Intel’s next wave of workstation chips is taking shape, and a fresh leak has put the spotlight on a new mid-stack part: the Xeon 654. Alongside it, early details for the broader Granite Rapids-WS family have surfaced, giving professionals a good idea of what to expect when these CPUs land.
The Granite Rapids-WS platform reportedly splits into two tiers. A mainstream lineup targets more accessible workstations with 4-channel DDR5 support and up to 80 PCIe 5.0 lanes. An Expert tier aims at heavy hitters with 8-channel DDR5 and as many as 128 PCIe 5.0 lanes. Earlier engineering samples hinted at the family’s upper bound, including a massive 86-core, 172-thread SKU tested on a W890 platform at 2.10 GHz. Now, attention shifts to a more attainable option that many studios and labs may actually buy.
Spotted in the Geekbench 6 database, the Intel Xeon 654 was benchmarked on a reference Granite Rapids-WS board with 32 GB of DDR5. The chip carries 18 cores and 36 threads, backed by 72 MB of L3 cache and 36 MB of L2. While the listing shows 4.60 GHz, observed peak clocks hovered closer to 4.80 GHz during testing. As this is an engineering sample on a pre-release platform, scores aren’t final, but for reference it posted roughly 2,634 points in single-core and 14,743 in multi-core. That trails some current 12-core competitors; however, ES silicon and early firmware typically suppress performance, so final retail numbers should look different.
A separate leak outlines several Granite Rapids-WS SKUs, their base clocks, and cache sizes. Notably, “X” models are expected to support overclocking, a perk for power users who want to wring out every last drop of performance.
At the top end, Granite Rapids-WS is expected to scale up to 86 cores with enormous cache pools, while midrange parts like the Xeon 654 should deliver high clocks and ample cache for workloads that thrive on fast per-core performance, such as CAD, code compilation, content creation, and lightly threaded simulation steps.
Platform details are still fluid, but current chatter points to:
– Mainstream and Expert segments with 4-channel and 8-channel DDR5 respectively
– Up to 128 PCIe 5.0 lanes on Expert-tier parts, and 80 on mainstream
– W890 chipset and a new workstation socket are likely
– Potential maximum TDPs up to around 350W on the highest-end SKUs
– A launch window targeted for late Q4 or around CES 2026
Pricing will be critical. The Granite Rapids-WS family will go head-to-head with rival high-end workstation platforms, and aggressive pricing could make mid-stack chips like the Xeon 654 especially compelling for studios, engineers, and researchers seeking premium performance without the flagship price.
Bottom line: the Xeon 654 leak offers a clear glimpse into Intel’s next-gen workstation vision—higher core ceilings, faster clocks, more PCIe 5.0 lanes, and DDR5 bandwidth to match. With overclockable X-series parts on deck and a rumored 86-core flagship, Granite Rapids-WS is shaping up to be a serious contender in the professional desktop space once it officially arrives.
