Intel Discontinues Cascade Lake Core X Series

Cascade Lake-X and Cascade Lake-W were processor lineups from Intel.

Cascade Lake-X was part of the Core X-series category and offered four SKUs

1. Core i9-10980XE Extreme Edition

2. Core i9-10940X

3. Core i9-10920X and

4. Core i9-10900X

These processors were targeted at high-end desktop systems for gamers, enthusiasts, and professionals. Cascade Lake-X was the last release in the high-end desktop (HEDT) segment from Intel before they shifted their focus.

Cascade Lake-W, marketed under the Xeon W-2200 series, offered a wider range of options from the quad-core Xeon W-2225 to the 18-core Xeon W-2295. Intel later introduced the W-3200 series, which was also based on Cascade Lake. However, Intel is discontinuing the W-2200 series while continuing with the W-3200 series. The W-2200 and W-3200 series have been succeeded by the Sapphire Rapids Xeon W-2400 and Xeon W-3400 series.

Intel has announced the discontinuation of Cascade Lake-X and Cascade Lake-W processors, but customers still have a grace period to order these chips until April 26, 2024. Intel will fulfill these orders and ship the processors before January 31, 2025.

With the discontinuation of the processors, the chipsets that support them, namely the X299 and C422, will also be retired. These chipsets were introduced in 2017 and supported multiple generations of Intel processors, including Cascade Lake.

Cascade Lake is considered a relic from the past, and Intel is focusing its resources on more recent offerings like Sapphire Rapids. Cascade Lake was released in 2019 and was the last HEDT lineup from Intel to feature Core-branded SKUs. Intel faced tough competition from AMD’s Threadripper lineup, which offered more cores, cache, threads, and I/O capabilities.

Intel’s latest offering is the Sapphire Rapids CPU family, known for its high performance but also high power consumption. AMD is expected to introduce its next-gen Threadripper CPU lineup called Storm Peak, while Intel is rumored to launch a Sapphire Rapids CPU refresh in the form of Xeon W-2500 and Xeon W-3500 in the coming year.