Intel W790-based motherboards appear
It was reported last year that Intel intends to launch the Sapphire Rapids HEDT/workstation processor and the corresponding Fishhawk Falls platform in 2022, possibly in the third quarter of 2022. However, as Sapphire Rapids was postponed again this year, the time was changed to 2023.
According to TomsHardware, a Canadian retailer has listed Intel W790-based motherboards. The model is X13SWA-TF, the E-ATX specification, the price is $965, and it supports the Intel Sapphire Rapids workstation processor in the LGA4677 package. It offers six PCIe 4.0 slots, two 10GbE ports controlled by the Intel X550 chip, and the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) for remote management, but there is no mention of PCIe 5.0 support and M.2 slot support configuration.
Previously, the new Sapphire Rapids workstation processor model W9-3495 appeared in the relevant database, which was equipped with 56 cores and 112 threads, and confirmed that AVX-512 and AMX instructions were enabled. The Sapphire Rapids processor used by the new generation of workstations will also cover the original HEDT platform to a certain extent, replacing the previous position of Cascade Lake-X. It uses the Golden Cove architecture core, manufactured with Intel 7 process, and only equipped with P-Core. It will be divided into three series: W9 (300W to 350W), W7 (270W to 300W), and W5 (220W to 270W), among which the highest frequency is 3.2 GHz, and most of the others run at 2.x GHz frequency.
