ASUS Readies Enthusiast-Class Pro WS W790E-SAGE Motherboard For Intel’s Sapphire Rapids ‘Fishhawk Falls’ HEDT CPUs
The motherboard, ASUS Pro WS W790E-SAGE was listed in the upcoming changes for HWiNFO. The upcoming version of the hardware diagnostic utility will be adding an ‘Enhanced Sensor Monitoring’ support for the motherboard which has yet to be released. The ASUS SAGE series of motherboards are always designed for HEDT CPU families with the last one being for AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper in WRX80 flavor and SAGE II for Intel’s Core-X lineup on the X299 chipset. With more and more Intel Xeon Workstation CPUs leaking out based on the Sapphire Rapids chip design, it is very likely that we are definitely getting a new HEDT platform this year but whether it’s going to launch with Raptor Lake or a little bit later remains to be seen. This does reveal that the new motherboards will utilize the W790 chipset which falls in line with previous rumors. Intel’s Fishhawk Falls HEDT Xeon family will be launching in two flavors of Sapphire Rapids chips, the Expert parts with up to 56 cores and the Mainstream parts with up to 24 cores. The 16-core chip that has leaked today seems to be part of the mainstream lineup. As for the platform, there’s support for 4-Channel (EEC) DDR5 support & the number of PCIe Gen 5.0 lanes will drop to 64. The prices will be largely similar to the previous Core-X CPUs so we can expect around $500-$3000 US for these chips. Earlier rumors have suggested that the Fishhawk HEDT family will be based around the W790/C790 PCH but given that there are at least two platforms in the works, there might be a much higher-end PCH SKU. The launch is said to take place in Q4 2022, around the same time as 13th Gen Raptor Lake CPUs. Summing things up for the Sapphire Rapids mainstream segment:
Intel ‘Mainstream’ Sapphire Rapids HEDT CPUs Up To 24 Cores / 48 Threads Up To 5.2 GHz Boost Clocks Up To 4.6 GHz All-Core Boost LGA 4677 Socket Support 64 PCIe Gen 5.0 Lanes 4-Channel DDR5 Memory (Up To 512 GB) Q4 2022 Launch
We can’t say for sure if Intel’s recent Sapphire Rapids server lineup delay will affect the HEDT parts too but if that’s the case, then we might see the launch slip from 2H of 2022 to 1H of 2023. AMD is also working on its next-gen Threadripper lineup so Intel better hurry up and launch its HEDT first or they’ll have to compete with some monstrous chips from the red team.
Intel HEDT Processor Families:
News Source: KOMACHI_ENSAKA
