Intel Sapphire Rapids Xeon W5-3433 ‘Fishhawk Falls’ HEDT Workstation CPU Spotted: 16 Golden Cove Cores, 32 Threads & 45 MB L3 Cache

Intel's next-generation Sapphire Rapids Xeon-W CPU, the W5-3433, which is designed for the HEDT workstation platform has been spotted within the SiSoftware Sandra database.

The Intel Sapphire Rapids chip that has been spotted is part of the Xeon W family as confirmed in its naming convention. This shows that the chip is not part of the standard server lineup but is in fact part of the upcoming 'Fishhawk Falls' HEDT platform that will be aimed at the consumer PC segment.

Looking at the specifications the chip has to offer, the Intel Xeon W5-3433 CPU is equipped with 16 cores and 32 threads. Based on the cache configuration of 2 MB of L2 per core, it can be confirmed that this is indeed a Sapphire Rapids chip and not a standard Alder Lake 'LGA 1700' SKU. The chip is equipped with 45 MB of L3 cache and 32 MB of L2 cache for a combined total of 77 MB. The chip is an early engineering sample as made evident by its 2 GHz clock speed.

As for performance, the CPU produces 456.00 GOPS in the Arithmetic test which is lower than the 490.41 GOPS produced by the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3955WX 16 core chip. Once again, the lower clocks are to blame but with 16 Golden Cove cores at hand, we can expect some nice single & multi-core performance at hand versus AMD's Ryzen Threadripper 5000 lineup.

Intel's Fishhawk Falls HEDT Xeon family will be launching in two flavors of Sapphire Rapids chips, the Expert parts with up to 56 cores and the Mainstream parts with up to 24 cores. The 16-core chip that has leaked today seems to be part of the mainstream lineup.

As for the platform, there's support for 4-Channel (EEC) DDR5 support & the number of PCIe Gen 5.0 lanes will drop to 64. The prices will be largely similar to the previous Core-X CPUs so we can expect around $500-$3000 US for these chips. Earlier rumors have suggested that the Fishhawk HEDT family will be based around the W790/C790 PCH but given that there are at least two platforms in the works, there might be a much higher-end PCH SKU. The launch is said to take place in Q4 2022, around the same time as 13th Gen Raptor Lake CPUs. Summing things up for the Sapphire Rapids mainstream segment:

We can't say for sure if Intel's recent Sapphire Rapids server lineup delay will affect the HEDT parts too but if that's the case, then we might see the launch slip from 2H of 2022 to 1H of 2023. AMD is also working on its next-gen Threadripper lineup so Intel better hurry up and launch its HEDT first or they'll have to compete with some monstrous chips from the red team.

News Sources: Videocardz, Momomo_US