Intel Xeon W-3500 & W-2500 “Sapphire Rapids Refresh” CPUs Launched: More Cores, Cache, Performance, Faster Than Threadripper In AI

Intel has officially launched its Xeon W-3500 & W-2500 "Sapphire Rapids Refresh" CPU lineup for workstations & AI systems.

The Intel Xeon W-3500 & Xeon W-2500 "Sapphire Rapids Refresh" family is designed to expand the current workstation and AI offerings with more cores, cache, performance, and new capabilities to boost the workloads of expert and mainstream workstation customers. Just like the Xeon W-3400 & Xeon W-2400 series, the new lineup comes in two diverse flavors.

The Intel Xeon W-3500 CPUs feature W9, W7, and W5 SKUs with TDPs of 385W while the Xeon W-2500 CPUs feature W7, W5, and W3 SKUs with TDPs of 250W. The chips target various workloads such as Media & Entertainment, Engineering, Life Sciences, Energy & Geosciences, Data Science & AI Development, and Financial Services. All chips are backed by an expanded compute architecture while being designed for AI development and build for businesses with Intel's vPro technologies.

Coming to some of the main highlights, the Intel Xeon W-3500 CPUs now scale up to 60 cores, up from 56 cores on the Xeon W-3400 series while the Xeon W-2500 CPUs now scale up to 26 cores, up from 24 cores on the Xeon W-2400 series. These processors feature Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0 with up to 4.8 GHz boost clocks, up to 112.5 MB of Smart Cache, 3rd Gen Deep Learning Boost with AVX-512 support, and AMX (Advanced Matrix Extensions) which offer INT8 and BFloat16 data types.

On the memory side, Intel's Sapphire Rapids Refresh platform features support for DDR5-4800 MT/s DIMMs (ECC RDIMM) with 4-channel (Xeon W-2500) and 8-channel (Xeon W-3500) memory configurations.

Up to 4.8 gigahertz (GHz) turbo frequency on W-3500 and W-2500 workstation processors.

Up to 112.5 megabytes (MB) (w9-3595X) and 48.75MB (w7-2595X) of L3 cache for better performance and data management – up from 105MB and 45MB in the prior generation, respectively.

Eight channels of DDR5 RDIMM (up to 4,800 megatransfers per second) memory support enables up to 4 terabytes (TB) of memory capacity for large datasets and memory-intensive workloads.

Continued support for ECC memory and RAS technologies that improve the integrity of critical data and system reliability.

Up to 112 CPU PCIe Gen 5.0 lanes on Xeon W-3500 processors and up to 64 CPU PCIe Gen 5.0 on Xeon W-2500 processors for multi-GPUs, SSDs, and network cards.

3rd Generation Intel® Deep Learning Boost (AMX, Bfloat16) and AVX-512 support powers improved artificial intelligence training and inferencing – up to 26% faster performance in crucial data science and AI development workloads.

Integrated Intel® Wi-Fi 6E for the latest network connectivity.

Ongoing overclocking support for unlocked processors – including DDR5 XMP 3.0 RDIMM memory overclocking features.

Intel vPro Enterprise technologies for hardware-enhanced security features, firmware version control, and remote manageability, enabling easy system deployment into the enterprise environment.

The chips still feature support on the same W790 motherboards with the LGA 4677 socket which offers up to 112 PCIe Gen5 lanes from the CPU, WiFi 6E support, and up to 8 DMI 4.0 lanes for the chipset for expanded connectivity.

The Intel Xeon W-3500 "Sapphire Rapids Refresh - Expert" CPUs feature the Xeon W9-3595X as the flagship offering which offers 60 cores, 120 threads, and a boost clock of up to 4.8 GHz across all 60 P-Cores, 112.5 MB of L3 cache, 112 PCIe Gen5 lanes, up to 4 TB memory capacity support, TDP of up to 385W and a price of $5889 US. The rest of the lineup scales from 16 cores, up to 44 cores & TDPs ranging from 290 to 340W. Full specs are provided below:

The Intel Xeon W-2500 "Sapphire Rapids Refresh - Mainstream" CPUs feature the Xeon W7-2595X as the flagship offering with 26 cores, 52 threads, 4.8 GHz boost clocks, 64 PCIe Gen5 lanes, 48.75 MB of L3 cache up to 2 TB memory support and 250W TDP. This chip is priced at $2039. The rest of the lineup scales from 8 cores, up to 22 cores, and comes in 175-250W TDP designs. Full specs are once again provided in the table below:

Intel will also offer certain SKUs in boxed flavors and the mentioned SKUs will feature an unlocked design for overclocking support on the W790 motherboards. These SKUs include:

Xeon W9-3575X

Xeon W7-3565X

Xeon W5-3535X

Xeon W7-2595X

Xeon W7-2575X

Xeon W5-2565X

Xeon W5-2555X

Intel is also sharing a few performance metrics with the Xeon W-3500 CPUs offering up to 2.8x/1.8x uplifts in rendering performance while the Xeon W-2500 CPUs offer a 1.93x/1.40x uplift over the last-generation Cascade Lake SKUs. In SPEC Workstation, the Xeon W-2500 yields up to a 104% uplift over Cascade Lake and a good improvement over the previous Xeon W-2400 lineup too but the differences mainly come from core count increments.

Intel also makes comparisons with AMD Threadripper PRO 7000 CPUs but only in AI workloads to showcase the performance advantage of its AMX accelerators. The Xeon W9-3595X offers up to a 2x uplift over the 7985WX which is a 64-core part. The test here is Topaz Labs Video AI PRO which leverages AMX through OpenVINO. In Data Science and AI development, the Xeon W-3500 CPU also offers a 26% improvement over the Threadripper chip. Intel also showcases performance with and without its Optimized Python Distribution which once enabled, delivers a 2x improvement.

Lastly, Intel offers a comparison with its very own mainstream desktop flagship, the Core i9-14900K which is a 24-core and 32-thread part. The Xeon W7-2595X being a 26 core and 52 thread part offers a 50% improvement in multi-threaded and 40% improvement in single-threaded workloads. The AMX performance is also represented which delivers a 9.4x improvement over the 14900K.

These are some big claims that we would like to test out for ourselves. As for systems, Dell, HP, and Lenovo will be offering new Workstation PCs with these chips while motherboard makers will be releasing new designs based on the W790 chipset. Partners such as ASRock, Gigabyte, Maxsun, and Colorful will be among the manufacturers with new W790 products on the market. The chips will be available for pre-orders beginning today and will be available in early September.

The Sapphire Rapids Refresh platform is an intermediate solution till the next-gen arrives. Intel is already working on its next-gen platform based around the W890 chipset which will feature support for Granite Rapids-X HEDT/Workstation CPUs with increased core counts and much better capabilities but these are expected to be unveiled next year.