It took some time for Intel to deliver its latest Xeon processor, but the W-3175X is finally available today. The chipset was originally announced alongside a refresh of its X-series processors in October 2018.
The Xeon W-3175X is a powerhouse meant to handle some of the most demanding workstation tasks, such as movie editing, 3D graphics and rendering, and so on. To do that, it packs 28 processing cores with hyperthreading, for a total of 56 threads. Each core is clocked at 3.1GHz, with support for Intel"s Turbo Boost technology up to 4.3GHz. The chipset is unlocked too, so you can try to take it further at your own risk.
The processor has 38.5MB of Intel Smart Cache, it supports up to 68 PCIe lanes and six channels of DDR4 memory for up to 512GB of RAM. Intel also packed a bunch of other features into the processor, such as Mesh Architecture for low-latency data transfers, and the Extreme Tuning Utility and Extreme Memory Profile to help overclockers get the most out of the W-3175X. Compared to Intel"s own 18-core i9-9980XE processor, which was announced at the same time, the Xeon W-3175X renders the Unreal Engine Infiltrator Demo 1.52 times faster based on Intel"s testing.
All that power doesn"t come cheap, as the W-3175X costs $2,999. You can get it from system integrators that make purpose-built workstations using the processor. There"s also a dedicated liquid cooling solution from Asetek, the 690LX-PN, to help keep things cool, but it"s sold separately for $399.