Reviews AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X and 1920X Review

It seems that you can get a 24c/48t EPYC chip (single socket, not dual compatible) for $1000. Neat!

And Intel think they have won the core race with a stupid announcement saying they've got 18 core processors coming ... something they never even had ready up until TR was announced.

 

Any idea whether Epyc will work in X399?

 

Technically yes but you gimp yourself to 128gb memory. Which is nothing in the area where Epyc will be good at.

 

The fact that the dies used to make up these chips are supposed to be the top 5%, and still can't reliably hit 4Ghz, further points to AMD doing what they did with Polaris - releasing an architecture that is already clocked close to It's limits.

It's not exactly a deal-breaker, as the IPC improvements over Bulldozer are more than enough to keep them within arm's reach of Intel, but I do hope that it isn't a hard limit of the design and can be fixed with Zen 2... A small IPC bump, coupled with a shrink to 7nm/10nm and a reliable max clock close to 5GHz on a mainstream 10c/20t chip in 2020 will pretty much be throwing my money at the etailers!

 

Where did you read that they're supposed to be the top 5%?

 

It states it here: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/amd-ryzen-threadripper-1950x-cpu,review-33976.html

Source does seem to be AMD: "AMD noted that only the top 5 percent of its dies coming through its Ryzen fab qualify for Threadripper chips."
http://www.computershopper.com/feat...en-threadripper-processors-decloaked-detailed

 

This. 7700K still the winner for that, unless you're obsessed with PUBG, which just got a 6 core update, but then you'd hold out for a 4.+GHz 8800K I guess.

BUT both AMD and Intel state TR and i9 are a CONSUMER CPUs, not workstation. OK so consumer/prosumer, but what both AMD and Intel are saying is that they're not going to bother to certify drivers for these systems. It's a "you take what you get" approach because they aren't made by the server divisions. So you can interpret it as workstation/prosumer but the companies themselves don't sell it that way...

TR is impressive but I'm looking at results over various sites and my 5960X is still cutting it in games vs 1920X and even 1950X. There's no point in upgrading a Haswell-era CPU still and 8 cores is plenty. The best thing about i9s and TR is the PCIE count. If you're running a mainstream system and M.2 drive you're fked by the shty PCH bandwidth and latency. Since Coffee Lake is still limited to 16x PCIE lanes, and X299 will only house SKYX, I'm not sure what my next upgrade will be

 

No. Either Toms or Anandtech said the socket is the same physically but apparently it won't work. X399 will be around for the next ~2 chips (Zen+ and Zen2) though, so a good board is expensive but potentially an investment if you're saying on the platform until 7nm Zen2 in 2019.

 

Blame Intel, they started this HEDT thing.

 

This is exactly where I am. I also have a 5960X (@4.5ghz) and it's doing a damn fine job. I do have the itch to update and was hoping TR would be it; sadly as good as it is, it's not enough to make me want to rebuild.

 

Because of the cost divergence. Look what happens when they put mainstream CPUs on the HEDT platform: total confusion over the 7640K and 7740K that doesn't belong in X299. They've got to keep a cheap/mainstream platform to make it mass affordable, but there's also the high-end need for more lanes, more memory, more cores, more power which increasingly adds cost. X58 was the first HEDT where PCIE lanes moved from northbridge into CPU.

I wished they dropped the price of Broadwell-E but Intel don't do that. ****. A 6900X would be lovely 22-->14nm.

 

Did you take account of the offset temperature when overclocking because some of those temperatures seem a lot higher than other reviews?

 

Thanks Rich. That's a shame, because AMD server boards are usually a bit crap and cost the same as my flat.

 

But zir, eet is only wafer thin!

 

I would avoid a first gen of any new platform, certainly never an early first gen.

 

Yeah I tend to. Watched my mate spend two and a half thousand dollars on a rig once (E8500, EVGA 790i with OCZ DDR3) and it was never stable. Poor sod, he even bought a D2X for $400. None of it worked. The ram caused BSODs 24/7 the sound card caused crashing and BSODs and in the end he threw it in the cupboard. It was only years later that he gave it to me for nothing (paid shipping like) and I flashed the bios and sorted it out. But yeah, that kinda put him off for life he never "early adopts" now.

 

Threadripper... Broadwell E... Ryzen 7.. BISCUIT..

Threadri.... BISCUIT. I'LL TAKE THE CHOCCY BISCUIT PLEASE.

 

That's kinda the point of HEDT, I guess. The 5960X was released in 2014, and as you rightly say, still has a good couple of years life left in it yet. The whole draw of HEDT platforms is the longer upgrade cycle - it's a lot of cash to put down at the time, but you can go through 2-3 mainstream generations while still being at the top of the performance pile (albeit while looking comparatively inefficient).

Realistically, that's what I'd be shopping for when I next look at building a PC - something I know I can put together then forget about upgrading for half a decade or more.

 

I guess it really does come down to what you're using your PC for, but in general I reckon that if you're a gamer then CPU technology is advancing at such a slow pace that you can easily get four or five years out of a CPU (providing that you buy a reasonably high-end one in the first place, so a 6600K rather than a 6100, for example ). GPU tech is where it's at for leaps forward in both performance and demand for horsepower. But sure, HEDT by definition should have good longevity because you're leveraging greater capability from the start of the product's life.

 

Completely agree Bawjaws, 2600k onwards is enough cpu performance in truth, Overclocked even more so.