Intel has launched the Xeon 600 series workstation processors, codenamed Granite Rapids-WS, targeting single-socket workstations that prioritize high core counts, large memory capacity and extensive I/O for multi-GPU and storage-heavy builds. The lineup is positioned as the successor to the Sapphire Rapids based Xeon W-2500 and W-3500 series and is designed to compete directly with AMD’s high-end workstation offering, the Ryzen Threadripper Pro 9000 series. Intel has 11 SKUs in the Xeon 600 series, and all of them are built around Redwood Cove performance cores only, with no efficiency cores included.
At the top of the range, the Xeon 698X features 86 cores and 172 threads, backed by 336 MB of L3 cache. The chip runs at a 2.0 GHz base clock, boosting up to 4.8 GHz with Turbo Boost Max 3.0, or 4.6 GHz under Turbo Boost 2.0. Intel confirms that the 698X is fully unlocked, allowing overclocking, which remains relatively uncommon in the Xeon workstation segment. The platform is aimed at creators, engineers and technical professionals who need extreme parallel performance and configurability in a single-socket tower or rack workstation.
The processors pair with the Intel W890 chipset, which offers up to 128 PCIe 5.0 lanes directly from the CPU. The platform features eight memory channels supporting DDR5-6400 RDIMMs, and up to 4 TB of system memory. Compared to the previous Xeon WS generation, Granite Rapids-WS introduces larger L2 and L3 caches, CXL 2.0 support and refreshed platform capabilities for expansion and connectivity. Intel also incorporates vPro Enterprise, along with Intel Deep Learning Boost technologies including VNNI, AVX-512 and AMX, to target Artificial Intelligence inference and other advanced compute workloads that benefit from accelerators and high bandwidth memory and I/O.
