There were a lot of leaks going back quite a ways regarding Xeon W 2500/3500 Sapphire Rapids Refresh but nothing from Intel yet. We recently got at least one W790 motherboard that launched and it is an entry level option that has me thinking of what might be going on with the platform. The board is actually priced in a place that I would be willing to consider it if Intel was to make their offerings more reasonable. Sapphire Rapids simply wasn’t. 12 cores for almost 1100 bucks is insane and I really don’t want to upgrade from 8 cores to anything less than 12. 12 or 16 is what I am specifically looking to move to and AMD thinks a $1400 24 core is a reasonable entry point. Personally, I’m not interested unless board and CPU for under $1500 combined with 16 cores or $1200 for 12 cores. I’ve been seriously debating getting an AM4 temporary setup but I’d be seriously unhappy if SRr dropped and it was another 10th gen X299 moment because Intel wanted to actually be competitive.
The refresh is coming, confirmed by Dell last month via BIOS update. However the refresh is pretty weak, same process and architecture as the first round of sapphire rapids CPUs just with a modest clock and core bump.
The bang for buck hack here is getting an Xeon ES/QS CPU, you can get high core count CPUs (>32) for a couple hundred bucks; couple that with the ~300USD W790 SAGE deal that was going on and it can be a very cheap platform.
300$ w790 sage? what now? I thought he new 500 dollar board was good value!
Also, regarding the refresh being ‘weak’; I know what to expect based on the leaks that show +2 cores on the 2500 and +4 cores on the 3500 and given the Raptor Lake Refresh, I don’t expect much single thread performance either. The thing is that the prices could make the platform significantly more interesting. X299 was very meh until the 10th gen when it became much more reasonable to entertain. Actually, I guess most of the price drop appears to have been in the 9th gen not the 10th when I compare the i9-*900X chips.
Basically, if Intel launched the W5-2555X at like $700 instead of almost $1100; I’d be really upset if I had just gotten a 5700x3d and dual 8 lane AM4 board.
I know, I thought it was some kind of pricing mistake but several people reported they were able to buy the board for that price. (sale is over now though)
Totally agree this could have been a much more compelling platform with a lower price… but then again that’s almost always the case with all the releases.
I think there are still deals to be had if you look around hard enough though, at least for Intel systems, not so much AMD.
Wow, yeah, that was definitely someone accidentally forgetting a 1 when entering a price. Honestly tho, if I were to have been able to pick up that deal, I probably would flip the board and put the funds toward the $500 W790 setup instead. That particular board is octal channel rather than quad so using it with a 2400 W5 instead of 3400 W5 would result in half the potential memory.
As far as the previously mentioned ES/QS 32 core chips, I’m not really interested in losing the single thread performance that would likely happen with an ES/QS high core count chip; nor would I enjoy the fear of a BIOS update making the chip no longer usable
Oh - and there are good AMD deals for what I want. Thus why I am considering an AM4 setup. I’m looking at a board just over $200 and the 5700x3d at under $200, in total 533 with 64gb of memory and tax/shipping. To get dual 8 lane slot boards on Intel isn’t that cheap and while there is a B650 at $230, the memory about a hundred bucks more and the CPU is also much more. ($501 vs $785 pre tax/shipping)
Well, it appears that it’s available now and at least currently it’s not worth another look from me. Yeah they lowered the cost of the lowest ‘HEDT alike’ Lite Workstation chip, but they still want over a grand for under 16 cores. $900, 16 cores, I’m interested. So better get on it with Threadripper AMD. haha
I really hate consumer socket. We need HEDT back so bad. Got a new case (Fractal Pop Air) so that I could install my 25gig network adapter in the top slot since for some reason it refuses to work in the second 8 lane slot. My GPU wouldn’t fit in the middle slot of the old case due to the case having bracing in the way. I forgot that my 3080 is fat because I tested with the only short card I had around (GTX 1050) and it is a true 2 slot. My 3080 is 2.75 slot. Therefore, my SSD riser wouldn’t fit in the chipset slot so I either need to buy a new SSD without a heatsink so it fits under the boards beauty panel or just run the network card in the chipset lanes like I’ve been trying to avoid this entire time. I mean, is it going to be a problem - no. Is it still going to bother me the entire time it’s there - yes. I guess the one plus side is that I could get a dual M.2 riser for the second 8 lane slot and have 3 directly connected to the CPU. At this point, I’m seeing that TR6 CPUs on Newegg are starting to look a little thin and it leaves me wondering how much longer until we see a new Threadripper launch. It’d be lovely if AMD would release a Threadripper 16 core, even if it’s Zen 4 to have a way to get a bit higher margin out of Zen 4.
Does anyone know if the 2500x series overclocks better than the 2400x?
Frankly, I ask myself the same questions. Intel’s silence on Sapphire Rapids Refresh is fishy, especially with these new W790 cards coming out without a clear CPU on the horizon. I was also waiting for a real 16 hearts at a human price, but here it is the desert. If it ends up in X299 v2, I will switch AM4 without regrets.