Blogs AMD's Threadripper could be the best option for any high-end system builder

If AMD do what they have done with Ryzen and release a CPU that can be overclocked for a lot less than the more expensive models they are onto a winner. What I mean is if there is a value option like the 1700 and 1600 tucked in among them somewhere.

 

Now if the kinds of software I was interested in (gaming!) would actually catch up and fully utilize an 8c/16t CPU, I would potentially get excited about all these HEDT shenanigans...

That's the problem I have with this stuff - The big draw (other than showing off, of course) of a HEDT setup is that it allows you to fully utilize extreme GPU solutions, but when you fire up a game on your spangly new 4K 165Hz monitor and flex the muscles on those SLI'd Ti's, you quickly realise the £500+ CPU you had to buy to access all those juicy PCI-E lanes is sitting there at 30-40% utilisation...

Does running 16X/8X drop performance enough to offset the incredible difference in platform cost? Nope. Not right now.

 

Intel's x299 platform is a mess... and i think it would've been a mess even if AMD hadn't dumped RyZen/Threadripper in their lap...

Add to that Apple appears to have hoovered up the first batches of the high-end Skylake-X stuff of the iMac Pro so good luck getting your hands on an i9 or equivalent Xeon any time soon...

 

^You're not alone in that opinion

 

Yeah Linus has said pretty much the same thing also. Intel are a mess right now. Puckered up like a gnat's chuff for many years, then it seems they had a core/branding enema and blew the whole lot out at once FFS. And they're doing it so quickly it seems even they don't have a jar of glue what's going on.

Just FAYI I had a I9 prototype once. It was a 6 core Westmere @ 1.6ghz. If you ran the ES code through Google it found Chinese sites that listed it as an I9. When I dug a little deeper it seems Intel had planned to use the I9 name then, but Bulldozer was crap so they didn't bother.

But yeah, I bet Westmere hex cores would have been common place if BD had been good. So it seems like they had that plan all along.. "Wait for AMD to do something good, then let's flood the market and confuse every one !!"

 

The venerable Q6600 is now over 10 years old. That's a good decade of Intel dominance.

 

It's so good to see AMD, not only back in the game but actually forcing Intel's hand and putting them on the back foot for a change.

 

And if you think that is bad, with X299 you'll need the £1000 chip for the full PCIe lanes, yep, Intel is actually daring to step up its artificial restrictions game.

While it isn't a problem if you just plug in any two GPUs, it quickly changes when you want additional PCIe devices on top of the two GPUs.

 

And even the range-topper will have 20 [iirc] fewer PCI-E lanes available to it than the bottom of the range Threadripper offering.

 

Which top X299 offering will costs $2000/£2000 (with vat + exchange rate) while is rumoured the Ryzen 9 9800 (non X) 16core/32t will cost around $850/£850 (with vat + exchange rate).

Hell I bet the top of the range Asus X399 board would cost as much

 

[H] tested this in detail and it turns out IPC is still king for multi gpu gaming: https://www.hardocp.com/article/2017/05/26/definitive_amd_ryzen_7_realworld_gaming_guide

Threadripper does not have high performance/core. Really that's that - it will never be a good choice for gaming. Any gaming cpu needs IPC first, and lots of cores second. Right now only Intel provide that IPC and lots of cores.

 

Mm. High IPC, high clocks are great for gaming.

But sadly, I do a lot more than just gaming. Threadripper looks fantastic, but the proof is in the pudding, so to speak; when it comes out, I'll decide. If the Intel competition is the price reports suggest, combined with the release time... it'll totally miss the boat. At least for my workplace...

 

If you only game, then you should not be looking at Threadripper, it offers you nothing.

However for those of us running programs that eat threads for breakfast, Threadripper is getting me as excited as I think I have ever been about a CPU since Athlon64's came out.

 

Mmmm Thready Brek.

It'll make no real difference to me but what will make a difference is competition.

 

When you sink a few grand into a platform you want it to last, as a gamer the CPU is the one area I compromise on, I get the best GPUs, with good RAM, in a good motherboard and then the best CPU I can afford ( which may not be the best CPU that can go in the platform) because if years of OCing has taught me anything the jump from a 4Ghz to 5Ghz CPU gives me naff all but going from a 1080 to 1080Ti for example gives a much better gain.

At a certain level IPC is not so important, just so long as you have a good enough supporting system on the while.

I’ve not jumped on any new platform as my z77 with PLX lets me run more GPUs with a number of PCIE lanes etc. and now I have shifted to NVMes I need more PCI-E, which until no one is really offering in a reasonable way, Intels platform looks out of touch, Thread ripper might be just what I need.

Intels release of their mainstream chips on the 299 platform sounded like just the sort of thing I might of jumped on and then they go and hobbled the lanes and RAM, fools, their platform sounds dead in the water for HEDT.

 

Funnily enough, X299 is the first HEDT platform I've ever considered. I don't have any nicely parallel workloads, so SP performance is paramount. Throwing more cores at a problem if it means using slow cores simply means paying more for a CPU that has worse performance. With the 'fast cores' in Skylake-X and availability of Kaby Lake-X (along with ASRock;s stonking X299 ITX board) this is the first time there is even the possibility of performance on a HEDT board being better than a top-end 115x board.

Threadripper needs two key bits of information before it is worth considering for myself: actual pricing, and actual SP performance data. Pricing is so far not available, and if the Ryzen launch is to be taken as an example, no hard performance data will be available before chips start shipping. X299 also lacks performance data, but unless there is a sudden unexpected bottleneck introduced, we at least already know the minimum performance Kaby Lake-X will be achieving (as we've seen these dies before).

 

If it's fewer, faster cores you're after, why is it not Z370/Coffelake you're interested in? What would be the benefit to you of buying an X299 board and using a 4c/8t CPU that's limited to dual channel RAM and mainstream-level PCI-E connectivity? The potential of a drop-in upgrade to Skylake-X in 2/3/4/5 years time?

 

Yup. There have been a few CPUs by Intel that have not made much sense (3820/k/4820 etc).

The 3820 for example was expensive, needed an expensive board and wasn't as good as a 2600K for overclocking. So I don't understand why they even bothered. At least with X99 they didn't bother with a quad core, just a cheaper entry level 6 core which was a decent price (I bought one).

But yeah, I would never spend £300 on a motherboard to run a £250 CPU for example. It just makes no sense.

You see people now trying to sell CPUs like that and they are worth practically nothing. 3820s? £20 if you are lucky. Why on earth would you want a crap CPU like that if you had invested into a motherboard that can take up to 12 cores for example? (X79).

 

Then x299 is utterly, utterly pointless for your needs... probably moreso if you want an itx system...

Higher TDP, Higher prices all round [that asrock board won;t be cheap, plus having to rely on DDR4 SODIMMs], for a rebadged 7700K.

If thread/core count isn't important for what you need a PC for, then neither HEDT platform is for you...


EDIT: FWIW, TR [or X299], will probably be my first foray into the HEDT sphere since X58