AMD's 32-Core 2nd Gen Threadripper 2990X CPU

[BLUEVOODU]

@trkorecky posted in the topic What Cooler do you use for your gaming PC? Intel or AMD - Chickendinnergaming.com.

To be honest... I've been out of gaming builds because I went to Computer Builders Anonymous and stopped getting the itch to build every 6 months.... well... every year.  Since 2013 I've been using the same build and still max everything out at 1080p.  Another discussion... another time.   So what's the hype?  Why is this so much better than other AMD's ... and other Intel chips that have been superior in the past.   

I understand AMD for a long time had the price component... they were cheaper, but you knew to accept less performance.  It really looks like AMD over the last generation of chips is trying to change this.

On hothardware.com I saw the following:
AMD's 32-Core 2nd Gen Threadripper 2990X Monster CPU Rumored For August 13th Launch - hothardware.com

I haven't perused that site much... but this is interesting.

So... I've always been a AMD CPU fan.  I've had NVidia graphics processors before... several.  But I've always been a fan of AMD GPUS.


@Polygon @trkorecky -->  what's the draw here?  Is this chip a game winner?  I know Intel has made some VERY stupid mistakes over the last 2-3 years. 

Comments / Thoughts?  Post it up!

[trkorecky]

This generation of AMD chips has a few things going for it.

AMD's previous FX series offered "8 cores", but they were basically four half cores internally, which didn't perform as well as expected. They were also power hungry and hot, leading to worse performance in games than Intel. For some multimedia tasks they matched or exceeded. This led Intel to sit back and deliver minor incremental updates for the better part of a decade, since they had no competition.

Some R&D magic later, AMD announced the Ryzen (desktop) / Threadripper (HEDT) / Epyc (server) series. These chips are all based on the same design -- a "CCX" of cores that talks to another CCX via "Infinity Fabric" (which runs at RAM speed). A CCX is a unit of four full cores and cache, and the Infinity Fabric is the incredibly fast connection between them. This gives AMD two enormous benefits -- any CCX that doesn't have four high performance cores can be lasered off and used in lesser products (1700/1800 is four per, 1500/1600 is three per, and so on) and Infinity Fabric allows an almost endless combination of cores that all have impressive speed for talking between cores and accessing memory. On top of that they increased the amount of work a core does per clock by 56% over the FX series (for first gen Ryzen, more in second, promises of huge increases for third and onward) as well as each core being a full core with SMT (what Intel calls HyperThreading). Best part? Because they're able to use CCX's that didn't make it to their top end parts for the lower ones, they have almost zero waste per wafer and a substantially reduced overhead because of this (and thus a lower cost to produce the entire lineup). Basically the process is a marvel of engineering.

This had a few knock on effects. First, Intel no longer only offers a max of 4 core / 8 thread only in their top of the line i7 because a Ryzen 7 offered 8C/16T for less. Intel has now finally bumped up to 6/12 on i7 and 8/16 on i9. With competition that can't keep doing almost nothing every year and charging a ludicrous amount for it. They also appropriately updated the i3 and i5 lines. AMD has gained significant market share because their processors are not only cheaper but offer far more and have been promised to have the same socket until ~2020. Second, the average core count of users has finally started increasing, meaning we (game devs) can start taking advantage of that.

As for why I'm excited about second gen Threadripper? It provides 32C/64T which will be incredible for compiling code (compiling AAA games takes forever, even distributed across the studio) and building game data. It also provides insanely fast quad channel RAM access, which is another huge bottleneck for us. I want one for home for side projects just to see if I can take full advantage of it.

[targetrasp]

on the financial side AMD has been up 63% during the last 3 months. I bought into them last year when they were trading around 10 / share when the demand on video cards went crazy. That basically seemed to be cancelled out by the lackluster sales of their then processors then. Maybe this new batch continue to push that needle. AMD is consistently undervalued and their earnings per share has surpassed expectations the last two quarters, maybe this can be their breakout.


I've had all AMD processors and cards since the 90's but my last 4 computers have all be Intel / Nvidia. I think 2010 (or so) when the hex core amds first came out was the last amd I built. Almost nothing seemed to take advantage of the extra cores. I hope this all turns out well, but I won't be an early adopter anymore. Theres hardly any payoff to buy these things at enthuisast prices when they're first offerend because nothing takes advantage of it. Benchmark programs aside, nothing on the consumer level gets to take advantage of this stuff for years it seems like.

[Polygon]

Well, let's just say that I'll be getting the 24 core Threadripper when it releases. AMD is really knocking it out of the park and is gaining a lot of market share. Confidence is up and so are stock prices.

Threadripper is now in it's own little bubble since it seems that Intel is abandoning HDET CPUs. So, it looks like they decided not to try and make a 28 core enthusiast level CPU. Instead the i9 is now the i7 and the i7 is now kind of an i5 with more cores since they will no longer have hyper threading. So, it seems that they're just giving that small niche to AMD and let's be honest, it's not a big money maker for Intel. We'll see how it works for AMD. At least their prices are more reasonable.

I think that price is where Intel is going to have to try and compete. The whole higher IPC and better single core performance arguments only matter to a small group of people. Most people are more concerned with price, to a point. Low cost and high performance is going to be more enticing to the masses. Still, desktop component sales are not a huge segment of the CPU market. Enterprise... servers, is. With the latest earnings and proof that market share is shifting, confidence is growing in AMD and Epyc might be a force to be reckoned with for the Xeon. If AMD undercuts Intel like they've been doing in the consumer market, all while offering a CPU that consumes less power and runs cooler, Intel might need to start worrying.

All of that coupled with the fact that they're having trouble with 10nm, the whole 28 core debacle, and the "firing" of Krzanich, Intel is not in a great position right now and it feels like they're scrambling to try to keep one step ahead in terms of performance, and really that mostly just in games. They've still been playing the game like they don't have any competition. I think the fact that Krzanich didn't see this coming, didn't react accordingly, as well as some other poor decisions like the misleading 28 core presentation and the failure of 10nm was why is he was told to step down. The relationship was merely an excuse to save face.

This coming from someone with like nine computers, all running Intel... for now.

[CreepinDeth]

I love this new competition that AMD has been able to provide. That 32-core threadripper is a beast and if it wasn't $1800 on its own I would've considered it. I'm really getting that new PC itch. My 2500K is finally showing its age.

[Polygon]

I love the competition too. I can't justify buying the 32 core regardless of how much I want to. I think it's interesting how Intel has seemingly given up on HEDT, for now, and are just handing that section of the market over to AMD. Then again, cannibalizing your Xeon's to sell in the consumer market might have been more of a drain on money then it was worth.

[trkorecky]

I'm looking forward to more benchmarks and OS patches for the 2990WX. From what I've seen from Phoronix some of the testing runs 2x or more faster on Linux than Windows.

[Polygon]

Thought I would give you an update. I did not by the 2970WX as there's some latency due to the architecture begin designed to work best with octa channel memory. I ended up going with the 2950X. Still in the build process.

[Grindspine]

But, can it play Crysis?

Is anything other than a main four core processor really necessary for most gaming?  How much is multi-core actually used in gaming?

My Core i5 with a GTX 960 still performs very well on 1080 gaming at 60 fps.

[CreepinDeth]

You don't buy a threadripper CPU for gaming. You can game with it but it's not going to be any better, or actually be somewhat worse, than a four core or six core CPU.

These are for the programs that are heavily threaded or if you do lots of heavy multitasking. If you do any rendering, these are the CPUs for you.

[Polygon]

Yeah, it will have a 1080 Ti so it can play Crisis just fine. However, I'm building this machine as an editing and encoding rig that I also game on. I'll make use of the cores. Also, newer games seem to be showing that even six cores can become a limitation. So, it looks like developers are really starting to optimize games for more than four cores.