Intel’s most expensive CPU can run without external RAM and yes, it can play Starfield
The Intel
No, this is not DDR4 or DDR5 RAM, but rather 64 GB of HBM2e RAM, which is built into many GPUs and AI accelerators.
The processor is built with four 14-core CPU tiles, each accompanied by a 16GB HMB2e package and two DDR5 channels. Elsewhere, the processor has a BSAE frequency of 1.9GHz, going up to 3.5GHz maximum turbo frequency, alongside 112.5MB of L3 cache.
Intel’s Xeon CPU Max 9480 CPU packs a lot of power
It also has a curious ‘winged’ shape, with winglets adding extra space to the package for some components that have been moved to make room for the HBM2e memory modules, according to Serve the House.
Despite the presence of eight DDR5 RAM channels, you can install the CPU in a machine and it is powerful enough to run on its own.
Better yet, it’ll be more powerful than most of the best PCs out there, with its 64GB of HBM2e RAM making it even powerful enough to run Starfield without the need for additional memory.
That is according to one YouTube user who claims to have worked on the bridge dies among the CPU tiles. “There’s enough PCIE and RAM for seven players to each have the P-cores of a 12900K and their own full bandwidth of 4090,” they said.
In practice, however, this CPU is designed for high-performance computing, for a range of workloads including data science and AI. There are also six different configurations, spread across three modes, each related to how much RAM is used, from what source and to what extent.
‘HBM Only’ includes no code change and no DDR5 RAM, with the system only booting and running with HBM2e RAM. ‘HBM Flat Mode’ is essentially about using two different memory pools – HBM2e and DDR5 – in combination. This is especially useful for giving certain memory-hungry applications more flexibility. ‘HBM Caching Mode’, meanwhile, relies on storing current data on the processor, while using DDR5 RAM as the primary memory storage.
The result, according to Intel, is a performance gain of up to 3.7 times greater than that of fourth-generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors across a variety of industrial workloads.
While it’s one of the most interesting CPUs Intel has produced, it’s also one of the most expensive, with a suggested retail price of $12,980 each.