INTEL

Xeon W-2400 and W-3400: the new Sapphire Rapids server processors

Company Intel has introduced other new server processors Sapphire Rapids. This time it's the new W-2400 and W-3400 Xeons. We found Advanced Matrix Extension (AMX) support with support for INT8 and BFloat16 data formats, there are also AVX-512 instructions. The processors support Intel vPro Enterprise, up to x8 DMI 4.0, Wi-Fi 6E and can have up to 112 PCIe 5.0 lanes. There is also support for DDR5-4800 memory, the possibility of installing systems with 4 TB of RAM and we can find a memory controller with up to 8 channels. This applies to the W-3400 Xeons, while the cheaper W-2400 models end up with 64 PCIe 5.0 lanes, a 4-channel memory controller, and a maximum of 2TB of RAM.

Basically, it's Raptor Lake architecture in server form, so we have powerful Golden Cove-type P-Core cores with 2MB L2 cache per core (compared to desktop chips, there are no budget E-Cores). As for the base models Xeon W-2400 (Sapphire Rapids-64L), then here we start on the 6-core model W3-2423 with 120 W PBP for $ 359. In this case, expect a maximum of DDR5-4400.

The offer then continues through stronger W3 chips with 6 or 8 cores, W5 then offers 10, 12 or 16 cores (and already brings DDR5-4800 support) and the weaker Xeon series offer ends with the 20 and 20 Xeon W7. 24 core models. Here you can already reach a maximum clock speed of 4.8 GHz, these are even unlocked processors, so they can be further overclocked. In the case of the 24-core W7-2495X, consumption reaches 225 W PBP. The price is then 2189 USD.

When it comes to Xeon W-3400 processors (Sapphire Rapids-112L), W5, W7 and W9 models will be available here. The basis here is a 12-core W5-3425 with 270W PBP and a price tag of 1189 USD. The W5 series also includes a 16-core model. W7 will offer versions with 20, 24 and 28 cores and consumption of 270 or 300 W PBP. Finally, we have the W9 in the form of the 36-core W9-3475X and the 56-core W9-3495X. There is a relatively large gap of 20 cores in the number of cores. The flagship is clocked at up to 4.8GHz, has a PBP of 350W and the price has gone up to $5,889.

We also have the new Intel W790 chipset, which will offer 14 USB 2 ports and 25 USB 3 ports. It itself has another 16 PCIe 4.0 lanes, 12 PCIe 3.0 lanes and 8 SATA III ports. Intel also showed some benchmarks and, for example, in single-threaded performance, the new 56-core Xeon W9-3495X has 28% more performance than the 28-core Xeon W-2375. Here you can see a particularly significant increase in IPC (maximum frequency increased by only 4%). When it comes to multithreaded performance, performance has increased by 120%, at least when it comes to the SPECrate 2017 benchmark.

by: Milan Šurkala