Intel Xeon w9 3495X and w9 3475X Review

Introduction

If you're a regular reader of these pages you'll be aware that we often mention the importance of knowing your intended use for your next purchase. It's very easy to get distracted by flagship models of products - RX 7900 XTX, RTX 4090 - when you're actually going to be gaming at 1080. Similarly the Ryzen 9 7950X or Intel i9-13900KS are massively tempting if you expect to be doing some rendering along with your gaming, but if you aren't then there is no reason not to get the extra clock speed benefits of the Ryzen 5 7600 or Intel Core i5-13400. It's horses for courses as the old saying goes. Especially as the more cores a CPU has the slower the clock speed tends to be, so you really need to know what your package requires before assuming that cores will best every other consideration.

But what if you aren't in the world where you will game at all? What if you spend your days in front of a CAD system or Cinema 4D? Whilst the aforementioned flagship CPUs might blow your mind if you've only ever experienced quad-core CPUs, in the world of high-end rendering even they are weaksauce. Pixar have 24000 cores or more, with many scenes in their films requiring over 70 GB of RAM. Suddenly that 32 thread machine doesn't quite seem all you thought.

Now we're not pretending that the two new Intel Xeon W9 processors we have today are for anyone other than the most demanding users. We're just ensuring that you know in advance that these are not a pair of processors for those of you who just want to not be CPU limited in your games, or perhaps want a tiny bit of extra horsepower in your rendering. These are CPUs strictly aimed at the hardcore renderers for whom even a minute or two extra time per frame can cost thousands in person hours.

However, even knowing that the 72 threads on the Intel Xeon w9-3475X or the, count 'em, 112 threads on the Intel Xeon w9-3495X are way beyond what most of us need, we love checking out some of the most insane hardware on the market and the new Xeon pairing fit squarely in that bracket. Let's take a look at what it offers.

Technical Specifications