- Intel’s Xeon 600-series returns desktop workstations with up to 86 cores
- Octa-channel DDR5 and MRDIMM support deliver unprecedented memory bandwidth speeds
- All cores use Hyper-Threading for consistent performance across demanding workloads
Intel has returned to the desktop workstation market after nearly three years with its new Xeon 600-series processors, offering up to 86 cores and clock speeds reaching 4.9GHz.
Built on the Granite Rapids architecture, these chips expand on 2025’s Xeon 6700P series and support up to eight channels of DDR5 memory and 128 lanes of PCIe 5.0 connectivity.
The lineup spans 12 to 86 cores, with memory capacities ranging from 4GB to 4TB, depending on DIMM configuration.
Memory and Bandwidth Improvements
These processors use the Redwood Cove microarchitecture, which Intel first introduced in its mobile chips and later expanded to deliver higher desktop performance.
All Xeon 600 CPUs support octa-channel memory officially rated at 6,400MT/s, while the top five SKUs include MRDIMM support capable of reaching 8,000MT/s.
This marks the first introduction of MRDIMMs to desktop workstations, allowing memory from multiple ranks to combine for higher transfer speeds.
Each CPU can handle up to 4TB of memory, doubling the capacity of AMD’s Threadripper Pro 9000 WX and quadrupling that of the standard Threadripper 9000 series.
These changes benefit data-intensive workloads on desktop workstations and high-end content creation systems.
The flagship Xeon 698X delivers 86 cores and 172 threads, while other SKUs scale down to 12 cores.
Unlike earlier heterogeneous Xeon designs, all Xeon 600 CPUs use only performance cores with Hyper-Threading enabled, which ensures consistent execution across workloads.
Xeon 600 processors also feature 128 PCIe 5.0 lanes and CXL 2.0 support. AMX accelerators in each core now support FP16 instructions, improving AI performance.
Intel claims up to 9% better single-threaded performance and 61% higher multithreaded performance compared to the previous Xeon W-2500 and W-3500 chips.
Benchmarks from SPEC Workstation 4 indicate gains across AI, financial services, energy, and life sciences workloads.
Applications such as Blender and Topaz Labs reportedly benefit from the integrated AMX accelerators.
Although these claims point to performance gains, Intel has not released direct comparisons with AMD’s Threadripper 9000, leaving performance per dollar and real-world advantages uncertain.
The X-series SKUs are overclockable, and boxed versions will be sold individually, with prices ranging from $499 for 12-core models to $7,699 for the 86-core flagship.
New W890 motherboards from Dell, Lenovo, Supermicro, and Puget are expected to arrive in late March 2026, although Intel has not confirmed a release window for boxed chips.
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