Intel Xeon W-2155 10-Core/20-Thread LGA2066 Processor Review

Bohs Hansen / 7 years ago

Final Thoughts and Pricing

Pricing

Intel released the Xeon W-2155 10-core processor with an MSRP of $1440.00. At the time of this review, it is listed on Amazon for $1,735.14. That price will surely drop as the availability increases.

Conclusion

Today we had a first on-hands look at the Xeon-W series which is the workstation version of the Skylake-X processors. They are similar in many ways, but there are differences. Just as with the predecessor Xeon and Core processors of the same family.

With up to 48 available PCI Express 3.0 lanes, it isn’t difficult to imagine possible setups. Whether you’re dreaming of a strong graphics, storage, or networking system. The processor supports Intel Virtual RAID on Chip which combines RAID with NVMe directly through the CPU. It’s the most direct way to control it which also will result in the best possible performance.

The Intel Xeon W-2155 is the third largest processor in the series, only superseded by the 14 and 18-core versions. While it has fewer cores than its bigger brothers, it has the same feature set. That includes Intel Turbo Boost 2.0 and support for up to 512GB DDR4 ECC memory. The increase in memory bandwidth is another thing you’ll notice when upgrading from the predecessor. The quad-channel setup allows you to install up to 2666MHz modules while the Intel vPro technology delivers hardware-enhanced security, identity protection, and remote manageability.

Performance

Let us talk a little bit about the performance, after all, that’s probably why you came. The current comparison charts might be a bit misleading at some points due to the changes mentioned on the terminology page. While that is the case, the actual numbers speak for themselves. We got a very powerful processor here. There are definite performance improvements over previous generations on both multi and single core operations. Anything that takes the GPU and storage into consideration might look a bit skewed due to the necessary hardware upgrades.

One thing we didn’t change was the memory and we’re not utilising the processor to its full capabilities here. So keep that in mind, with faster memory you’ll get an even better performance. At least where memory is part of the equation, and where isn’t it?

The Xeon W-series fill the spot between the Server Xeon Scalable platform and Consumer Core i9 family well.

Pros

20 Threads, 10 Cores
Quad-Channel DDR4 ECC memory up to 2666MHz
AVX-512 with up to 2 FMA units and Intel Mesh Architecture
Easy compatibility with LGA2066 socket
48 PCIe Lanes
vPro and VROC Technologies

Cons

Availability at the time of review
Price might be an issue for some interested parties

“Intel’s Xeon W-2155 is a high-end chip without being the flagship. It delivers a great performance and scales really well across the cores and threads. No doubt thanks to the new Mesh architecture.”