AMD Unveils Ryzen Threadripper 1950X 16-Core and 1920X 12-Core Specs and Pricing (hothardware.com)

MojoKid writes: AMD first teased its Ryzen Threadripper series of high-end desktop (HEDT) processors back in mid-May, but is now sharing additional details on the first two products in the family. Both processors are based on the 14nm Zen core, make use of AMD's new Socket TR4 interface, support quad-channel DDR memory, and feature a total of 64 PCIe lanes. In addition, both processors will come from the factory unlocked. Ryzen Threadripper 1920X will have 12 Cores, 24 Threads, and 3.5/4.0 GHz (Base Clock/Precision Boost) clock speeds. Ryzen Threadripper 1950X will have 16 Cores, 32 Threads, and 3.4/4.0 GHz (Base Clock/Precision Boost) clock speeds. Pricing is set at $799 and $999, respectively, with availability in early August, though Dell's Alienware gaming PC division will have systems shipping with the new chip starting this month. AMD also put the new chips up against Intel's Core i7-7900X 10-core CPU in a Cinebench benchmark run in a video demo, and the 12-core Threadripper chip beats Intel's currently available Skylake-X chip handily, while the 16-core Threadripper outpaces it even further.

Comments

Laptops and servers

[williamyf]

In a dwindling X86/AMD64 PC market, laptops* is where the volume is... Yet AMD has nothing for the Laptop Market in the Zen Class Architecture.

And in servers, while there may not be as much volume, is where the cream of the profits are.

While Zen Server parts (Epyc) look good on paper, it reamis to be seen if there will be Adoption from server makers, and demand from server purcharsers...

So, no laptop parts, to early for servers, coupled with so so results for enthusiasts desktop PC (great bang for buck, but performance is more or less even depending on workload) and crap processors for enterprise desktop (corporate parts without IGP? Really? I mean, REALLY?!?!?), is to early to be happy for AMD.

I hope they do well, I really do, for this will be good for all of us (even those of us using Apple gear, therefore, tied to Intel)...

But one thing is to hope, and quite another thing is reality, and is to early to know what reality looks like.

Just my two cents.

Re:Laptops and servers

[steveha]

AMD has nothing for the Laptop Market in the Zen Class Architecture.

Coming in Q3. In other words, 2-4 months from now.

Laptops refresh twice a year, and the Ryzen launch wasn't in time for the last laptop refresh. No big deal; they're coming.

https://semiaccurate.com/2017/05/22/amd-talks-threadripper-ryzen-mobile-ryzen-pro/

While Zen Server parts (Epyc) look good on paper, it reamis to be seen if there will be Adoption from server makers, and demand from server purcharsers...

Well, sure. But unless the paper is a lie, those chips will do well. They will offer much-improved price/performance compared to Intel's server chips, they offer some tasty new security features (like VMs running with the in-RAM data encrypted so that there's no way for one VM to spy on another's memory), and they are doing it right when Intel is jacking their server customers on price.

corporate parts without IGP? Really? I mean, REALLY?!?!?

Does "IGP" mean integrated graphics? AMD is all over integrated graphics, they call such products "APUs" and the mobile lineup will be pretty much all APUs. So my guess is Q3 for corporate products with APUs as well. (I hope AMD supports ECC RAM on APUs, finally.)

Re:Laptops and servers

[Kjella]

Speaking from the company's perspective and not a user perspective it's more important for AMD to compete successfully in the areas that they do compete than to provide competition in areas where they wouldn't. AMD doesn't have the least power hungry chips, the highest performing server chips or the fastest single threaded gaming chips. Very often it's the extremes that make money, the "sweet spot" processors not so much. Particularly not if you have a 800lb gorilla in the room looking to snuff out your profit so you don't become a real danger.

So for AMD this is lot about picking battles where they think Intel won't go. Will Intel give you 8 cores for $499 or 16 cores for $999? No. Then that's a great product for AMD. Intel's client computing group sells for 7.4 billion/quarter, AMDs computing and graphics combined $600 million and if you leave dedicated graphics out of it maybe $400 million - that's just my guess. They don't need to sell to everybody to make those sales targets, the important thing is their inventory gets sold and isn't collecting dust on the shelf.

I agree that in the slightly longer perspective the server market is a place AMD should make money, but it's a long time since the Opterons were competitive and they've been out of the loop. The enterprise market is conservative, they want validation, stability and long term commitments. They won't be rushing out to buy the latest hotshot offering from AMD no matter what you do, it's got to mature a bit and AMD can't wait for those profits to roll in. As for the enterprise desktop the lack of IGP is not a big deal as long has supercheap graphics cards to go with them. The integration is much more important in laptops.

Re:Too bad its 9 years behind Intel with IPC

[gman003]

How about you use a source that actually knows what they're talking about, and knows how to do reliable, repeatable testing?

Ryzen 5 1600X vs Core i5 6600K

Cost difference is negligible - a minor discount on either side will swing it. Nominal TDP is only 4W apart. And it's the high-end "ordinary consumer" part - the default recommendation for PC gaming. This is as close to an even comparison as you can get.

Across multiple graphics cards, across multiple games at different resolutions, AMD is competitive. Major wins on some games (Civilization 6), major losses on others (Rocket League), plenty of dead ties (GTA V), and a general trend of AMD doing better as resolution increases. No real oddities with uneven framerates - the 99th percentile framerate tracks the mean. AMD gets a small but consistent lead on synthetic benchmarks, and naturally scores overwhelming wins on multithreaded rendering.

Threadripper: The instruction mutilator

[chispito]

Threadripper: It has the electrolytes processes crave

Re:Phenomenal

[AmiMoJo]

These are more aimed at workstations than gaming. For workstations having more PCIe lanes (64, standard Ryzen has 24 and Intel's Skylake-X competition has 44) means plenty of bandwidth for multiple GPUs, RAID cards and NVMe SSDs. They have more cores than Intel's parts too, which while they have slightly lower single core performance and clock speeds will perform better overall in anything that can make use of them like video encoding, CAD/raytracing and simulations. Oh, and code compilation of course. Also handy if you have a lot of VMs.

AMD hardware tends to last longer than Intel too. By that I mean that it won't suck in 5 years time, not that Intel hardware is less reliable. 5 years down the road AMD will probably still be releasing CPUs for the socket, and supporting the old chipset reasonably well.

Re:Phenomenal

[Rockoon]

Intel boards got significantly cheaper, matching amd's, only after Intel castrated the number of pcie lines available.

the confusing sound of wet rubber boots

[epine]

Intel is fucked on all levels ...

You really need to recalibrate your "is fucked" dowsing rod.

After a decade of living on cream and sunshine, summer vacation is over, and Intel will soon have to buckle down and earn good grades, obtained through long hours of hard study.

Heard on beaches the world over when governments shorten their unemployment insurance entitlement periods: "Shit! We're fucked! Now we'll all have to get real jobs."

Welcome back to how everyone else lives.

On the one hand, it will take a while for Intel to recover its former work ethic. On the other hand, they're well rested—and surrounded by three decades worth of motivational trophy cases (lately somewhat dusty) for Best of Breed in the 800-lb gorilla division.

Yeah, that sure sounds fucked, doesn't it?

Re:From my HPC days

[steveha]

And naturally, right after I posted the parent, I found the cache sizes.

These are for a 16-core Threadripper 1950X:

L1 instruction cache: 32 KB x 16
L1 data cache: 64 KB x 16
L2 cache: 512 KB x 16
L3: 32 MB x 4

http://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-threadripper-1950x-cpu-performance-benchmarks-leak/

https://browser.primatelabs.com/v4/cpu/3324737

I'm not a CPU expert but it seems clear that L1 and L2 cache is per-core (makes sense) but L3 cache is shared... I'm going to guess that a group of 4 cores shares one 32 MB cache, since 4 * 4 is 16.