$400 12-core Threadripper: But Is It Worth It?

[Julio Franco]

With AMD's 2nd generation Threadripper out in the wild, the company has decided to slash prices of first gen parts. The Threadripper 1920X is now down to just $400, which on paper for a 12-core/24-thread high-end processor is insane.

Read the full article here.

https://www.techspot.com/review/1686-affordable-12-core-threadripper/

 

[Fritzkier]

Steven, your pricing on the Intel side is wildly inaccurate. You might want to check your facts before publishing in the future.

That said it really doesn't bode well for AMD that they are slashing prices to undercut Intel at this stage. It really doesn't show much confidence in their multi-die strategy.

It's $1,200 on Amazon. CPU only.

"That said it really doesn't bode well for AMD that they are slashing prices to undercut Intel at this stage. It really doesn't show much confidence in their multi-die strategy."

How? They just want to empty their old processor for new processor. Explain or you just saying BS.

 

[Sausagemeat]

£750 for an i7 7900X in the U.K. and £350 for a TR1920X. I would pick the 7900X over a TR1920X if price wasn’t an object but for half the money I’d definitely go with TR1920X. Although I’m curious as to how close the 9900K will get to some of these scores when it comes out and should be a cheaper buy than a 1920X when you factor in platform costs along with offering far better single threaded performance, which in my eyes is still very important.

I do agree that price slashing is a bad sign for AMD. Manufacturers don’t slash prices unless their parts are either not selling or they have a backlog of unsold parts to clear. But I don’t really care, it might be bad for AMD but it’s great for the consumer.

 

[sasat]

At last the time has come 33$ per decent core. For renderers it's a steal.

 

[dj2017]

If you run professional software and you don't have enough money, well, let me use "Tom's hardware" words here, but this time because it makes sense, not because...ok let's not point to the obvious.

"Just But It".

 

[Badvok]

It's $1,200 on Amazon. CPU only.

Hint: There are other retailers.

 

[Steve]

Steven, your pricing on the Intel side is wildly inaccurate. You might want to check your facts before publishing in the future.

That said it really doesn't bode well for AMD that they are slashing prices to undercut Intel at this stage. It really doesn't show much confidence in their multi-die strategy.

Feel free to correct me with some facts, aka links.

Also they are slashing prices because they have new CPUs coming, there's been no point buying Skylake-X for a year now.

Hint: There are other retailers.

Why don't you just post a link, we allow that on the forums.

 

[fps4ever]

The cheapest I can find on pcpartpicker.com is $960 for OEM and $1005 for retail 7900X. That is still way more expensive than a 1920X. Allows you to buy more memory or anything else with those savings.

 

[Vrmithrax]

That said it really doesn't bode well for AMD that they are slashing prices to undercut Intel at this stage. It really doesn't show much confidence in their multi-die strategy.

Doesn't Intel traditionally do the exact same thing every time they have a new generation of processors about to flood into the market? Well, except they don't tend to slash prices as heavily - Intel likes to milk that "premium" tax as long as possible. And yet, when they cut prices, it never gets reported as "not boding well" for Intel...

 

[hood6558]

This reminds me of a BOGO sale at my local supermarket - 2-for-the-price-of-one - the more you buy, the more you save! Now they just need to slash mobo prices down to the normal (for AMD) $50-$100, and the bargain bin boys will be happy again, ballin' on a budget, braggin' about "twice" the performance for half the price.

 

[amghwk]

I only have been buying Intel core i7s. As a gamer and self-PC building as a hobby, I guess that's expected. (Just finished building a 8700K based system.)

But I have to agree, this AMD CPU and the price is well worth it. For productivity based system, this CPU and the price is hard to beat.

 

[Vrmithrax]

I only have been buying Intel core i7s. As a gamer and self-PC building as a hobby, I guess that's expected. (Just finished building a 8700K based system.)

But I have to agree, this AMD CPU and the price is well worth it. For productivity based system, this CPU and the price is hard to beat.

I tend to do heavy CAD and rendering as well as gaming on my main home rig, so it's always been a tough call to consider AMD over Intel until recently. I built a Ryzen system and have not been disappointed, but I don't do hardcore 4k gaming so it's typically not a huge gap in performance between the CPU camps. Been considering building a new dedicated CAD workstation due to an increasing workload, and this ThreadRipper pricing is seductive... Between that and apparent declining memory (and SSD) prices, seems like a great time to whip out the wallet and make it scream for mercy. heh

 

[Adi6293]

£750 for an i7 7900X in the U.K. and £350 for a TR1920X. I would pick the 7900X over a TR1920X if price wasn’t an object but for half the money I’d definitely go with TR1920X. Although I’m curious as to how close the 9900K will get to some of these scores when it comes out and should be a cheaper buy than a 1920X when you factor in platform costs along with offering far better single threaded performance, which in my eyes is still very important.

I do agree that price slashing is a bad sign for AMD. Manufacturers don’t slash prices unless their parts are either not selling or they have a backlog of unsold parts to clear. But I don’t really care, it might be bad for AMD but it’s great for the consumer.

Difference between AMD Intel and nVidia is that AMD has always done that to clear out the stock

 

[Sausagemeat]

Difference between AMD Intel and nVidia is that AMD has always done that to clear out the stock

Well, I have a feeling we might be seeing some cheap 10 series cards hit the market soon.

 

[Benjiwenji]

Steven, your pricing on the Intel side is wildly inaccurate. You might want to check your facts before publishing in the future.

That said it really doesn't bode well for AMD that they are slashing prices to undercut Intel at this stage. It really doesn't show much confidence in their multi-die strategy.

Major retailers has the 7900x at over $1100 USD. There is no argument there unless you are buying from third party sellers, which are not indicative of true market pricing.

Most importantly you don't understand economics and basic retail manuvers. AMD slashed price to get rid of last gen inventory. The same reason why Nvidias GTX 1080 can be bought with as little as $429 and GTX1080 ti at $550.

Would you make the same argument on Nvidia's price slash?

 

[Lew Zealand]

If only AMD's h.265/HEVC performance was better, I'd be considering this. OK, in reality I'd already have a R2600, but the major job for my PC right now is h.265 encoding with some gaming on the side and the calculus came out i5-8400 for cost, power efficiency, and speed.
I was hyped up on Ryzen when it was revealed until finding out that the weakest point of it's performance was the single biggest thing I used. Maybe Zen 2 will fix that, we'll see.

 

[OortCloud]

I'm going to keep pestering for some Visual Studio/Gulp etc benchmarks.
Surely there are at least as many (or more?) developers as renderers out there?
Some benchmarks showing large (30+) project solution builds in VS across .NET/C++/JS/TypeScript etc would be really informative. I mentioned this on a previous review and some others seemed keen too. Although, I wonder if the disk-heavy nature of these tasks would make the CPU have little impact?

 

[Badvok]

Feel free to correct me with some facts, aka links.

Just one example: https://www.ebuyer.com/795444-intel-core-i9-7900x-lga-2066-retail-boxed-processor-bx80673i97900x

£793 = £660 without sales tax (as US prices are always quoted) = $860 equivalent

And Intel's site links to places selling it as low as $700.

Also they are slashing prices because they have new CPUs coming

Does that explain such a large price slash? I don't think so.

 

[Nightfire]

The 1920x has dropped in price AND seems to be getting better with age.

It seems to compete much better with the 7900x in computing and gaming...now at less than half the price.

 

[Nightfire]

Feel free to correct me with some facts, aka links.

Just one example: https://www.ebuyer.com/795444-intel-core-i9-7900x-lga-2066-retail-boxed-processor-bx80673i97900x

£793 = £660 without sales tax (as US prices are always quoted) = $860 equivalent

Also they are slashing prices because they have new CPUs coming

Does that explain such a large price slash? I don't think so.

Well done, you can get the 7900x for "only" $860 using some generic site. Even then, it may not be a widespread deal.

What is your point exactly?
I have never seen anyone be so critical of low CPU prices. It is unfortunate that you feel a product is inferior simply because it is priced to low for your taste. You are more than welcome to buy a similar performing product for over twice the price if it makes your ego feel better.

Feel free to reminisce back to the pre-TR "good old days" when we were forced to pay $1700 for 10 cores. When you had to shell I that kind of money, you KNEW you were better than the rest of the PC community.

 

[EndRessentiment]

This reminds me of a BOGO sale at my local supermarket - 2-for-the-price-of-one - the more you buy, the more you save! Now they just need to slash mobo prices down to the normal (for AMD) $50-$100, and the bargain bin boys will be happy again, ballin' on a budget, braggin' about "twice" the performance for half the price.

Is it just me or are you trying to sound elitist - like an 'Intel champ'? If so, why? I don't see a reason for being a subservient customer, marketing Intel stuff for free.

 

[orondf]

I'm going to keep pestering for some Visual Studio/Gulp etc benchmarks.
Surely there are at least as many (or more?) developers as renderers out there?
Some benchmarks showing large (30+) project solution builds in VS across .NET/C++/JS/TypeScript etc would be really informative. I mentioned this on a previous review and some others seemed keen too. Although, I wonder if the disk-heavy nature of these tasks would make the CPU have little impact?

I would also like to see some benchmarks in VS, but due to the constant updates which improve performace it would be hard to have consistent benchmark scores between reviews. However, I can predict that for disk-heavy workloads Intel CPUs may suffer due to the Spectre patches which impact SSD performance.

 

[maxxxenem1]

AMD will always take a back seat to Intel. They never have been able to out do Intel. Never buy any of their tech.

 

[Musician]

Appreciate this article for the comparisons and analysis. Good savings for high performing parts. Thanks Steven!

 

[msroadkill612]

The AIDA mem copy results reveal a telling fundamental.

TR is a clear leader of the pack, and double the 2700x.