ES Xeon Discussion

[RolloZ170]

looks like sapphire Rapids SPR-SP ES works on chipset ASUS WS W790 Ace motherboard.
QYFP (BIOS 0506,0705) all D0 without Intel 4xxx accelerators(QAT) should work
QYFQ,QY06,QY0C (BIOS 0403)

 

[Kizune]

item 175826589225 from US is advertised as having E3 stepping (more retail grade) and theoretically (if it's really E3) should work on more boards (but it's more expensive - starting from $800+delivery, another question is about seller' reliability because of too few sales made and lack of feedback as seller).

These chips are E3 - the screenshots were not modified. So far i haven't encountered any boards that refused to work with them. I still have a bunch of them - they are selling slowly - so if you live in continental USA i can just send you one for evaluation if you wish.

 

[RolloZ170]

all sapphire rapids E steppings usualy share SAME microcode, only on SPR-WS systems they may be separated.
806F4 E0
806F5 E2
806F6 E3
806F7 E4
806F8 E5
806F8 E5: this microcode mostly includes reference to E0,E2,E3,E3,E4
- so you may don't see other than
806F8-plat. 87, SPR-SP
and
806F8-plat. 10, SPR-HBM xeon max

 

[sam55todd]

These chips are E3 - the screenshots were not modified. So far i haven't encountered any boards that refused to work with them. I still have a bunch of them - they are selling slowly - so if you live in continental USA i can just send you one for evaluation if you wish.

Thank you Kizune for generous offer, really appreciate it, generally I'm trying to avoid ES/QS for obvious reasons mentioned previously by multiple parties on this thread
My initial attempt to get it was driven purely by requirements to test recently purchased motherboard and RAM, now DOA return window has closed, therefore no urgent need anymore for any CPU (that's why feasibility criteria was relaxed towards ES grade) above acceptable budget.
Moreover as for home enthusiast user the main market pricing is still a bit beyond justifiable limits (it's not necessarily about your listing)
I do expect proper Gen4 Prod versions starting pouring into the second-hand market somewhere in September and after at materially more affordable price.
Therefore for now won't buy any compatible QS CPU (this eliminates any D stepping and below) above $300 (posting to UK/London can be extra up to $100) without considering lower-core counts editions (also would like to test some of database-related accelerators, although not really hardcore programmer).
And I would be lying by saying that my intent is to buy more CPUs later or for evaluation purposes, it's definitely not, if it goes into the socket and works reliably - then it stays there for long term as proper workstation machine.

 

[Kizune]

Thank you Kizune for generous offer, really appreciate it, generally I'm trying to avoid ES/QS for obvious reasons mentioned previously by multiple parties on this thread
My initial attempt to get it was driven purely by requirements to test recently purchased motherboard and RAM, now DOA return window has closed, therefore no urgent need anymore for any CPU (that's why feasibility criteria was relaxed towards ES grade) above acceptable budget.
Moreover as for home enthusiast user the main market pricing is still a bit beyond justifiable limits (it's not necessarily about your listing)
I do expect proper Gen4 Prod versions starting pouring into the second-hand market somewhere in September and after at materially more affordable price.
Therefore for now won't buy any compatible QS CPU (this eliminates any D stepping and below) above $300 (posting to UK/London can be extra up to $100) without considering lower-core counts editions (also would like to test some of database-related accelerators, although not really hardcore programmer).
And I would be lying by saying that my intent is to buy more CPUs later or for evaluation purposes, it's definitely not, if it goes into the socket and works reliably - then it stays there for long term as proper workstation machine.

That is understandable. And one of the reasons i mentioned continental USA area is that sending stuff to Europe - even a free stuff - can be tricky because of customs. Tried to send a free hardware to my friend in Austria and customs just held the goods until they calculated (no idea how) some arbitrary price for them then imposing a tax that my friend had to pay to get them finally delivered.

If the retail versions of Gen4 chips will be available at the used market by September then prices of the ES and QS processors will eventually go down - but so far i see no indications of that. The problem with Gen4 processors is that the development cycle was prolonged couple of times and the retail processors were not started to ship until Q1 of this year. Because of that i do not see any prospects of customers performing large scale upgrades just 6 months after the inception of the model and i would say that no significant quantity of used retail processors will hit the used market until at least Q3 2024.

And i would never use ES or QS processors in the business critical environment - no matter of how stable they are so i perfectly understand that when i offered to send this processor it would not be because i hoped for any future sale or anything. The thing is - i got these processors in bulk from a recycler paying basically "scrap metal" price so i already recovered my expenses selling 4 of them for the current market price. So my proposal of free CPU stands - if not for you because you are in UK then for someone with desire and knowledge to test compatibility and performance of this chip. All i want in exchange is the feedback here on forum - and no, i will not use any part of this feedback to promote or push any sales. I have 2 chips i can spare at the moment. If someone have an access to the W790 based board that would be a plus because i heard controversial reports about the compatibility of WS boards with the server Sapphire Rapids processors and would love to hear back first hand if this processor will run on any of these boards.

 

[RolloZ170]

If someone have an access to the W790 based board that would be a plus because i heard controversial reports about the compatibility of WS boards with the server Sapphire Rapids processors

i have ASUS WS W790 Ace, runs QYFQ (similar 8468v) and other D0 ES2.
some other reported X13SWA runs SPR-SPs(no proof until now)
keep in mind W790 mboards are designed for 112 or 64 PCIe lanes, SPR-SP gives 80,
hard to say which slots/ports are missing compared to W-3400.

 

[Kizune]

i have ASUS WS W790 Ace, runs QYFQ (similar 8468v) and other D0 ES2.
some other reported X13SWA runs SPR-SPs(no proof until now)
keep in mind W790 mboards are designed for 112 or 64 PCIe lanes, SPR-SP gives 80,
hard to say which slots/ports are missing compared to W-3400.

Well if you like to try the E3 version of 8461v - just DM me where to send it and you will have one for free. I would love to hear back performance comparison with D0 variant.

 

[sam55todd]

Ok, with the help from @Kizune have provisionally booked Xeon Gen4 8461v from US in the end, amazing thing about this model (despite disabled UPIs, so no Dual-CPU setups {as was also pointed by @RolloZ170 straight away}) is the fact that it has all accelerators for testing purposes (although not sure how to design programs for those yet and highly doubt existing databases {my specialty} have relevant support implemented, the only thing I could find is QAT features by Microsoft SQL Server and nothing about offloading workloads to DSA/IAA, but may be it's just my limited quick googling skills).

p.s.
@RolloZ170 - yes, with recent Intel' corporate fine-tuning and binning policies we may see all kind of non-retail off-roadmap gizmos offloaded to ebay soon.

 

[Mushan]

check if you can swap this board with X12DPi-N6, this supports B0/C0 ES1/ES2 with BIOS up to 1.1b (not with 1.2 and up)

Hi RolloZ170,

I got two QUYR (step 4) recently, and I want to buy a MS X12DPI (1.1c bios) for them. Since you only mentioned 1.1b bios work, will 1.1c also work? Thanks!

 

[cooldude]

My 5 year old x11 server just died. Need to pickup qs/es and motherboard. Haven't been following recent trends.
Any recommendations that work for board and cpu

 

[RolloZ170]

I got two QUYR (step 4) recently, and I want to buy a MS X12DPI (1.1c bios) for them. Since you only mentioned 1.1b bios work, will 1.1c also work?

my information is 1.1c(and up) not work, not tested. you can try and report.

 

[RolloZ170]

I got two QUYR (step 4) recently,

you should expect drop of memory channels over time (silicon bug of ICX ES1)

 

[psyq321]

looks like sapphire Rapids SPR-SP ES works on chipset ASUS W790 motherboard.
View attachment 30843View attachment 30844

Thanks! Do you know what happens with the PCIe slots if it is a SAGE version of the mobo? I am asking because SAGE has 7 PCIe slots ( x16/x16/x16/x16/x16/x8/x16) and that's clearly more than what single non-WS SPR Xeons have (WS versions trade non-enabled UPI links for more PCIe lanes) ?

@edit - nevermind, just saw the latest post. Still, if somebody has tested this it would be great to know.

 

[RolloZ170]

Thanks! Do you know what happens with the PCIe slots if it is a SAGE version of the mobo? I am asking because SAGE has 7 PCIe slots ( x16/x16/x16/x16/x16/x8/x16) and that's clearly more than what single non-WS SPR Xeons have (WS versions trade non-enabled UPI links for more PCIe lanes) ?

like with Xeon W2400
CPU M2s missing, only slots 1,3,5,7 (but probably one more, but unsusable for 2Slot width GPUs)
check the schematic in the manual Appendix page83/84

 

[chrgrose]

Does anyone know if the off-roadmap 8272CL is compatible in the Dell T7920?

 

[sam55todd]

Preliminary feedback on Xeon Scalable Gen4 8461V CPU (all accelerators but no UPI) QS version (Q16Z) with E3 stepping (48-cores / 96-Threads)

it has resulted in my first successful LGA4677 Sapphire Rapids platform boot
(previous attempt from different supplier with different model of early ES version having D0 stepping has failed/no boot {ff post code, no any signs of life}).

It does work on SuperMicro X13DEI





sold by @Kizune (ebay)

don't have much time to test it all right now but despite lack of TPM on my MB (add-on module takes some time to be delivered from China to UK) - will run more detailed diagnostics via Windows 11 (internet says there are ways to install without TPM) over the weekend.

I was starting to suspect other components (MB/RAM/PSU) but getting this QS CPU finally made all the worries to go away.

 

[RolloZ170]

Does anyone know if the off-roadmap 8272CL is compatible in the Dell T7920?

yes i know. 8272cl runs not on T7920, you have to do a VRM reprogram.

 

[sam55todd]

..don't have much time to test it all right now ... will run more detailed diagnostics via Windows 11 (internet says there are ways to install without TPM) over the weekend..

Xeon SR 8461V - Q16Z QS , E3 stepping on SuperMicro X13DEI

 

[sam55todd]

Given it another sensor capture run during CPU-Z benchmarks,
AVX keeps triggering PL throttling, so benchmarks for all-core keeps showing nothing (there are ways obviously to extend PL durations to overcome this issue but won't push for it for now).





and for comparison my current Prod i7-11700


As you can see - single-core performance is roughly the same (which is expected given SR running on "Golden Cove" hence not that much of a generational gap plus frequency limitations on Xeon vs Consumer CPUs).

 

[RolloZ170]

Xeon SR 8461V - Q16Z QS , E3 stepping on SuperMicro X13DEI

WoW: only 55 watts IDLE package power, the lowest value i have ever seen at SPR.
the physical redesign of the DIE tiles indeed was worth it.