AMD Ryzen Threadripper to arrive 'early August' priced from $799

[CAPTAIN_ALLCAPS]

There's been all sorts of rumours about Threadripper SKUs, but none that I was particularly convinced by. I hope there's an 8 core (1900X maybe?) at 130W, along with lower clocked 12 and 16 core versions at the same TDP.

If they're planning an 8 core they might be holding it off in the hope that they'll get more early adopters on the 12 and 16 core variants (much like they've held back the Ryzen 3 processors). Makes sense I suppose - people who'd consider a $599 8 core CPU to get the quad memory/64 lanes miught be persuaded to stretch up to a $799 12 core part.

It will be two memory channels per die though (unless I am very much mistaken), so you'll also get NUMA pitfalls as well as the latency issues around having two CCXs connected by an interposer. I could easily see an 8-core threadripper performing worse in all but the most parallelisable CPU tasks than Ryzen 7.

Having said that it might be compelling for content creators who need something inexpensive to bolt several graphics cards together whilst retaining good PCIE bandwidth.

[ik9000]

CAPS LOCK IS NOT A BUTTON IT IS A WAY OF LIFE.

What a load of scroll-locks.

[scaryjim]

... I could easily see an 8-core threadripper performing worse in all but the most parallelisable CPU tasks than Ryzen 7.

Having said that it might be compelling for content creators who need something inexpensive to bolt several graphics cards together whilst retaining good PCIE bandwidth.

I think this is pretty much where it's at tbh. I can't see out and out enthusiasts and gamers going for an 8 core threadripper - they'll want the 12 or 16 cores for Kudos/ePeen - but there's plenty of use cases that don't need huge threaded performance but can benefit from memory bandwidth and PCIe lanes. The flexibility of the I/O combinations should make the platform excellent for workstations, small home/office servers etc...

[DanceswithUnix]

There's been all sorts of rumours about Threadripper SKUs, but none that I was particularly convinced by. I hope there's an 8 core (1900X maybe?) at 130W, along with lower clocked 12 and 16 core versions at the same TDP.

If they're planning an 8 core they might be holding it off in the hope that they'll get more early adopters on the 12 and 16 core variants (much like they've held back the Ryzen 3 processors). Makes sense I suppose - people who'd consider a $599 8 core CPU to get the quad memory/64 lanes miught be persuaded to stretch up to a $799 12 core part.

TDP is about keeping costs down, I can't see that as being significant in this market. I can see an 8 core being useful for people who want to stuff obscene amounts of RAM into their motherboard so the more channels the better as there are some workloads that just need RAM and a few high clocked cores.

[scaryjim]

TDP is about keeping costs down, I can't see that as being significant in this market. ...

In the Enthusiast gamer market maybe not. In the multi-thread workstation I'm not so sure. A 16 core clocked at 1700 speeds (3.0/3.7) with a 130W TDP makes an interesting proposition, and if you're on a limited research budget saving $100 on your analysis workstation might matter.

An 8 core would almost naturally fall into a 130W TDP, unless they decided to clock it through the roof (and I guess ifd you've got a 180W TDP to play with you might do that). At 1500X speeds it'd be a 130W part anyway. If they wanted to use the full 180W TDP they've obviously rigged the platform to*, you'd probably hit something like 3.7GHz stock...

*interestingly, that's also the top TDP for EPYC parts, which is perhaps unsurprising given they're rumoured to use the same physical socket...

[HW90]

Intel did that with Skylake-X ...

If you mean the quad core, dual channel memory, 16 PCIe lane abominations that are the i7 7740k and i5 7640k, they're a completely different beast - they're consumer silicon shoehorned onto the enthusiast platform but are incapable of providing most of the features that make the enthusiast platform attractive.

8 core threadripper would be a full threadripper - 2 dies, each with 4 active cores. That means it would retain the quad channel memory and 64 PCIe lanes common to the platform. The 1800X already consumes 50W more than the 1500X, so the power consumption would actually be pretty similar; the performance would be pretty similar; they could be priced very close to each other (the 1500X costs less than half an 1800X, so AMD would make more profit selling those two dies as an 8 core threadripper); and the consumer gets more choice and a lower entry price into the quad-channel/64 lane platform. There's really no downside.

That's part of it, but a good deal of the criticism was to do with very few people upgrading their CPUs once they've bought into a platform, and so the whole buy low now, buy high later idea goes out the window.

[scaryjim]

... a good deal of the criticism was to do with very few people upgrading their CPUs once they've bought into a platform, and so the whole buy low now, buy high later idea goes out the window.

An 8 core Threadripper wouldn't be a buy now-upgrade later deal though. It'd be for people who want the platform for memory bandwidth and PCIe lanes. Not everyone who needs those things also need 24+ threads.

With the Kaby Lake X you *needed* to upgrade because you didn't get all the benefits of the platform. With an 8 core threadripper you'd get all the benefits of the platform at a lower price.

[DanceswithUnix]

In the multi-thread workstation I'm not so sure.

That is the market I was thinking about.

130W TDP by definition means designing a new heatsink. In a mass market part where every penny counts that matters, but not in a workstation market where engineer productivity is king.

If you have an office with 200 engineers then the wage bill utterly dwarfs the energy bill, so you want those engineers as efficient as possible, so I don't think the people buying the Xeon workstations at the last company I was at even knew the TDP of the cpu. If they did, they wouldn't care. The machines needed to be fairly quiet in operation, which is why Dell fit what looked like well over a kilo of copper heatsink on a massive fan and none of that could have been cheap. It was however reliable, I don't ever remember seeing one of the heatsink fans in one of those machines packing up. If it did, we would expect a service bloke to turn up and fix it within a day, so he doesn't want half a dozen possible parts in the van. One standard lump of copper serviced by a standard oversized fan that can turn all day every day for half a decade without breaking a sweat, it's probably rated for well over the actual TDP.

If you are on a limited research budget, you are probably looking at an 1800X anyway and you aren't looking at an office full of them.

[scaryjim]

... If you are on a limited research budget, you are probably looking at an 1800X anyway ...

Certainly possible, but if you need more than one x16 card at full bandwidth then the 1800X isn't an option. *shrug*

Intriguingly when I was buying servers I was very specifically looking at the TDPs of the processors, because when you're running 2 servers 24/7 in a small research unit the electricity costs do start to become a significant part of the budget. If you've got a tower workstation under your desk that extra 50W of heat round your legs might make a difference.

Besides, more choice is good, no? I don't really see a downside to AMD offering 130W versions of threadripper...

[kalniel]

BIOS TDP limit?

[scaryjim]

BIOS TDP limit?

Hmmm, possibly. depends on whether they seem them as more workstation/server chips or as consumer chips. The tendency is to provide consumers with more stock options, but the server/workstation market with a few options and configurable TDPs....

[DanceswithUnix]

Intriguingly when I was buying servers I was very specifically looking at the TDPs of the processors, because when you're running 2 servers 24/7 in a small research unit the electricity costs do start to become a significant part of the budget.

Oh proper server parts are different, the TDP matters a lot there because you have a total power limit on a rack, have to stay within the constraints of the aircon etc. But these don't seem to be server chips.

On a workstation, like on gaming, performance is everything. The workstations I have used were measured on code compile time (in hours so it mattered) and absolutely nothing else.