Discussion AMD Threadripper 3000 series announcement and reviews

[Kocicak]

24 cores for 1400 and 32 cores for 2000 USD?

That is expensive. It does not put much pressure on Intel. It also does not motivate people too much to change platforms from AM4 to sTRX4. I must say I am surprised.

I bet that some people at Intel are pretty relieved now.

 

[amrnuke]

Also from the Anandtech article regarding all 3000 series CPUs:

I'm genuinely curious, what other applications would this have?

 

[Hitman928]

I'm genuinely curious, what other applications would this have?

What do you mean?

 

[Mopetar]

Huge price gap between 16 core 3950X and 24 core 3960X. Obviously you're getting HEDT platform features as well for the price jump, but still seems too large. I wonder if AMD is expecting the 10xxx line of intel HEDT processors to be very supply limited, otherwise the new TR pricing doesn't make much sense to me. Possibly we see a TR price drop once the intel line is released with general availability?

If you look at the price gap between the 3900X and 3950X it roughly falls into line. With the desktop parts it's an extra $250 for 4 more cores. Here the price difference is about $325 for each additional 4 cores, but it is a different platform so there should be some expectation of higher prices. Jumping up to the 3970X is an additional $300 per 4 additional cores so it still fits the line.

I'm not really sure if a pricing gap like that matters. I suspect that for most consumers it's $300 - $500 for the 8/12 core chips or $1400+ for a HEDT part. For anyone who could legitimately use 32 cores, $2000 is practically a pittance. Compare against the i9 9980X which has approximately half the cores at lower clock speeds and still carries a $2000 price.

Yes there's still a huge premium for HEDT parts, but the value of what that premium gets you has increased significantly with Zen 2. I doubt there are very many customers who are in the market for a 3950X who are disappointed that there isn't a way to spend an extra ~$300 to step up another level. Similarly, I doubt there are many customers who are in the market for a 3960X who are disappointed that there isn't a way to spend ~$300 less. In the case of the latter group, there is if you consider 2XXX Thread Ripper parts to be a viable choice.

 

[positivedoppler]

If you look at the price gap between the 3900X and 3950X it roughly falls into line. With the desktop parts it's an extra $250 for 4 more cores. Here the price difference is about $325 for each additional 4 cores, but it is a different platform so there should be some expectation of higher prices. Jumping up to the 3970X is an additional $300 per 4 additional cores so it still fits the line.

I'm not really sure if a pricing gap like that matters. I suspect that for most consumers it's $300 - $500 for the 8/12 core chips or $1400+ for a HEDT part. For anyone who could legitimately use 32 cores, $2000 is practically a pittance. Compare against the i9 9980X which has approximately half the cores at lower clock speeds and still carries a $2000 price.

Yes there's still a huge premium for HEDT parts, but the value of what that premium gets you has increased significantly with Zen 2. I doubt there are very many customers who are in the market for a 3950X who are disappointed that there isn't a way to spend an extra ~$300 to step up another level. Similarly, I doubt there are many customers who are in the market for a 3960X who are disappointed that there isn't a way to spend ~$300 less. In the case of the latter group, there is if you consider 2XXX Thread Ripper parts to be a viable choice.

Perhaps the TR chips uses the same IO die as the server parts?

 

[TheGiant]

well it is no longer value proposition so I dont understand the rant
the best part of the first post is however.....the system power target....ROFLCOPTER -here is how tdp ended on the market

 

[amrnuke]

Since when did pricing follow a 1:1 relationship with performance?

Never, because if we use the 3600 as the baseline at $199, then the 3900X should be $262 (31% CPU test lead, 8% 720p gaming lead).

Maybe he meant cores? Even then it's not 1:1. 3600 at $199, $33 per core, that means the 3900X should only be $399, 3950X should be $530, and the 3970X should be $1,060.

I wish we got per-core or per-performance cost scaling... how cheap it would be!

 

[Hitman928]

If you look at the price gap between the 3900X and 3950X it roughly falls into line. With the desktop parts it's an extra $250 for 4 more cores. Here the price difference is about $325 for each additional 4 cores, but it is a different platform so there should be some expectation of higher prices. Jumping up to the 3970X is an additional $300 per 4 additional cores so it still fits the line.

I'm not really sure if a pricing gap like that matters. I suspect that for most consumers it's $300 - $500 for the 8/12 core chips or $1400+ for a HEDT part. For anyone who could legitimately use 32 cores, $2000 is practically a pittance. Compare against the i9 9980X which has approximately half the cores at lower clock speeds and still carries a $2000 price.

Yes there's still a huge premium for HEDT parts, but the value of what that premium gets you has increased significantly with Zen 2. I doubt there are very many customers who are in the market for a 3950X who are disappointed that there isn't a way to spend an extra ~$300 to step up another level. Similarly, I doubt there are many customers who are in the market for a 3960X who are disappointed that there isn't a way to spend ~$300 less. In the case of the latter group, there is if you consider 2XXX Thread Ripper parts to be a viable choice.

If you look at it in terms of value relative to a baseline 8 core CPU the difference becomes much more stark. There's a basically linear relationship between 8 to 12 cores and then a drop when you get to 16 and then a huge drop down to 24.



Even then I would agree with you about the HEDT platform demanding a premium price if intel hadn't already announced such large price cuts on their own HEDT line. If you throw in the 10980xe into the above graph you get this:



All of a sudden intel is the value leader in cores/$ on the HEDT platform. Now, this isn't perf/$ and I still expect AMD to win there and to do so by a significant margin (outside of some niche cases like AVX512) which will obviously justify its price, but I just think it's a marketing mistake on AMD's part simply because I think a huge reason the Ryzen and TR lines were so popular to begin with was because AMD was pushing the amount of cores you could purchase per tier much higher than what intel was willing to provide.

With the new TR pricing, that's no longer really the case and now AMD will have to compete more head on with intel. I'm not saying it's a bad choice, it just changes the landscape from a market / marketing perspective. If it works for AMD, then great, they become the premium choice in the market which would be great for them. I'm just not sure how the market will react to AMD reaching for that designation. I do agree with the Anandtech article that it seems AMD is trying to kind of evolve the TR segment back into truly being a HEDT/prosumer platform rather than having it be a wide ranging platform of top end consumer segment up to professional workstation segment.

 

[Hitman928]

well it is no longer value proposition so I dont understand the rant
the best part of the first post is however.....the system power target....ROFLCOPTER -here is how tdp ended on the market

That table was made by CNET and I have no clue what they're talking about on that row. The Anandtech article lists the 3960x and 3970x as each having a 280W TDP.

 

[AtenRa]

Intel will have 18 cores for 1000 USD and AMD coming with 24 cores for 1400 USD

Axaxaxaxaxa Intel HEDT CPUs are now considered Value For Money

 

[Kocicak]

Second generation Threadripper prices scale almost perfectly with core count.

3950X on AM4 has 16 cores, that is the number of cores of 2950X and will perform better. 3950X is a really high performance CPU and I do not know why should it be evaluated completelly independently from 3rd gen. threadrippers.

I already mentioned that there could be some premium for different (better) platform.

Paying 2000 instead of 1500 as scaling from 3950x would suggest, that is 500 premium for the platform and in my opinion it is completelly out of whack. It is like AMD took all the money you had prepared for the motherboard and made you pay for it again. It is ridiculous.

 

[Thala]

I do not believe that comparing with own past products and their features makes more sense than comparing with upcoming competing products.

Intel will have 18 cores for 1000 USD and AMD coming with 24 cores for 1400 USD will push many people willing to spend around a grand for a new CPU to buy Intel. AMD just solved decision problem for a number of customers. If AMD offered 24 cores for a grand or so, most people would buy AMD, just because 24 is more than 18 and the difference is so obvious, that even some long term Intel users would buckle.

Whats wrong with buying Intel?

 

[dnavas]

The "forward looking features" sounds like PR crap given they won't commit to long term platform support.

Pray I don't alter it any further....
Funny how they figured out how to do this for their server systems, isn't it?

TR is a platform. Start treating it as such, please. We know what the server socket future looks like, and the AM4 socket future. Somehow that isn't true for TR. That isn't acceptable.

 

[dnavas]

It is like AMD took all the money you had prepared for the motherboard and made you pay for it again.

Yep, that's exactly where I'm at.
It's not, mind you, ridiculous, or completely out of whack. TR4 (err, TR4x?) isn't AM4. Right?

I mean, with AM4, we know that socket will be around. Can't say the same here?
Oh, but, it does give you more lanes than AM4, though, hah, fewer than TR4, but, uh, more to the chipset, which, umm, does what extra for me, remind me? I mean, thanks for the 10Gb ethernet? No? Umm, thunderbolt? No? Apparently a lot of call for really heavy nvme raid out there or something?
Ok, maybe a little ridiculous.
But it has more features, so, not completely out of whack.
Aside from the ranty bits, yeah, it does feel like a slap in the face. Was prepared for the motherboard, but I figured I was going to get something extra

 

[amrnuke]

What do you mean?

For the average home user, or even someone doing a lot of video editing, or gaming, it seems that a lower power draw wouldn't be terribly useful. Is that feature targeted at corporate environments or some other purpose I can't think of?

 

[dnavas]

...some other purpose I can't think of?

ITX?

 

[Kocicak]

It's not, mind you, ridiculous, or completely out of whack. TR4 (err, TR4x?) isn't AM4. Right?

Nomenclature suggests too, that these are all related high performance CPUs. 3950, 3960, 3970.

It is obvious that It takes more effort to put together TR4 CPU than AM4 CPU. The package is different, the platform is better. I can imagine paying 100 USD premium for these with no problem, 200 is stretching it massivelly. 500 is simply completelly out of whack!

BTW AMD gets another payment for the platform, they sell chipsets.

 

[Atari2600]

Whats wrong with buying Intel?

From AMD's perspective, that's not a great end result when they clearly could price a 16C TR3 @ 900 USD.

 

[Hitman928]

For the average home user, or even someone doing a lot of video editing, or gaming, it seems that a lower power draw wouldn't be terribly useful. Is that feature targeted at corporate environments or some other purpose I can't think of?

I think it's mostly for OEMs or boutique system builders. By enabling a cTDP they can keep the same case sizes, case cooling, and even keep CPU cooling the same between multiple core count options. That way they can offer the same system with increasing core counts. This is really a positive for large volume OEMs who would have to add additional inventory and overhead to support higher power processors.

It could also be useful for end users who like to build small form factor devices for HTPCs or mini home servers or whatever it may be.

 

[thigobr]

I am a little bit surprised by the high prices (we still don't know for sure about the motherboards) but I can see why they are what they are: the amount of I/O and performance you can get from this platform is unmatched on the desktop space... And you need to pay for that. I would love to have one of these beasts over my desk but I really can't justify that amount of money

 

[Kocicak]

Ok, some real numbers. I watched AMD video about performance of the new threadrippers. When I average all 5 benchmarks AMD decided to show, 3970X is 43% better than 9980XE, while costing twice as much as upcoming 18 core from Intel.

The highest advantage was in R20, where it was 90% faster. Still not over twice as fast.

Intel will have higher performance/price ratio.

Honestly I did not expect this.

.

 

[Markfw]

Ok, some real numbers. I watched AMD video about performance of the new threadrippers. When I average all 5 benchmarks AMD decided to show, 3970X is 43% better than 9980XE, while costing twice as much as upcoming 18 core from Intel.

The highest advantage was in R20, where it was 90% faster. Still not over twice as fast.

Intel will have higher performance/price ratio.

Honestly I did not expect this.

Since when was the fastest chip scaled 1:1 with performance ? NEVER

 

[Excelsior]

Ok, some real numbers. I watched AMD video about performance of the new threadrippers. When I average all 5 benchmarks AMD decided to show, 3970X is 43% better than 9980XE, while costing twice as much as upcoming 18 core from Intel.

The highest advantage was in R20, where it was 90% faster. Still not over twice as fast.

Intel will have higher performance/price ratio.

Honestly I did not expect this.

.View attachment 12961

And? The 3950x compares favorably to the 9980XE on a non-HEDT platform, for $250 less. Then you have to factor in the cuts in price to the 2nd gen TR options as well.

 

[amrnuke]

I think it's mostly for OEMs or boutique system builders. By enabling a cTDP they can keep the same case sizes, case cooling, and even keep CPU cooling the same between multiple core count options. That way they can offer the same system with increasing core counts. This is really a positive for large volume OEMs who would have to add additional inventory and overhead to support higher power processors.

It could also be useful for end users who like to build small form factor devices for HTPCs or mini home servers or whatever it may be.

Thank you - that's really interesting and a cool feature!

 

[Kocicak]

I believe that it is better to have not only the best absolute performance, but also higher performance/price ratio.

If AMD left vacated the low performance end of HEDT platform, you could still with higher performance/price ratio rationalise yourself into buying AMD. But with lower performance/price ratio, the rational solution is to buy Intel, if its low performance will be enough for you.

I do not think that AMD wants to give reasons to anybody to buy competing products and that the prices of the new products are unreasonably high. That is all.

 

[Markfw]

I believe that it is better to have not only the best absolute performance, but also higher performance/price ratio.

If AMD left vacated the low performance end of HEDT platform, you could still with higher performance/price ratio rationalise yourself into buying AMD. But with lower performance/price ratio, the rational solution is to buy Intel, if its low performance will be enough for you.

I do not think that AMD wants to give reasons to anybody to buy competing products and that the prices of the new products are unreasonably high. That is all.

I was said before. First, the 3950x performs like the $1000 Intel CPU, and there are the discounted 1xxx and 2xxx threadrippers. I just bid on one for $600 a 2970wx, its buy it now at $800. That will easily beat the 9980xe. So they can also win on price/performance.

Why don;t you understand this ?