THREADRIPPER IS BACK!!

THREADRIPPER IS BACK! And honestly, it’s come back fighting. For the first time since the first generation, I can finally see why each of the product lines AMD offers exists. The last generation of Threadrippers were pretty artificially limited – I mean only allowing up to 256GB of RAM on a 64 core CPU was just a joke – but this time the lines between the server, pro, HEDT and desktop chips all make sense. Let me show you what’s new and you’ll see what I mean!

You can split this launch into two product categories – Pro, and HEDT. The Pro chips are their WX chips. They are basically just EPYC chips, but are limited to one socket per board and get slightly different support and featuresets. Then there’s the HEDT chips, those are the “Ryzen Threadripper” chips we haven’t seen since Ryzen 3000. As you might expect, the Pro SKUs are the highest spec. The top end 7995WX is rocking a whopping 96 cores and 192 threads at up to 5.1GHz, and with a new, higher, 350W TDP, up from 280W on the last WX generation. We now also get PCIe Gen 5 – yes all 128 lanes Threadripper Pro offers are at Gen 5 speeds – and more L3 cache too at 384MB, up from 256MB. Admittedly, this isn’t using AMD’s 3D V-Cache technology, but more cache generally seems to be more better. One thing that is quite different from their regular desktop counterparts is that all six TR Pro chips have the same 350W TDP. That means the 12 core absolutely rips. It has a BASE CLOCK of 4.7GHz, and will boost to 5.3GHz out the box. Oh, and all Threadripper chips, Pro or not, are unlocked for overclocking. Barely anyone will actually overclock them, especially the Pro chips, but it’s pretty cool that they are unlocked anyway.

AMD was very happy to point out both how much of an improvement over their last gen 5000 series TR Pro this new generation is, and how much better their stuff is compared to Intel’s best. I do want to note that I’m actually impressed AMD didn’t go overboard on the marketing figures here – they compared their old 64 core to their new 64 core, not the 96 core. They actually compared like for like. Madness! Anyway, AMD says you can expect between 12% more performance in Premiere Pro to 46% more performance in Ansys Simulation, and anything in between. If you were interested in halo product vs halo product, AMD reckons you will get between 9% “faster compositing” in After Effects, and 223% faster rendering in V-Ray. That’s quite the spread! The other interesting comparison was between Intel’s 36 core and AMD’s new 32 core, where they say that their 32 core is considerably faster than Intel’s w9-3475X, at least in these CAM and CAD apps. That’s quite the shot across the bow. 

But enough talk of the Pro chips, I imagine you are far more interested in the HEDT chips, the consumer focused Ryzen Threadripper 7000 series. Now somewhat sadly, these bad boys don’t get the 96 core option, they top out at 64 cores, but they still have the 350W TDP, up to 5.3GHz boost clocks on the 32 and 24 core variants, and are unlocked for overclocking. They do have PCIe Gen 5, but only get 48 lanes of Gen 5 – which is still double regular Ryzen chips. They also “only” get quad channel RAM, where the TR Pro chips can have eight channel. Interestingly, both TR Pro and regular Threadripper chips will work in the TRX50 boards, so if you want to still get 96 cores but you want to save a bit of cash and don’t need eight channel RAM or 128 Gen 5 PCIe lanes, you can drop a TR Pro in a consumer board. Sadly it doesn’t work the other way around, but that makes sense. The regular TR chips aren’t pinned out for eight channel RAM or all that PCIe, so that’s pretty reasonable.

One major change is that both TR and TR Pro now support RDIMMs, that being registered RAM. Both support ECC, but RDIMMs are more enterprise than we’ve seen before. That does mean that all Threadripper chips now support at least 1TB of RAM, with the Threadripper Pro chips supporting double that – and AMD made it clear that once RAM manufacturers produce double-the-density RDIMMs, Threadripper will support that, so at some point you’ll be able to have 2TB or 4TB of RAM in a desktop. Yeah… That’s insane. 

Something I found interesting was the block diagram of the PCIe layout. The WRX90, and I can only assume TRX50 chipset too, are still only connected via a PCIe Gen4 x4 link. Of course, if you want a load of local storage you are going to use one of the SIX PCIe Gen 5 x16 slots connected directly to the CPU, but I don’t know, I found it funny. I do also like that you get eight Gen 3 “bonus lanes” connected to the CPU, enough for two M.2 slots. You’ve also got 10G LAN listed here too, which is nice to see built in.

So that’s most of what’s new – we will have to wait I think until November to get our hands on these and actually test them and see just how insane the performance is – but I wanted to explain a bit more about what each of the product categories are about. Like I said, previous generations have felt very artificially limited so they don’t cannibalise their own market, but now I think they’ve finally figured out how to lay them out. Here it is on a chart. Their EPYC chips are for servers. They can have all the cores – up to 128 on some SKUs – they have all the PCIe, up to 8 channel RAM, long support windows and stability, and can have multiple chips per board. I believe you can overclock them, but for simplicity I’m going to say you can’t because you wouldn’t in an actual server. They aren’t designed for that. Threadripper Pro then sits below EPYC, with basically the same features, except a bit of a different support channel and only one socket per board, and at least for now only 96 cores and no 3D V-Cache. Threadripper is then below that, with up to 64 cores, a quarter of the PCIe Gen 5 lanes, half the RAM channels, but all the raw performance. Finally, there’s the Ryzen desktop and mobile chips. They have up to 16 cores, 24 PCIe lanes, and dual channel RAM. There’s now a clear reason why you might want a Threadripper Pro over a Threadripper, over a Ryzen chip, and none of it feels like a BS software limitation. 

So, that’s what’s new from AMD. I’m pretty excited to see what these can do, but I’d love to hear what you think in the comments down below!