Intel is gearing up for a major comeback in the high-end desktop (HEDT) and workstation market with the development of its next-generation Granite Rapids-WS processor. A recent leak from OpenBenchmark.org has revealed details of an engineering sample labeled “Intel 0000,” believed to be Granite Rapids-WS, boasting 86 cores, 172 threads, and a maximum boost clock of 4.8GHz — a clear signal that Intel is preparing to directly challenge AMD’s Threadripper 9000WX series.
The leaked sample was spotted running on a GNR-WS motherboard with 512GB of DDR5 memory and an RTX 3090 GPU. The base clock is listed at 2.1GHz, with the top-end configuration similar to the Xeon 6787P, which also features 86 cores but with a higher clock speed. Granite Rapids-WS is built on a modular tile-based architecture shared with Arrow Lake-S, featuring two compute tiles for cores and two I/O tiles for PCIe and memory, enabling high core counts at a more competitive cost.
With 86 cores, Granite Rapids-WS narrows the gap with AMD’s flagship Threadripper 9995WX, which offers 96 Zen 5 cores. It marks the first time in years that Intel has been this close to its rival in the high-core-count workstation space. While Granite Rapids is scalable up to 128 cores with a three-tile design, the 86-core variant strikes a balance between performance, production cost, and motherboard complexity.
Rumors surrounding Granite Rapids-WS have circulated since early this year, including details about the new W890 chipset with support for up to 128 PCIe 5.0 lanes, 8-channel DDR5 memory, and the new LGA 4710 socket. Unlike AMD, which allows easy upgrades on the same platform, Intel users may need to upgrade their entire system to adopt the new chip.
Granite Rapids represents Intel’s strongest server and workstation architecture to date, matching AMD’s EPYC lineup for the first time since 2017. Launched in late 2024 as part of the Xeon 6900P family, Granite Rapids breaks past the limitations of Sapphire Rapids Refresh (capped at 60 cores) and sets Intel up to reclaim performance leadership from AMD’s Threadripper 7000WX lineup, which has dominated since 2023 with 96 cores.
The arrival of Granite Rapids-WS could be a turning point in the workstation CPU market. Designed to compete with AMD’s 350W TDP Threadripper 9000WX with 384MB of cache, Intel’s new chip will cater to both mainstream (4-channel DDR5, 80 PCIe lanes) and expert (8-channel DDR5, 128 PCIe lanes) segments. With improved scalability, core density, and high-speed memory support, this new platform could significantly boost performance for content creation, simulation, and compact server workloads — positioning Intel as a serious contender once again.
