server generations. This architecture is definitely viable and competitive now in a increasing number of application areas.
2. Microsoft Azure has ARM deployed in my estimation at scale second only to Baidu. I am tempted to think it's actually politics that prevents a ARM Azure server machine offering to commercial users, little else. The problem with Microsoft, is user expectation of a all round performance consistency and intel and Microsoft have been working on that smooth delivery for decades.
3. ARM is bit cheaper if you need to do more than a quick recompile with a few architecture options selected.
re when we will see a Azure ARM instance, I think could even be waiting for the ability for Cavium to actually deliver hardware, because unmet demand is a fatal blow to new technology, as well as successful realisation.
All my"quality time" with our server fleet, is spent all hands on the thermal and power profiles of our applications.
We will rewrite to gain fractions of a percentage point where it's a consistent number across runs. Since twenty five years ago, I crashed a colo cage by not considering the power on start surge of a huge half terabyte raid array, power loads obsessed me. Power usage in Cavium ARM looks like a winner for us.
4. BUT I said that,based on data mapping dense thermal sensor arrays, with the functional code paths of the actual application logic in flight across the fleet, at the time. If we're able to calculate the cost benefit of routing a new application function to a specific server, depending on the thermal load and core behaviour at the time of dispatch, I admit we're not very typical for a small scale customer. I think small is a server count below 10,000 here, including any peak on demand usage in case you're consumer retail and sell half price Gucci shoes on Black Monday.
(we got surprised by the reliability of gains from very crude information. Originally we just wanted to see if we could balance the flows in the hot aisle, and even throttle hotspot buildup if we lost some cooling locally. For Intel, we got lots of gains, by sending jobs to not exceed the optimal max turbo clock of a processor, and immediately filling out the slower cores with background chores. AMD and Cavium ARM are not as sophisticated about thermal management, where Intel is keen on overkill recently, eg four nigh identical Xeon Gold SKUs. Just do really read that STH review about this"redundancy of the Xeon processor parts- I came away with a purchase order for the reviewed SKU, because we're so excited about the power management system roles in production deployment, as a competitive advantage.
5. REAL COST ADVANTAGE DEPENDS ON CHANNEL PENETRATION, WITH AMD AT 2%, yes, TWO percent is considered healthy for them today, AMD need to be shipping in far greater volume, to move the money dial to realise the kind of cost advantage SanX is excited about.
Certification of countless applications is hardly begun...
I want to use a ARM workstation, to eat my dog food. This necessitates nvidia Quadro cards support. Yes, I write for a living. I target CUDA for a ever increasing proportion of customer needs. SURE I can just remote machines at will. BUT IF YOU DON'T GIVE CRITICAL DEVELOPERS TRULY GREAT HARDWARE, YOU'RE ABANDONING THE PLATFORM FOR ANY IDEA OF GENERAL DEPLOYMENT.
6. Probably the last sentence should have been standalone here.
I'll just say that we need a workstation as cool as the Silicon Graphics Indy of'93, to get a chance of getting a new GENERAL purpose platform in the mainstream soon.
7. I am constantly a both astounded by the simple fact that we have a chip that good to compete at all, yet scared because I am starting to wonder if we'll ever see sales above"bargaining power level" and platform insurance, and the niche market for companies able to extract whole value chains from controling their entire software ecosystem, something almost nobody in the real world can do.
JoJ - Saturday, August 4, 2018 - link
typo, mea,in point 3, I mean to say, "ARM is NOT cheaper, if you need to do more than a quick recompile.."
Ian Cutress - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
If we ever get a Xeon Scalable system up and running for proper benchmarking, I'll run through some tests.JoJ - Saturday, August 4, 2018 - link
Hi Ian,I beg you to consider the futility of approaching HPE, to obtain a Z station and 56 Scalable cores, max RAM etc, may not may be wholly as anticipated.
I have a very high profile media production job coming, that could warrant a room of fully loaded such machines. Truly high profile. I have been always able to establish nearly immediate rapport with the marketing folk who are not apparently thought about by the UK online tech media, as warmly as I think it fair, but then I deal in printed worlds of very controlled readerships, and possibly by reflex alone I'm treated like I have more to say than I often do. But approaching the twenty five years mark, I probably ran out of lines some nineteen years ago anyway...
I care about hurling around heavily laden InDesign files, often without any media placeholders to include 409MB Hassleblad captures straight from the photographer. This project is going to be filled with custom adverts not run in any other media ever. (It took longer to agree copy for Rolls Royce than to sell the deal, in our first encounter with this project. VWAG owned both marques including Bentley, then.) Advertisers may visit, our job to produce for them their first display copy ever, because of interest from services who are in the word of mouth referral ecosystem this publication represents. We are effectively building a advertising studio, to accommodate the needs presented by, eg a long established security company, beyond public profile not by necessity or plan but rather not seeing the circle squared to deliver satisfactory result, without establishing unwanted capacity or staffing. So founder directors shall descend, for interview and portrait, the deal being approved by them signing a proof of the pages, in person, ideally we are able to complete 60% of the interview and layout remotely in advance.
I want to suggest to you that HPE could genuinely be intrigued by the client base of our project, and want to be exposed to them... mostly boutique banks and funds. A typical user is running a dozen Bloomberg Professional windows, Excel, with live updates and a lot of libraries for giving cell results, will have a terabyte or so of core textual references, between academic papers, email threads, online discussion (usually scraped) , and the job is to fill very specialist magazines with content and advertisers who don't play in the spray and pray brand game, but care everything about how they're found by a prospective new customer. So atop the trappings of a financial trader's desktop, will be layered Word, sure, but a TeX compositor, Visual studio, InDesign, PS...WHY? Because if we can get the message right, we can trade quickly to fill a matching campaign of the same redundancy as big ad buyers get, at even sharper prices. They come for creative, stay for flow execution.
It's realistic, even commonplace, for a Xeon Scalable workstation to find itself in front of board member powers, in this way.
Looking at the decisive commitment required to purchase current generation high end workstations, I assume that HPE, Dell et.al. just lean on their direct sales forces.
but strip away our Corporate veneer, and we're indistinguishable from any of your readers.
Individual buyers of workstation class computers, commonly inhabit the front line trenches of high end media production. London seethes with freelancer artists, driven by insufficient investment by employers, to fly solo simply to stay current with the tools and turnaround of their art. I can't win any argument about how far from the public imagination of the game, is the typical MB Pro user, sat elegantly in a WeWork chair, I thought my first sight of the Barbican WeWork office, was a film set... (whereas we're actually building a film set where to conduct our FOH business, because I can't vouch for the appearance of our actual digs. (Mr CIO left of his own accord, incapable of tolerating our disinterested views of fancy workspaces... the fact that our dev team is 80% founder level partner, actually never came into play, but the non attendance at his"corporate development" meetings, was protest against the idea of competing for hires with luxuries. Pity, in this one respect alone, the one character aspect we didn't believe necessary to investigate in interview, so patent is our third world architectural infrastructure, relations truly soured only because the guy was so good in every way otherwise. We just couldn't please with such capital commitments, not looking at the impending A grade glut just completing in the City. Such dangerous words; "absolutely, in the future, if you take us there, we will want a statement head office for sales etc". Just not on any immediate plans..
sorry, Ian, I am avoiding saying that I think I certainly could sell a HPE on the facts we know very well, where they'll be getting sales, in this sector at least, more from physical exposure to buyers and influencers, directly demonstrated the new generation capability by entirely non conveniently situated independent professionals and outside service companies, but absolutely nothing to look at in the kind of performance review I can't really understand is so homogeneous online, because this sort of evaluation hardly relates to the real use at all.
I am adamant that the entire presentation of high end desktop bixes is hostile and increasingly damaging to sales of performance workstations to corporate office buyers of all kinds.
Wall to wall gamer imagery has diluted the public perception of utilitarian power of computers beyond homeopathic insignificance.
Nothing, not a single word for twenty years- it seems to me - has conveyed any part of this crucial message: "With this new Intel computer, and the latest developments in the most advanced quantitative tools for generations, I WHOOP MY COMPETITIONS REAR!'
By all means, running a renderer matters in the industry that we inhabit. But the reason why we'll shell out for a 56 core beast, is so we can quickly previs a scene, while still working through the latest circulation data dump for the 200,000 or so publications we trade advertising on. Most days, we're rendering visuals of the data we don't want to take our concentration aeay from, again the reason why we're looking at the new HPE Z station Scalable workstations.
i have to be distracted but I'll conclude with guaranteed brevity upon my short return. There's plenty of angles here to get a vendor to cough up a couple of fully loaded machines for you, and I am entirely serious I'll invest the necessary time to get you a shot if you think I'm not batshii crazy. bfn
Elstar - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
To be fair, the top end Core X and Xeon W have different TDP values.HStewart - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
So does TDP values make bigger impact than actual Frequency - on same chip of course.BurntMyBacon - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
It is more that TDP and frequency can no longer be separated. If you completely ignore TDP and fix the frequencies to their maximum, then TDP only matters in as much as you have the proper cooling solution to manage it. However, the actual running frequency of Intel's processors are tied into processor temperature, power, number of active cores, etc. On the same chip, a larger TDP means the processor can spend more time at higher frequencies or have more cores active at the same frequency.mode_13h - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
The difference relative to X-series is probably due to thermal throttling due to dual AVX-512 and heat buildup under the non-soldered IHS.HStewart - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
That would also be interesting test - I believe AVX-512 can be turned off in bios - not sure since I don't have one.JlHADJOE - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
Lack of Turbo Boost 3.0 maybe?stanleyipkiss - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
Besides the VM situation on Threadripper, why would anyone spend $2500+ for this?duploxxx - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
what VM situation?mode_13h - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
Just the fact that you need to map your VMs to stay on the same physical core, for best performance (i.e. so that the memory is local to it). If you do that, TR is actually a great VM solution.Death666Angel - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
That doesn't sound so complicated as to be a "situation" for someone dealing with VMs. :) Seems like a general setup config thing that you just check off when you do it once.mode_13h - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
Sorry, I meant "same physical die". Actually, best results are from setting affinity at the CCX (i.e. 4-core) granularity.SanX - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
The day ARM announced it developed 8 and 16-core server and supercomputer chips at their usual price around $25 per 5 billion transistors, Intel Xeon prices would plunge 10-50x.Infy2 - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
It would be helpful on those charts if there was an indicator how many cores/threads in CPU has.Ian Cutress - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
We used to have that info in the graphs, however people found it redundant when it was elsewhere, and price/power was requested instead. It's hard to put all the info of every part into every graph!Death666Angel - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
Can that not be coded as a tooltip/mouse-over text? That would be neat and not add clutter while adding information to those who want it. :)Ian Cutress - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
Graphs are images generated locally from the data. I'm not au fait with how our back end works, but that's require more than a simple rewriteDeath666Angel - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
Alright. :) Shame though, would be a useful feature for some. Maybe add it to an overhaul list, if such a thing exists. :)lkuzmanov - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
I'm with Infy2 on this one, not sure who protested, but I think something like (10/20) next to the model wouldn't be too distracting or cost too much screen space. I caught myself having to go back to the first page of the article to check the core count of the Xeon parts. That said - great content, you're one of my daily go-to sites.Alsw - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
Nice article, unless i missed it it would be really handy to know all core Turbo boosts you acheived as i don't' think Intel release this info any more? i am in a situation where our FEA/CFD applications beneifit from both frequency and GHz so it is tricky, even before you start taking into acount whether dual CPU is better with the potential for performance variance data being passed between two physical CPU'sIan Cutress - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
I thought I had the information, but I do not. I've reached out to Intel - normally the enterprise side of the business gives out this info, but the consumer side does not. I'll update the review when we get the details.eek2121 - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
Looks like it's time to update your benchmark suite and redo benchmarks. Octane 2.0 has long since been retired, WebXPRT 15 as well. I like chrome, but you can disable updates in Firefox fairly easily. 7zip is at (!) 18.05. The version you are using is from 2010.Ian Cutress - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
We've got a new benchmark suite for our next review, I put the finishing touches to it recently. The time we had these CPUs, it was not ready in time (also for retesting - a new suite takes about a month to bed in with older hardware).HStewart - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
Ian, it would be really nice to see the performance benefits of AVX 512 in these benchmarks.I try to search for what applications are available that use AVX 512 - only thing I found was the following
https://www.hpcwire.com/2017/06/29/reinders-avx-51...
Ian Cutress - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
I've got a few for our new suite. 3DPM has an AVX-512 mode now, and I've got the latest y-cruncherJoeyJoJo123 - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
"AMD’s chiplet design will take a few generations to get used to"Is chiplet the silicon equivalent of calling someone a manlet? Lol.
jcc5169 - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
There they go again! More Intel Fanboy propaganda !!!Ian Cutress - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
So a review of a product = fan boy? What? Last week I was told I was an AMD shill.BurntMyBacon - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
CONFIRMED! Ian is a double agent. Now that his cover is blown, he must commence emergency extraction procedures and call in a body double.Or maybe people just get a little too upset when things don't go as expected ..... Nah, I like the double agent story better. You'll have to let us know what your call signs were.
0ldman79 - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
He was an Intel fanboy undercover as an AMD shill who's in Intel's pocket.He's a triple agent.
The only way to keep is cover is to not show bias, be objective and report the facts as they stand, otherwise his employers will figure out he's turned (and turned and turned) and they'll cut him loose.
True story.
BambiBoom - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
Anandateers,As a Xeon / workstation user for many years, this is an interesting review, but seems eccentric to typical workstation buyers' tendencies.
There are three kinds of Xeon users based on the emphasis in applications: one, single thread performance such as 3D modeling, animation, and simulation, two, multi-threaded which includes CPU rendering, some well-threaded simulation, some aspects of video and photo-editing, and database, computational application, and three, a very common one in which the workstation has to be reasonably good at both single-threaded and multi-threaded. Solidworks is very useful to evaluate workstations as it's well-written and also demanding of both very high single and multi-thread performance. If you look at worsktation listings, the modeling units are i7-8800K A lot of Solidworks modelers are running i7-8800K systems- with the required Quadro. ECC is not as universal as it was five years ago. But, if the system is also used for the very well-threaded Solidworks rendering, they will use 10 or 12-core i7 or i9 that have high Turbo clock speeds.
My solution to reasonable performance in both single and multi-threaded work is a Xeon E5-1680 v2 which I run at 4.3GHz on all 8 cores. Yes, you can overclock E5-1680 v2, E5-1660 v2, and E5-1650 v2. A friend of mine using Solidworks and Maya runs an E5-1680 v2 at 4.7GHz using a large custom-designed external cooling tower. Because a fast 8-core is the sweet spot in single and multi- thread balance, I'm sorry the review did not include tests of the Xeon W2145 ([email protected]/4.5), also the W2135 ([email protected]/4.5), and especially, the i7-7820X ([email protected]/4.3) overclockable- there are a lot of 4.6-4.8GHz on Passmark and it's under $600 as compared to $1100 for the W-2145. The i7-7820X could be the perfect workstation CPU except for the limited PCIe lanes. The W-2145 has an excellent average single threaded mark of 2537 on Passmark, but that has a locked multiplier. The i7-7820X however at 4.8GHz has a calculated single thread up to 3100 and the top performer on Passmark at about 3185. This is even more interesting in comparison to the recent AMD Ryzen 2700X which has greatly improved Ryzen single thread performance. However, the highest CPU rating in Passmark calculates to about 2600- still really excellent: the average i7-7700K is 2583. The 2700X is tempting from a cost/performance standpoint, but those needing the highest possible single-threaded performance will stay with Intel.
Overall I'm very glad to see a review of Xeon W's, but in my view, the inclusion of the low end OEM 4-core models, the inclusion of the limited issue i7-8086K and the obsolete i7-7700k instead of the i7-8800K, plus the exclusion of the 8-core Xeon W-2145 and it's i7 counterpart i7-7820X makes it less useful to the typical workstation buyer. Some comparative tasks within workstation applications would be more informative too than synthetic benchmarks.
BambiBoom
P.S. In my view, Intel is making a huge mistake with the upcoming i9-9700K. It's 8-core and has high clock speeds- 3.6/4.9GHz and will be overclockable, but minus hyperthreading is going to send many, many workstation buyers to whatever the Ryzen 2800X turns out to be. The lack of hyperthreading will make it a gaming-only CPU and what games will make much if any use of all 8 cores?
mode_13h - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
You mean i7-8700K, but yeah.A good workstation has more cores (and PCIe lanes) than desktop, but still good single-thread perf. It's mostly servers where you really care about aggregate performance more than single-thread.
Ian Cutress - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
>Overall I'm very glad to see a review of Xeon W's, but in my view, the inclusion of the low end OEM 4-core models, the inclusion of the limited issue i7-8086K and the obsolete i7-7700k instead of the i7-8800K, plus the exclusion of the 8-core Xeon W-2145 and it's i7 counterpart i7-7820X makes it less useful to the typical workstation buyer. Some comparative tasks within workstation applications would be more informative too than synthetic benchmarks.1) Unfortunately these were the only 5 SKUs we were able to get ahold of. Please pester Intel if you want to see more reviewed.
2) We have many other CPUs tested in our database, www.anandtech.com/Bench
3) We can't test every overclockable CPU at every frequency. Overclocking is in itself a niche (as much as people talk about it online, and we only pull out OC data unless it's universal: Running our suite CPU X at Frequencies YXZ just multiplies our testing time.
4) Benchmarks: I've repeatedly asked in reviews over the years for users to get in contact with their preferred professional benchmarks. Some ideas were good (Agisoft, DigiCortex), some were not (licensable software doesn't scale over 5 systems testing simultaneously). But please keep emailing suggestions.
Please bear in mind, not 100% of benchmarks have to be specifically for you. I get so many complaints about 'why include benchmark X?' because it doesn't pertain to that user. There are other users who prefer other benchmarks. Even if 50% or 20% of the benchmarks are relevant to you, that's the take-home data for you, not the others. The others are for other people. Don't expect 100% of all the data points to be relevant for you.
diehardmacfan - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
Have you looked into using SPECviewperf 13 for testing? It's probably the best all-in-one suite for workstation performance.BambiBoom - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
Ian Cutress,I don't expect any review to have any particular content specific to me and don't understand your creating that inference.
My point was that the review was less relevant to buyers considering Xeon W's by omitting an important category of processors, the fast 6-core and moreso the W-2145 8-core. As those processors were unavailable, we'll look forward to seeing something about them perhaps another time.
It seems that those buying HP, Dell, Lenovo, Boxx, and Puget systems are going to buy quite a few W-2123, W-2125, W-2135, W-2145 plus the i7-and i9 alternatives including i7-8700K and i7-7820X and I would have liked to have seen those reviewed. Those with $2,000 can have good performance in both in 10, 12 and greater core count CPU's, but the 8-core is important in having a good balance at a comfortable cost. Tests have shown- e.g. the Puget Systems articles that demonstrate that multi-threaded applications often (e.g. Adobe) have peak core utiltization at 5-6 cores and so a fast 8- core is a good solution. As the Xeon W-2145 and i7-7820X are both 8-cores @ 3.7/4.5, it seemed that would be a good "center" for a Xeon W- review. I also don't expect a review to try every overclocked CPU, but in the example of comparing the W-2145 and i7-7820X, it seems interesting to note that the i7-7820X may be run at 4.8GHz for $500 less (-45%) than the 4.5GHz W-1245.
You seem to have stored up a good supply of impatience and anger towards readers making requests or suggestions. Keep in mind we're not as expert, have the range of technical or market knowledge, nor access to so many components as do you. Do you enjoy this work?
BambiBoom
tmediaphotography - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
"You seem to have stored up a good supply of impatience and anger towards readers making requests or suggestions." You have to empathize with Ian, and the other reviewers. With every article / review they publish here there seems to be a small cadre of users that will criticize everything they write, deride them, belittle them. After a time it gets old, and starts to weigh heavily. All while working under intense pressure from deadlines.Constructive criticism is a thing most people should read into. In my job as a photographer / trainer, the basic idea is "Okay, this is what is good about the image, this is what is wrong and here is how to improve upon it in the future." While your comment had much of the workings for a proper CC, I also don't see Ian's anger or impatience. I only see him reiterating a point he's had to make dozens of times.
0ldman79 - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
Agreed.I've seen where Ian was getting irritated, this didn't appear to be one of those moments.
BambiBoom - Wednesday, August 1, 2018 - link
imediaphotography,As Anandtech is owned by Purch Group which has a marketing function; "to better reflect its growing portfolio of brands and products focused on purchasing decisions", one would think that mentioning median level products not reviewed but that were, in my view, probably more likely to be purchased by workstation buyers would have had a better reception. Instead of addressing the specifics of the content and intention of my comments, Ian's reply was almost entirely a general rant as to readers' unfair comments and those applied applied to me.
Reviewers/ critics that take every comment personally seem unhappy in their work. Yes, reviewing is difficult and under pressure of deadlines, but your idea of focusing on constructive criticism is the proper mode of response. In a professional media situation, applying general irritation based on past experience to an individual has no excuse. Ian could have simply said that the processors missing from the review would be reviewed when available and not use most of his comments repeating that I insist every review revolve around me.
I've been a reviewer / critic, having had a radio program in Los Angeles for six years. During that run I became used to criticism of my choices for review and comments, and once in a while this was vehement. I once had a fellow make semi-obscene comments and implied threats concerning something I said- about Mozart. Still, my perplexity and pique was never applied to any other caller.
BambiBoom
JlHADJOE - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
To me it looks like forcibly introducing an i9 SKU and it's need for differentiation with an i7 messed up the whole lineup.If they had stuck with the traditional lineup, then we could have had 8/16 i7, 6/12 i5, and 4/8 i3 and the entire line would have been much better across the board.
0ldman79 - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
Agreed.I imagine there will be several situations where the 6 core 12 thread i7 will outperform the i9 9700.
If the cache increase is enough that may not happen, but I'm not betting on it making up enough of a difference.
Icehawk - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
The 8086 is functionally equivalent to the 8700, they trade blows in a pretty tight grouping so I don’t mind that they used it’s scores.mode_13h - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
Their pricing is nuts! These can only make sense if you're desperate for PCIe lanes or lots of cores (and, for some reason, don't want AMD).I have an older E5 Xeon and wanted to replace it with a W-series, but I can't justify this pricing (or the performance hit taken on the lower-core-count models, relative to desktop/E-series chips). I will have to opt for either an E-series Xeon or a Ryzen. At this rate, I see myself going for a 7 nm Ryzen, actually.
I think AMD is smart for using narrow AVX units. > 256-bit doesn't really make sense for much that wouldn't be better-served by a GPU. AVX-512 was a strategic misstep for Intel, and they're just going to have to live with it.
mode_13h - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
Oh, and let's not forget the IHS TIM issue.I'm not in the market for > 8 cores, but those who are will be disappointed by the rate of thermal throttling, due to this being their first (recent) workstation/HEDT chip with a non-soldered IHS.
0ldman79 - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
I missed that.The IHS is using TIM even on the Xeon now?
That was honestly the one big reason I was looking at the Xeon. That's just a poor business decision. Xeon carries a price premium, they could at least guarantee the heat conductivity is going to be enough to keep it running cool and smoothly for the life of the chip.
mode_13h - Wednesday, August 1, 2018 - link
I don't know this for a fact, but their Xeons are normally just binned HEDT processors without the special features fused off. So, I assume it's the same crappy TIM under that IHS.Comparing thermal performance @ the same clock for 10+ core models vs the i9's would easily show whether this is true.
HStewart - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
"I think AMD is smart for using narrow AVX units. > 256-bit doesn't really make sense for much that wouldn't be better-served by a GPU. AVX-512 was a strategic misstep for Intel, and they're just going to have to live with it."AMD's AVX 2 is only 1/2 of Intel AVX 2 - that sound like they are using dual 128 bits instead 256 bits
Also keep in mind Intel CPU also have AVX 2 support your statement makes no sense.
HStewart - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/ryzens-halved...bill.rookard - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
The thing is - and this is somewhat critical for a workstation based board, you're NOT really going to be using it for single threaded tasks. You'll be using software which has for the most part SHOULD be multi-threaded. Considering that the Threadripper is a 16c/32t CPU in the gen1, and running for a street price of about $800ish, and the gen2 is going to be a 32c/64t beastie of a CPU at a price of $1500ish, why would you spend $2500 on a 18c/36t Intel CPU?You could just as easily do some research to find people who have indeed put together some TR/ECC combos, and put a complete AMD system for the price of an Intel CPU alone.
mode_13h - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
That's nuts, dude. For software development, I want lotsa cores for parallel builds. When recompiling only a few files, I want fast single-thread perf.The reality is that there are still lots of places in day-to-day computing where single-thread perf matters. I don't know how you can possibly believe you accurately represent the needs of all workstation users, but you don't.
Lolimaster - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
I see no point in this when TR exist, not only 1950X already crushes but the 2990X will just made them an afterthought.cm2187 - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
It says “workstation” but is there any reason not to base an entry level server on these specs? Cheaper than server chips, ample of ram, ECC, vpro. Is there anything Intel will do to enforce a segmentation?GreenReaper - Monday, August 6, 2018 - link
That is almost certainly one of the purposes of the custom 4-core editions. HP's MicroServer Gen8 had a two-core 2.3Ghz Celeron with ECC support - this has significantly more wattage but I'd expect to see it in hardware with a need for long-term highly-reliable duty like communications equipment.buxe2quec - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
This may be a stupid question, but how come my E3-1220 (3.1 GHz) from 2011 has 80 W TDP and this Xeon W-2104 (first table) has 120 W?I thought that power consumption went down per MHz... this is 50% increase.
buxe2quec - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
I saw the numbers on page 2 about the real tests, but I don't have the ones for the E3-1220 to compare the actual values, so I was comparing only nominal TDP.Hamm Burger - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
I'm lucky enough to be using a 10-core iMac Pro, so have the Apple-specific W-2150B. I'm afraid I'm not about to prise it out of the system so that you can test it, but here's the result of one anecdotal test: running the CPU portion of Cinebench 15 for macOS gives a mutithreaded score of 2012 and single-threaded of 182 — a spot below your figures for the W-2195. Also, Intel Power Gadget shows the CPU drawing 150W, with the cores hitting almost 100° during the multithreaded test.abufrejoval - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
I guess Intel wants to ensure AMD Threadripper gets the home-grown workstation market going forward…Like you mention, previous generation CPUs, even high core count variants are floating around in the second hand market and I got myself an OEM variant of the E5-2699v3 (E5-2696v) about two years back for around $700 from China via eBay (“extremely affordable”). That’s an 18core chip that will clock a little higher than the 2699, 3.6GHz instead of 3.3 when fewer cores are used, while the all-core clocks and TDP (145 Watts) are the same.
I am running this in an X99 board with 128GB of ECC UDIMM (bought before the RAM prices hiked 100%) and operating it with a BCLK overclock of 103.8, which results in a clean 4GHz for low-core workloads, 3.8GHz with four cores active and 2.8GHz for all-core unless it’s AVX workloads (prime95), where it may drop to 2.6GHz, all with well below 140 Watts and generally quite cool with an unnoticeable Noctua fan inside a $60 cheapo tower.
It runs games rather well, clocking high on the few cores most game engines use and it also does well using lots of cores on things like massive compile jobs (make -j40) or machine learning tasks (helped along by GTX 1080ti where GPUs are better).
It gets 2552 on Cinebench R15, so it won’t quite beat the current generation Threadrippers or these Xeons, but at the premium prices Intel wants to charge for Xeon-W as well as current DRAM prices, I simply couldn’t afford something in this league for the home-lab.
abufrejoval - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
Here is a Geekbench result for this rig: https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/9220520alpha754293 - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
The other reason why someone might consider the Xeon W (such as myself) - high memory and need a very fast single threaded performance.The consumer parts are limited to 64 GB (ECC or not) of RAM whereas the Xeon W caps out at 512 GB.
Most "normal" people might not need that, but I can tell you right now that for some of the pre and post-processing work that I do, I'm looking now at either a 256 or 512 GB system with very fast single threaded performance.
Dug - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
I know you've heard it before, but just want to throw in my 2 cents.Could you please try a newer version of Handbrake for H.256 benchmarks. I know when doing comparisons you need consistency and it's best to stick with one version, but x265 is becoming very popular, and the new version fixes previous x265 issues. Plus they have new Production presets which might be helpful. Thanks for any consideration.
Icehawk - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
Can you please provide your Handbrake x265 config? I would suggest providing a link to a page showing settings for your encodes. Your 4k speeds are much, much higher than I have gotten.xray9 - Saturday, August 4, 2018 - link
What I really hate about all these new CPUs / mainboards .. only Support for Win10 and alike, no Win7 anymore. Win10 has not the overall quality yet and EULA is against privacy.TitovVN1974 - Sunday, August 5, 2018 - link
IMHO, there is no support for AVX512 in windows versions prior to 10.lillylothian - Saturday, April 27, 2019 - link
Do not eat your dog's food.