Intel Xeon Silver 4214 Review

The Xeon Silver 4214 is one of Intel's high-end Server processors. It was released in 2019 with 12 cores and 24 threads. With base clock at 3.2GHz, max speed at 3.2GHz, and a 85W power rating. The Xeon Silver 4214 is based on the Cascade Lake 14nm family and is part of the Xeon Silver series.

Xeon Silver 4214 is also the successor of Intel's last gen Xeon Silver 4114 processor that was based on the Skylake (server) and 14nm process and was released in 2017.

Speaking of which, if you want a high-end desktop (HEDT) 24-core processor that can compete with the Intel Xeon Silver 4214, you’re going to have to drop quite a bit more cash and get something like the $1299 AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2970WX. And, even if you do go with this AMD chip, you won’t necessarily end up with the same level of performance.

The Intel Xeon Silver 4214 is an absolute behemoth of a processor, as it absolutely should be with its 12 cores, 24 threads and high price tag. If you’re looking for the absolute best processor money can buy on a mainstream processor, then look no further. Whether you’re playing PC games or even doing hardcore video and 3D work, the Intel Xeon Silver 4214 can handle them with ease.

We covered the deep dive details of the Cascade Lake chip design in our Intel Xeon Silver 4215 and Xeon Silver 4210 review, so head there for more information on the Xeon Silver 4214's architecture, which is identical to the Xeon Silver 4210.

The Intel Xeon Silver 4214 was rolled out on 2 April 2019 for $694, which puts it in the same general price range as the last-generation Xeon Silver 4114. This means that at least we're not seeing any considerable price jumps from generation to generation.

What this all means is that the Intel Xeon Silver 4214 is an absolute beast when it comes to multi-threaded workloads, especially at this price point. If you're counting on doing some video editing or compiling one hell of an Excel spreadsheet, you're going to see firsthand a performance boost with the Xeon Silver 4214.

We stand by that assessment, but that won't escape us from running a few up to date benchmarks. We'll focus on gaming performance which should make life a little easier for AMD's CPU. For application performance you can refer back to our day-one coverage of the Ryzen Threadripper 2950X where the Xeon Silver 4114 was included. You can safely bet the 2.5% factory overclock isn’t going to make the Xeon Silver 4214 any more than about 1-2% faster than those figures.

With Xeon Silver, Intel continues to innovate on its new architecture and 14nm process. Like Xeon Silver, Intel has engineered Xeon Silver to operate on a FCLGA3647 chipset with all the modern amenities of computing. This includes support for DDR4 RAM, the fastest NVMe SSDs and Thunderbolt 3 ports.

Fresh from a successful roll-out of mainstream Xeon Silver CPUs, Intel's attack on AMD now extends down into the high-end with its Xeon Silver 4214 processors, which the company is making available as of 2 April 2019.