Intel Xeon W Workstation CPU Review
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,397 words · ~6 min read
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remember how before this thing got wrecked we compared it to a custom core
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i9 pc determining that the consumer hardware was a better value
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well those skylake w chips are not exclusive
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to the imac pro so what if you were to put one of them in a
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pc what is a xeon w and how does Intel
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justify the hefty premium that you would pay over a desktop core i9
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we're not sure what we do know though is origin pc
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so i've got two benches here for us today both of them are running very
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similar ASUS workstation boards like
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i wouldn't call these guys brother and sister but
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if they were cousins they probably wouldn't want to get married so there's
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the x 299 sage that's running the x 299
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chipset that you're probably already familiar with and the other one is
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running a chipset that Intel calls c422 and you will need
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a c422 board if you want to run a xeon w
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so with this chipset the main thing that you gain is support
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for vpro whose claim to fame among other things is remote management with the
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convenience and vulnerability that comes along with
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that what you lose is support for Intel's
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optane storage acceleration otherwise they are pretty similar in
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their capabilities another feature of z w is official support for up to
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512 gigabytes of system memory though
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it should be noted that some x299 motherboards are compatible with
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registered dimms meaning that they can
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also run 512 gigs of RAM with a regular
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core i9 so then if it wasn't for Intel making ecc a xeon
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exclusive feature um there wouldn't really appear to be any
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difference between them whatsoever
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now ecc memory which we've actually covered in more depth before here
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is not faster than regular RAM
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what makes it special and what makes it more expensive is the fact that on the
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fly it can actually check for and correct errors improving overall system
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reliability this is a desirable feature for any system that's running mission
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critical applications as for the cpus themselves well with a
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couple of exceptions they line up almost one to one with the core x series lineup
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which is to say they've got the same cache the same core counts and they even
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fit in the same socket where they differ
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is in the xeons gaining an extra four pci express lanes while losing support
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for turbo boost max though it should be noted that many of
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them have a higher turbo boost 2.0 speed
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to compensate making that last bit sort of a non-issue and also kind of
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raising the question as to why we have to have a software
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application that only works in Windows for the desktop processors anyway
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so with both benches assembled all that's left now is to do a little bit of
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tuning to make sure that our tests are fair the main thing is just to make sure that
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our memory is running at the same speed which it is
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so to recap here are the hardware configurations that we're running today
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now let's run some benchmarks starting with our two eight core chips to see if
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maybe just maybe there is something that we have
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overlooked yeah okay
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moving on to our other tests we see the slight difference a 100 megahertz higher
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base clock makes for gaming actually giving the xeon w2145
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an edge over its core i7 counterpart so
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that's good news if you were concerned that your serious business workstation
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wouldn't be able to game off hours you can put those fears to rest and then as
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for the heavy multi-threaded tests like blender the differences shrink down to a
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maximum of 16 seconds and don't really seem to get any worse
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over time meaning that the difference basically comes down to how high and for
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how long the chips boost during the early phase of the run thanks to their
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slightly different turbo implementations so i guess it's time for us to do a
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quick chip swap here now we're on to our second pair and just
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like the previous ones the differences aren't exactly striking
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neither chip really seems to gain a firm
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advantage over the other and it's a dead heat in our synthetic gaming tests once
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again lightly threaded workloads favor turbo boost max and our numbers tighten
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up considerably when we pour on the juice in blender
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this time however we've got a maximum delta of about a minute with the 7 900
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taking the crown on the gooseberry render
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let's try the heavyweights now shall we we've got both systems loaded up with
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their 18 core variants
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so which monster CPU is more monstrous well
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surprisingly our 7980 wrecked the xeon
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w2195 in deus ex thanks to its higher
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base and turbo boost clocks and while it's not as big a victory as
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in our synthetic gaming tests it's still a win for the core i9 and then
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it's the same story across the rest of our tests regardless of threading
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we also saw our biggest upset in blender
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with the core i9 winning by over a minute and a half
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on the gooseberry render so
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if the performance is as similar
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in real life as the spec sheets would
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seem to indicate with neither the consumer chips pulling
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ahead in consumer workloads like games
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nor the workstation chips pulling ahead in workstation workloads
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it makes it honestly pretty difficult for me to wrap my head around the reason
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that this lineup of cpus
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and this chipset exists
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now traditionally xeons based on the consumer 11 xx sockets
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only had ecc as their main selling point
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but those came at a relatively small premium
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whereas again traditionally the expensive xeons with many cores well
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they had the ability to run on dual socket boards as an easy justification
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but this generation lacks that capability meaning that unless you
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absolutely need the pro and ecc memory
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support the latter being something that AMD's entire lineup from ryzen 3 to
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threadripper supports natively and the former being something that Intel's own
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consumer products support
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it kind of smells like mostly marketing but uh
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with a subtle undertone of extra pci express lanes
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so at the end of the day i think what it comes down to is that
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xeon has a lot more brand recognition
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than core does in the workstation and
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enterprise space so if Intel can charge
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more for it i guess they might as well
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but for our viewers i'll say this as long as you don't stand to lose a
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hundred bucks worth of work every time your system
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blue screens due to a bit flip
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we're recommending to stick with the consumer core i9
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