AMD's 3rd-gen Threadripper is now official, starting at $1,400 for 24 cores/48 threads

[wiyosaya]

According to Lisa Su herself in the interview, Zen3 has already been finished and just for 7nm+ EUV manufacturering. Its improvement over Zen2 will be similar with Zen+ over Zen.

Believe me, I expect that AMD keeps being competitive on their products and in the market, thus we end-users would benefit from the competition. However, limiting X399 from supporting Zen2 Threadrippers(even if the future 48/64cores models really need more powerful chipsets, the 24/32cores 3960X/3970X should be no excuse), raising the new models' launch prices while Intel cutting half of their 10th gen X299 platform CPUs' prices(they were indeed not worth before, but becoming competitve now)... all these familiar operations just ring the bell.

While some might see the new chipset requirement for TR3 parts as not unlike what sIntel has been doing, the number of feature improvements are, IMO, genuinely impressive. With the features in the new chipset, beasts of computing are brought to the general public - though arguably at a price. A researcher, as only one example, could possibly build a desktop HPC platform with multiple GPUs, etc., and no shortage of PCI-e lanes.

AFAIK, sIntel never added that many feature improvements. For sIntel, IMO, it seemed that the requirement of a new chipset with almost every processor tick or tock seems much more like a sales and marketing tactic.

 

[Evernessince]

Eve, are you ok dude?
I didn't say a damn word about Intel, or make any comparison to them.
You are SO brand loyal and SO defensive of AMD, even when folks are neutral you still attack others. Because of this I've lost alot of respect for you.
It's really uncalled for and as someone who has some respect for you still, I think you need to R.E.L.A.X. If this article was about Intel I would have chuckled and said the same thing. Spending $750, $1400 or $2000 on a CPU to game at 1080p, Intel or AMD, is silly and I got a laugh of out that screenshot.
Good gracious, I'm starting to honestly feel sorry for you. You need to quell that biased brand loyal rage, its got you by the balls and it destroys your opinion and judgement.

Sooner or later, no one will care what you have to say if you keep this up. Get it together kid.

You can't debate on point so you resort to other tactics.

You certainly didn't seem to care about price when talking about the 9900K. I'm just pointing out that double standard.

 

[amstech]

You can't debate on point so you resort to other tactics.

I'm sorry that you feel that way.

 

[Jeffrey2009]

While some might see the new chipset requirement for TR3 parts as not unlike what sIntel has been doing, the number of feature improvements are, IMO, genuinely impressive. With the features in the new chipset, beasts of computing are brought to the general public - though arguably at a price. A researcher, as only one example, could possibly build a desktop HPC platform with multiple GPUs, etc., and no shortage of PCI-e lanes.

AFAIK, sIntel never added that many feature improvements. For sIntel, IMO, it seemed that the requirement of a new chipset with almost every processor tick or tock seems much more like a sales and marketing tactic.

I couldn't agree with you more on the last paragraph regarding no new features' update only a marketing tactic, and that's the reason why I'll still keep buying AMD's stock for the future 18 months.

However, not all the consumers who are interested in TR3 need all the new features that the new platform brings. The new rig builders are certainly recommended to set up their system with the brand new TRX40 chipset, yet the current users should also have freedom to choose either buying a set of new rig or just updating the CPU, which is totally killed now.

 

[quadibloc]

I have to admit that I'm a bit puzzled at one thing. If it has the same 105 watt TDP as the 3900X, why does it require liquid cooling? Does TDP actually mean anything?

 

[OptimumSlinky]

If your buying a $750, $1400 or $2000 CPU to game at 1080p, I don't feel this is the best way to spend your paper presidents.

You'd be AMAZED at the number of *****s that think they need a 2070 Super+ and $750 CPU for 1080p gaming; they're all over reddit.

 

[OptimumSlinky]

Does TDP actually mean anything?

Short answer? No.

 

[amstech]

You'd be AMAZED at the number of *****s that think they need a 2070 Super+ and $750 CPU for 1080p gaming; they're all over reddit.

Don't take much to game at 1080p, lots of good deals on CPU's and GPU's now, on both sides.

 

[krizby]

Well the 3950x could be perfect for game streamer and youtuber since they require the highest fps possible (pubg, fortnite and any other competitive mmo) and the cores count to encode stream in higher quality than what nvenc can offer.

Anyways 1080p is the standard for benchmarking a CPU's gaming performance, there is no point benchmarking 4K gaming since the bottleneck then lie with the GPU. The reason for this are people upgrade their GPU more often than CPU, therefore a CPU that is not bottlenecking a 2080Ti at 1440p may bottleneck the 3080Ti at 1440p, and we all know 3080Ti is coming soon.

 

[Irata]

Pricing wise, the cost per core is not that much higher than Cascade X, but TR3 is on a vastly superior platform.

Core i9-10980XE comes in at around $54 per core, the 3960X is $58 per core, but the two are not really in the same class.

Let‘s not forget that Threadripper 2 is still around . If TR3 is too pricey but you need the extra memory channels and IO over AM 4 (but not PCIe 4), you can get a 24 core 2970 WC for under a thousand Dollars, the 12 core for $498 or even the eight core 1900x for $ 149 (on sale at Newegg right now). Boards are also cheaper so you do have a choice.

 

[wiyosaya]

However, not all the consumers who are interested in TR3 need all the new features that the new platform brings. The new rig builders are certainly recommended to set up their system with the brand new TRX40 chipset, yet the current users should also have freedom to choose either buying a set of new rig or just updating the CPU, which is totally killed now.

I bought into Sandy Bridge-E, and was able to move to Ivy Bridge-E, but no further in terms of CPU, so I get what you are saying. However, at least as I see it, being able to do so was rare for an Intel platform (note, I have primarily been an AMD guy for a long time). Would I have bought another proc for the platform is a question that I could not answer. Having gone from an i7 to an E5 in the process, I gained extra PCI-e lanes that the i7 lacked.

Even being an AMD guy, I note that AMD has, in general, gone a long way to maintain compatibility between new CPUs and sockets back to Phenom II days and further. That was one of the main attractions to AMD for me. So, personally, I find it hard to fault them. New sockets are sometimes necessary as technology progresses.

That said, AMD just announced socket longevity for the new TR sockets - https://www.techspot.com/news/82734-amd-commits-long-term-support-strx4-cpu-socket.html though the article does not mention the expected lifetime.

One could always attempt to make up the difference in cost by selling off the old platform and proc through e-bay or some such. In fact, that is partly how I paid for my E5 proc by selling the Sandy Bridge E proc I originally bought.

In fact, I view selling previous PC components as an excellent way for those on a budget to bring down the cost of new components. If the components are not that old, there is a good chance of recovering a substantial portion of the original investment.

 

[Danny101]

I'd be fine with an 8-core chip that can push past 5 GHz. Efficiency is great, but clock timing is king
.

 

[Jeffrey2009]

I bought into Sandy Bridge-E, and was able to move to Ivy Bridge-E, but no further in terms of CPU, so I get what you are saying. However, at least as I see it, being able to do so was rare for an Intel platform (note, I have primarily been an AMD guy for a long time). Would I have bought another proc for the platform is a question that I could not answer. Having gone from an i7 to an E5 in the process, I gained extra PCI-e lanes that the i7 lacked.

Even being an AMD guy, I note that AMD has, in general, gone a long way to maintain compatibility between new CPUs and sockets back to Phenom II days and further. That was one of the main attractions to AMD for me. So, personally, I find it hard to fault them. New sockets are sometimes necessary as technology progresses.

That said, AMD just announced socket longevity for the new TR sockets - https://www.techspot.com/news/82734-amd-commits-long-term-support-strx4-cpu-socket.html though the article does not mention the expected lifetime.

One could always attempt to make up the difference in cost by selling off the old platform and proc through e-bay or some such. In fact, that is partly how I paid for my E5 proc by selling the Sandy Bridge E proc I originally bought.

In fact, I view selling previous PC components as an excellent way for those on a budget to bring down the cost of new components. If the components are not that old, there is a good chance of recovering a substantial portion of the original investment.

The reason why the article could not mention the expected lifetime is: its so called longevity would be no longer than 2 years or we say 2 generations, which is the current Zen2 Threadripper 3000 series and the next Gen Zen3 Threadripper 4000 series.

Why? Because Zen4 Threadripper 5000 series(if exist then) will 99% shift to DDR5 platform at the end of 2021 or 1H of 2022.

 

[wiyosaya]

The reason why the article could not mention the expected lifetime is: its so called longevity would be no longer than 2 years or we say 2 generations, which is the current Zen2 Threadripper 3000 series and the next Gen Zen3 Threadripper 4000 series.

Why? Because Zen4 Threadripper 5000 series(if exist then) will 99% shift to DDR5 platform at the end of 2021 or 1H of 2022.

Not necessarily.

At least some models of Phenom II supported both DDR2 and DDR3. Therefore, it is possible that the memory controller could vary in some future gen TR proc to support DDR5 without changing the socket layout.

Phenom II - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

In addition to the Phenom II's pin compatibility, the AM3 memory controller supports both DDR2 and DDR3 memory (up to DDR2-1066 and DDR3-1333), allowing existing AM2+ users to upgrade their CPU without changing the motherboard or memory.