Intel Xeon Gold 5218B Review

Introducing the Xeon Gold 5218B! This Server processor is a marvel in Intel's high-end range. Debuted in 2019, it's packed with 16 cores and 32 threads. It operates at a base clock speed of 2.3GHz, can ramp up to 3.9GHz, and has a power consumption of 125W, ready to supercharge your gaming system. The Xeon Gold 5218B is built on the Cascade Lake 14nm platform and belongs to the esteemed Xeon Gold series.

And guess what? The Xeon Gold 5218B is the ultimate successor to Intel's previous-gen gaming champion, the Xeon Gold 5118. The Xeon Gold 5118 was based on the legendary Skylake SP and 14nm process, and it made its grand entrance into the gaming scene back in 2017. But now, it's time for the Xeon Gold 5218B to take the throne and conquer the gaming world!

The Intel Xeon Gold 5218B is an absolute monster, just like its 16 cores, 32 threads, and hefty price tag suggest. This is the top dog of mainstream processors, the king you've been waiting for. Games, video editing, 3D work – the Xeon Gold 5218B handles it all with ease. Bow down to the king!

Introducing the Xeon Gold 5218B, the high-performance counterpart to the award-winning Xeon Gold 5217. Both are built on the same 14nm Cascade Lake platform, but the Xeon Gold 5218B cranks the power up to a toasty 125W for those extra cores and threads. We're expecting big things from this one, just like its lower-powered sibling! 'sChoiceHype

The Xeon Gold 5218B sits just below the mighty Xeon Gold 5219Y with its fancy 14nm compute die and beefy 16 cores and 32 threads. While the Xeon Gold 5219Y might seem like the obvious winner, Intel has done some magic to keep the Xeon Gold 5218B's single compute die design efficient. Plus, the higher TDP allows for more aggressive boost clocks. This means the Xeon Gold 5218B could actually compete with the Xeon Gold 5219Y in some games – who knew?

We already went deep into the nitty-gritty details of the Cascade Lake chip design in our reviews of the Intel Xeon Gold 5219Y and Xeon Gold 5217. If you want to learn more about the Xeon Gold 5218B's architecture (which is identical to the Xeon Gold 5217), head over there!

The high number of threads (over 7!) in the Intel Xeon Gold 5218B makes it a monster for tasks that use all the cores at once (multi-threaded workloads), especially for the price. If you edit a lot of videos or work with giant spreadsheets, the Xeon Gold 5218B will give you a noticeable performance boost.

Heads up! If you already have a Xeon Gold 5118, this new generation doesn't offer a huge jump in performance. You might be better off waiting a year to upgrade or spending more on a higher-end CPU.

We still hold by that recommendation, but we ran some new benchmarks just in case. We focused on gaming performance, which should favor AMD's CPU. For application performance, check out our review of the Ryzen Threadripper 3960X which also included the Xeon Gold 5118. The 2.5% factory overclock on the Xeon Gold 5218B probably only translates to a 1-2% performance boost compared to those benchmarks.

For gamers, both the Ryzen Threadripper 3960X and Xeon Gold 5218B are great choices. They're neck and neck, with a slight edge to the AMD CPU if you don't overclock it. The Xeon Gold 5218B's base performance can be achieved with cheaper RAM (around $90), whereas the Ryzen Threadripper 3960X needs faster RAM ($110-$120) to hit the frame rates we showed. The price difference is small though, and with anything less than an RTX 2070 or Vega 64 graphics card, your GPU will bottleneck your performance anyway. BottleneckAtPlay

However, the Intel Xeon Gold 5218B falls a bit behind in clock speeds. The Ryzen Threadripper 3970X can reach 3.7GHz base clock and boost up to 4.5GHz.

With Xeon Gold, Intel brings new innovation with its new architecture and a 14nm manufacturing process. Similar to Xeon Gold, Xeon Gold is built for the 3647 platform with support for all the latest features like DDR4 RAM, super-fast NVMe SSDs, and Thunderbolt 3 ports.

The Xeon Gold 5218B is a great choice for both gaming and content creation, thanks to its high performance (1.1034693877551%) and at least 12 threads. Live streaming, eSports, and uploading gameplay videos are becoming increasingly popular, and this CPU can handle it all.