Hardware & Technical Threadripper

shadragon

shadragon
I had basically decided to get an 1800X RyZen / ASUS Hero VI motherboard combo for my new gaming rig. I've been waiting for prices to come down and the technology to mature before buying.

Then this was announced. 16-core, 32 thread Threadripper, 64 PCIe 3.0 lanes and support for Quad Channel DDR4 RAM. Details are few and far between, but major mobo makers are already on board and making prototypes. This, I can't wait for. I deal with a lot of VM's and large DB's. The more horsepower, the better.

As a guess, I'd price this in the $799 - $899 range, if they are smart about it anyway.

threadripperslide2_575px.png


http://www.anandtech.com/show/11482/amd-cpu-updates-threadripper-64-pcie-lanes-epyc-june-20th
 
Last edited:

Deleted member 110222

D
Totally noob question here.

Who would need this? I'm guessing it would be total overkill for gaming?
 

MickyG1982

M
What it has done, if the YouTube hardware pundits are to be believed is put Intel into a very panicked defensive. So much so that they have completely ballsed up their x299 platform. It stinks massively of being rushed and is massively hobbled compared to threadripper.
 

Porina

Porina
Rumour is the entry level 16 core part is US$849, so that'll be around £849 then. There's a separate rumour there are two different clock models, as well as fewer core models.

If you don't know why you need a 16 core 32 thread system, then it probably isn't for you. It might be useful if you run big compute jobs that scale well, or lots of smaller jobs at the same time. It isn't a first choice for gaming. Most games are not written to scale much beyond 4 cores 8 threads, and a high clock fewer core system could run rings around high core count lower clock system. I just ran into this myself, wanting to get into 1080p 144Hz gaming. I used an R7 1700 system (8 cores) as basis since it was spare, threw in a 980Ti, and... it did worse than my existing 6700k system by a large margin. Moving in a 2nd 980Ti for SLI made hardly any difference. Overclocking the CPU finally did help somewhat, but it was still very weak against a 6700k.

As for Intel's answer, I both agree and disagree with consensus. The middle of the range (Skylake-X LCC) is fine. This is likely their original plan before ThreadRipper was announced, and they then went into panic mode and announced a higher end range (Skylake-X HCC) with up to 18 cores. 18 cores were likely chosen specifically to be a bigger number than ThreadRipper's 16 and no other reason. There are zero specs for the HCC parts, and they're likely waiting for similar details on TR just to make sure they one-up it. Kaby Lake-X everyone is struggling to make sense of. The only half good reason anyone has come up with is for hard core competitive benchmarkers, where the platform difference might tip the balance over those using Kaby Lake on Z270 platform.

Still, with Skylake-X having AVX-512, that is likely swing me to that over TR.
 

proffrink

P
Un1k0rn said:
Totally noob question here.

Who would need this? I'm guessing it would be total overkill for gaming?
Click to expand...
Enterprise or very high-end workstations (rendering, virtual private servers and the like). This is where the real money has been since for ever. They are absolutely overkill for the majority of gaming applications.

The high number of PCIe lanes is a giveaway of this - no gamer is going to be using 64 lanes, but a storage server using slots for SSDs, network cards, RAID cards etc. might well do.
 

shadragon

shadragon
Un1k0rn said:
Totally noob question here.

Who would need this? I'm guessing it would be total overkill for gaming?
Click to expand...
I work on genomic databases. Individual stored DNA records for science and research that are several hundred MB each. Not to mention multiple VM's. Yes, it is overkill for gaming, but if streaming or editing video, this is a godsend. If the price is 850'ish then it's a no brainer for me both at work and home.
 

Robert Maynard

Volunteer Moderator
Robert Maynard
shadragon said:
If the price is 850'ish then it's a no brainer for me both at work and home.
Click to expand...

That's just for the CPU though - rumour has it that the X399 motherboards are going to cost a pretty penny....

Quite happy with my 1800X / Asus Prime X370-Pro, for the moment anyway....
 
Last edited:

shadragon

shadragon
Porina said:
Rumour is the entry level 16 core part is US$849, so that'll be around £849 then. There's a separate rumour there are two different clock models, as well as fewer core models.
Click to expand...
Here's what I could find.

16-core/32-thread Ryzen Threadripper 1998X, with a clock speed of 3.50 GHz, and 3.90 GHz boost, a TDP of 155W, and XFR.
16-core/32-thread 1998, clocked at 3.20 GHz with 3.60 GHz boost, 155W TDP, and lack of XFR.

There are lower core count processors coming as well. If I can get a 16/32 running at 4.0 GHz (Should be possible with XFR), I'll be quite happy.

Source: https://www.techpowerup.com/233945/amd-readies-nine-ryzen-threadripper-models
 
Last edited:

Deleted member 110222

D
Thanks for the replies guys. Yeah I figured this would be pointless to peasants like me who just game. I was just curious.

:)
 

MickyG1982

M
Un1k0rn said:
Thanks for the replies guys. Yeah I figured this would be pointless to peasants like me who just game. I was just curious.

:)
Click to expand...

It really depends on just how much of a gamer you are. If you want to create Youtube Content at 4k & game at the same time then I'll bet it really isn't that pointless...
 

shadragon

shadragon
MickyG1982 said:
It really depends on just how much of a gamer you are. If you want to create Youtube Content at 4k & game at the same time then I'll bet it really isn't that pointless...
Click to expand...
When I was involved in the games community years ago, we always said a "gaming" computer had to be in the top 1% of performance overall. They call it all sorts of things nowadays, "enthusiast" and the like. Over-the-top was the norm and we would spend weeks to get an extra 0.001 GHz performance.

The 64 PCIe lanes will disappear quickly with graphics cards, M.2 SSD's and the like. Better to have it and not need it, then to need it and not have it.
 

Porina

Porina
shadragon said:
If I can get a 16/32 running at 4.0 GHz (Should be possible with XFR), I'll be quite happy.
Click to expand...

Do note that the max boost is only with low core count active. If you're going all cores blazing, there can be a small boost over base. Unless they changed the process radically over existing Ryzen, getting all cores beyond 4 GHz is a challenge and not all make it due to the voltage wall required to get there. Personally it isn't worth the extra heat to get out a relatively small clock increase.
 

shadragon

shadragon
Porina said:
Do note that the max boost is only with low core count active. If you're going all cores blazing, there can be a small boost over base. Unless they changed the process radically over existing Ryzen, getting all cores beyond 4 GHz is a challenge and not all make it due to the voltage wall required to get there. Personally it isn't worth the extra heat to get out a relatively small clock increase.
Click to expand...
Can't disagree, but my current FX-8370 runs at 4.0GHz and buying a newer processor that runs slower is hard to swallow. :)
 

shadragon

shadragon
Robert Maynard said:
.... even if the IPC is 52% higher?
Click to expand...
You know what I mean Robert. Clock speeds have been increasing steadily over the last thirty years. My first Pentium III was 450 Mhz. The move to reducing TDP has taken over, but it limits the speed that chips can run. Better TDP works in corporate server farms to reduce power / cooling expenses, but gamers have always pushed limits. Power consumption and TDP have never been near the top of any gamers checklist, performance is. That performance is being limited.

The AMD FX series was designed from the outset as a gaming CPU which could be OC'd easily. Now AMD is making one chip for all and gamers are being shortchanged.

I'd love to see a 4.0 - 5.0 GHz Threadripper chip that runs hot (I can invest in decent cooling) and get a firebrand gaming rig (I would think the IPC Gain on such a system would be another 20-25% better). I'm not talking something that needs LN2 levels of cooling, but chip makers can design something that can be OC'd to 5.0 GHz easily if they removed the imposed artificial limitations to hit a specific TDP rating. Threadripper FX has a decent ring to it.
 

Porina

Porina
shadragon said:
I'd love to see a 4.0 - 5.0 GHz Threadripper chip that runs hot (I can invest in decent cooling) and get a firebrand gaming rig (I would think the IPC Gain on such a system would be another 20-25% better). I'm not talking something that needs LN2 levels of cooling, but chip makers can design something that can be OC'd to 5.0 GHz easily if they removed the imposed artificial limitations to hit a specific TDP rating. Threadripper FX has a decent ring to it.
Click to expand...

What's firebrand? If there were a massive IPC gain on offer, everyone would be on it.

And what are these "artificial limitations" you speak of? I think I call them laws of physics, and every time I've fought them so far, I've lost. Ryzen was designed to run power efficiently, as such it is a design decision to do that. It isn't like they put a limiter in that does nothing but prevent high clocks. If you want to know the limits of the process, look at what overclockers get without sub-ambient cooling. In general the Ryzen X CPUs are running pretty close to their limit already, but it is speculated they're binned to be the better clocking ones. The non-X generally report to getting some MHz lower eventual OCs. Personally I don't see the point in paying more for an X CPU, as you can get 90+% of the performance by overclocking the lower model in each part of the range for a lot less. As it is, the wall is around 4 GHz before voltage and temps get silly.

Ryzen reminds me of Intel Broadwell. It never made it big on desktop with its delays and paper launch, but they did ship it. For whatever reason, they're not great clockers either, compared to the generations either side of them (Haswell, Skylake). Broadwell also ran out of steam around 4 GHz ball park, whereas its neighbours could push another half gig or more up. I kinda hope AMD can do a Kaby Lake on Ryzen. Kaby Lake is essentially the same as Skylake but with process changes, which allowed it to either do more clock at a given power, or same clock at lower power. While not 100% guaranteed, 5 GHz without sub-ambient cooling is achievable. Given AMDs position, I doubt ThreadRipper or Epyc will perform much differently than Ryzen and you'll have to wait for the next major iteration to see potential gains.
 

shadragon

shadragon
Porina said:
Ryzen was designed to run power efficiently, as such it is a design decision to do that.
Click to expand...
Exactly. It was designed primarily for power efficiency NOT performance. They deliberately chose to limit performance to get a low TDP. That's an artificial limit.

Cray computers are liquid cooled for a reason. You never see TDP on any of their specs.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom