Rumors about a ‘Sapphire Rapids’ workstation chipset called W790 date back to mid-2021 which is when a slide from a presentation showed Sapphire Rapids as a HEDT (High-End Desktop) product that the next W790 chipset would support. This product was expected to be available in the second quarter of this year, but Intel appears to be having difficulty keeping Sapphire Rapids products on track.
We now know, more than a year later, that Intel will launch its 4th Xeon Scalable CPUs built on Sapphire Rapids on January 10th. So far, there has been no official statement on the HEDT series. Furthermore, ATIC, a Canadian retailer, is now selling a SuperMicro X13SWA motherboard centered on the W790 chipset with preliminary specifications.
The W790 motherboard would have up to six PCIe Gen4 x16 slots (no Gen5 support), two 10 Gbit LAN ports, and an E-ATX form factor that is now commonly utilized in server-grade or enthusiast boards. Additionally, the LGA-4677 socket in this listing indicates Sapphire Rapids CPUs, but Raptor Lake processors with 34 cores should not be ruled out just yet. The motherboard is presently estimated at $1290 (CAD), which is approximately $963 (USD).
Although Intel has not confirmed its plans for the HEDT market, it appears the company will provide consumer Core-S series, business Core vPRO, and HEDT/server Xeon products. On the other hand, there is consumer Ryzen, company Ryzen PRO, Threadripper PRO for content creation, workstation EPYC SP6 (yet to be released), and EPYC SP5 for data centers, which was released earlier this month. Intel undoubtedly needs to catch up in the high-end market.
Via Tom’s Hardware