Speculation: PC enthusiasts will migrate to HEDT

[DrMrLordX]

Depends on how far back you go, I guess.

In the pre-PC/Apple II/Commodore days, being an enthusiast meant buying a DiY kit and building the computer yourself. Maybe you'd join a local club and swap stories/software with fellow builders.

Post-PC, it meant doing stuff like swapping crystals and so forth. Honestly I have no idea how many mods and other tweaks there were for the PCs/PC compatibles, Ataris, Commodores, and Apple computers for sale back then. But the people that were working with 286s and the like used to tell stories about overclocking by swapping clock crystals. And anyone OCing in those days pretty much had to buy the "halo" parts since that's about all there was. You could pay a lot of money for that stuff, back in the day.

The budget OC crowd didn't really start showing up until maybe Socket 5, and they went full-bore after the Celeron 300a. There was some limited OCing you could do with Socket 5 if you had the right board and knew what you were doing.

Now enthusiasts are being pushed towards higher-dollar parts again, just like in the old days. The major difference is that there are fewer technical skills required to get your gear working. Instead it's more knowledge-based: understanding why things might not be fully compatible, dealing with goofy/bad driver stacks and other software nonsense, coping with funky power delivery, managing balky IMCs that do not want to play ball with your DIMMs, etc. Just because it all plugs together doesn't mean it'll do exactly what you want.

 

[Freejack2]

Will there eventually be anything left besides HEDT and Business desktops, in a few years? I'm getting the impression that most consumers who don't do PC gaming have no need or interest in desktop computers, when a tablet will do what they need? For business, which I'm including those who need high end desktops, for some purpose they make money on. Won't consumer desktops become something only for gamers? I saw a post from VirtualLarry, that he can't even give away desktop systems these days. So I'm getting the impression that for consumers who aren't gamers, or using it for business purposes, are not interested in buying desktops.

 

[arandomguy]

Will there eventually be anything left besides HEDT and Business desktops, in a few years? I'm getting the impression that most consumers who don't do PC gaming have no need or interest in desktop computers, when a tablet will do what they need? For business, which I'm including those who need high end desktops, for some purpose they make money on. Won't consumer desktops become something only for gamers? I saw a post from VirtualLarry, that he can't even give away desktop systems these days. So I'm getting the impression that for consumers who aren't gamers, or using it for business purposes, are not interested in buying desktops.

In terms of how you are framing it that is already the case. Neither Intel nor AMD have CPUs specifically for mainstream desktop usage.

There is more focus in terms of SKUs specifically for gamers due to the growth and high margins in that market. I would wager in terms of budgeting that resources for other desktop CPU SKUs is rather low priority and minimal.

But even desktop HEDT is in that situation as well. The primary focus in terms of resource allocation for the technology that does into desktop HEDT platforms is not actually for that market.

 

[dnavas]

But the people that were working with 286s and the like used to tell stories about overclocking by swapping clock crystals.

I was certainly working with PCs at that time, but was there really much to be had by doing this? Wasn't this around the same time that people were discovering that timing had been implemented using for loops, and pushing the turbo button was as likely to cause problems as not? Dunno, never was a gamer, and the thought of having my VistaPro or Mandelbrot animations done in 8 hours instead of 9 would have been ... nice, but, I'd have still been waiting overnight anyway?

You could pay a lot of money for that stuff, back in the day.

An Amiga3000 was a little over $3000. Adjusted for inflation that's over $6000. And that was just the computer. Add another grand for a 500Meg drive and a little more than that again for a NEC4D. It makes those 2990WX builds look cheap, which is saying something. The Lisas, Macs, and NeXT workstations were all even more expensive.

The major difference is that there are fewer technical skills required to get your gear working. Instead it's more knowledge-based: understanding why things might not be fully compatible, dealing with goofy/bad driver stacks and other software nonsense, coping with funky power delivery, managing balky IMCs that do not want to play ball with your DIMMs, etc. Just because it all plugs together doesn't mean it'll do exactly what you want.

I just spent weeks debugging some kind of RF/grounding/something issue with my first pcie slot. If I've got my capture card in there, and more than one optical drive powered (not even attached to a SATA port), the machine either won't boot all the way to the login screen (hangs), or it'll hang during shutdown (about a 1:3 chance of either happening). If I wanted to *know* exactly what was going on, it'd take quite a bit of technical skills and a fair bit of machinery. But if I just want to get it working, persistence and trial and error is all that's required (and a little cash -- I bought a replacement drive at first :|). I feel like a lot of OCing effort is trial and error rather than staring at digital scope captures, so you're right that there's less technical skill required, but we're not understanding as much in the process either. In my opinion, that's less fun, but :shrug:

I haven't seen ANY DIY cases, that have USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports on them.

Nanoxia CoolForce 2 Rev.B has one. I just came across another one recently, but I forget what it was. The Dark Base 900 has a Qi charger on it. There are a couple of cases out there with cute ideas. Probably my favorite is the NZXT (?) with the illuminated rear panel which would be a godsend. Too much of the illuminated nonsense is "aesthetics", but that's just me, apparently :shrug: I *do* want lighting, but I want it pointed at the stuff I'm trying to attach, not directed into my face.... Or maybe a way just to find that "case" fan connection which is directly under the CPU cooler (while the CPU fan connector is sitting in the upper right half of the board, for reasons that completely elude me). The worst area, though, tends to be the upper left where you've got a fan connector, a couple of CPU power ports, shaded by your CPU cooler, the (potential) rads and fans on the top of your case, and the I/O shroud, can you imagine if a motherboard maker put an LED on that shroud pointed in that corner so I could stop guessing where the connectors are? There are tripod makers that put LEDs in the bubble levelers. Can you imagine what kind of lighting a typical motherboard maker would put on a tripod? Hah! Like I said, though, maybe just me

I think "enthusiast" is just "tinkerer." You could be aiming at really high clocks, or ridonculous amounts of RAM or spinning rust or RAIDed NVME, or making your computer look like the deck of the Enterprise -- anything where people buy parts. The parts these days are not the 7401s-from-Fry's of my youth. There are no counters I can go to at Fry's that sell those anymore anyway. But parts is parts, as a really old commercial used to say.... [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTzLVIc-O5E]

 

[DrMrLordX]

I was certainly working with PCs at that time, but was there really much to be had by doing this? Wasn't this around the same time that people were discovering that timing had been implemented using for loops, and pushing the turbo button was as likely to cause problems as not? Dunno, never was a gamer, and the thought of having my VistaPro or Mandelbrot animations done in 8 hours instead of 9 would have been ... nice, but, I'd have still been waiting overnight anyway?

Not really sure. I think it was just bragging rights, and maybe a few limited cases where running the CPU faster did not produce undesirable behavior.

I definitely remember some old games running completely off at higher clockspeeds. I had an old CGA remake of the arcade Star Wars trench run game that was unplayable on a 386 due to timing issues. And I remember having to use utilities like moslo to play some Ultima games at an acceptable speed (though admittedly, high-speed U7 was kind of fun on my Pentium 100).

 

[Vattila]

Threadripper 3000 seems to be around the corner. Remember that AMD CEO Lisa Su reassured everyone, in an interview back at Computex I think it was, that Threadripper was not dead and we would hear more later. Considering Ryzen had moved up, Threadripper would have to move "up, up", she said. Now, there are indications on the web that three chipsets are in the works: TRX40, TRX80 and WRX80.

The obvious suggestion is that there will be a professional workstation platform (WRX80) in addition to enthusiast consumer options (TRX80 and TRX40). The speculation, which makes sense to me, is that WRX80 and TRX80 platforms will support 8 channels of memory, while TRX40 sticks with 4, like before. The new 8 channel options will combat Intel's workstation platform, which supports 6 channels of memory and workstation grade processors, such as the top-end Xeon W-3175X 28C/56C ("Skylake-SP") with the C621 chipset (e.g. see OverclockersUK).

So it looks like we can expect a formidable Threadripper 3000 launch later this autumn, with AMD squarely taking on Intel in the professional workstation market, as well as strengthening their dominance in consumer HEDT. A very interesting dynamic for this generation is that there should not be any penalty for gaming — on the contrary, the UMA, extra memory channels, large amount of cache and dynamic CPU boost should all benefit gaming, assuming the CPU chiplets are from the best clocking bins. It will be interesting to see if gaming and content-creating PC enthusiasts will migrate to the HEDT platforms in larger numbers.

wccftech.com
videocardz.com

 

[Markfw]

Threadripper 3000 seems to be around the corner. Remember that AMD CEO Lisa Su reassured everyone, in an interview back at Computex I think it was, that Threadripper was not dead and we would hear more later. Considering Ryzen had moved up, Threadripper would have to move "up, up", she said. Now, there are indications on the web that three chipsets are in the works: TRX40, TRX80 and WRX80.

The obvious suggestion is that there will be a professional workstation platform (WRX80) in addition to enthusiast consumer options (TRX80 and TRX40). The speculation, which makes sense to me, is that WRX80 and TRX80 platforms will support 8 channels of memory, while TRX40 sticks with 4, like before. The new 8 channel options will combat Intel's workstation platform, which supports 6 channels of memory and workstation grade processors, such as the top-end Xeon W-3175X 28C/56C ("Skylake-SP") with the C621 chipset (e.g. see OverclockersUK).

So it looks like we can expect a formidable Threadripper 3000 launch later this autumn, with AMD squarely taking on Intel in the professional workstation market, as well as strengthening their dominance in consumer HEDT. A very interesting dynamic for this generation is that there should not be any penalty for gaming — on the contrary, the UMA, extra memory channels, large amount of cache and dynamic CPU boost should all benefit gaming, assuming the CPU chiplets are from the best clocking bins. It will be interesting to see if gaming and content-creating PC enthusiasts will migrate to the HEDT platforms in larger numbers.

wccftech.com
videocardz.com

I do think that Ryzen is mainstream, and threadripper is enthusiast/HEDT already.

 

[moinmoin]

Looking at the poll question "Will PC enthusiasts (gamers, overclockers, etc.) migrate to HEDT?" and with Ryzen 3k being out with soon up to 16c32t, one could say that HEDT instead came to the consumer platform.

 

[nicalandia]

Thanks to Ryzen 3950X 16C/32T monster CPU are know Mainstream and the worlds First 16C/32T CPU and don't be surprised to hear Dr. Lisa Su say "I am proud to introduce Amd Thread Ripper the World's first 32C/64T CPU"

 

[Markfw]

Thanks to Ryzen 3950X 16C/32T monster CPU are know Mainstream and the worlds First 16C/32T CPU and don't be surprised to hear Dr. Lisa Su say "I am proud to introduce Amd Thread Ripper the World's first 32C/64T CPU"

AMD already has a 16c/32t, and a 32c/64t , both threadrippers. And I have them. the 2990wx is 32 core 64 thread, and I have 2 of them.

Your statement about "worlds First 16C/32T CPU" could be clarified to say mainstream, since threadripper is not really mainstream.

What MAY happen is a 64 core 128t threadripper, that is not a server chip. Not confirmed yet, just rumored.

 

[nicalandia]

Sorry I mean to say the world's first 32C/64T "Gaming CPU"... due to that I/O Chip and UMA it will be just a matter of cooling that beast to be as good as 3900X for gaming.

 

[Markfw]

Sorry I mean to say the world's first 32C/64T "Gaming CPU"... due to that I/O Chip and UMA it will be just a matter of cooling that beast to be as good as 3900X for gaming.

The 3800x/3900x are currently the best AMD gaming chips. I don't think the 32core one will be better, but it WILL excel at multi-threaded apps like rendering and such. Not that I notice it, but I bet the new 32c/64t chips will blow my 2990wx's into dust.

 

[Topweasel]

I don't know there is potential there. First TR with 4 chips basically has twice the power envelope as the 3950, will have A lot larger of a cooling area with bigger gaps in between items giving out heat and to top all of that off still could be getting top 5% of the chiplets for clocks. It might be easier for AMD to clock a 32C TR3 chip higher than the 3950, and with both using an IO die you could end up with pretty level performance per clock between the two chips.

 

[Vattila]

The 3800x/3900x are currently the best AMD gaming chips. I don't think the 32core one will be better

On the other hand, there is no reason it should be any worse, right? They just need to put at least one top-binning CPU chiplet on the package, able to reach 4.7 GHz (or better) to stay abreast with 3950X on the mainstream platform.

 

[Markfw]

On the other hand, there is no reason it should be any worse, right? They just need to put at least one top-binning CPU chiplet on the package, able to reach 4.7 GHz (or better) to stay abreast with 3950X on the mainstream platform.

Maybe, but if I was a gamer, I would want to spend the least amount for the best perf, and that will most likely be the 3950x, not any threadripper.

Edit: You know I need cores for my DC work, so I will be getting one or more of the 64 core TR's to replace my 1950x's. Look for good deals on those, come the time the new TR's come out. I have 5 to get rid of. Maybe even the 2990wx's and the 2970wx as well.

 

[nicalandia]

Maybe, but if I was a gamer, I would want to spend the least amount for the best perf, and that will most likely be the 3950x, not any threadripper..

If you were a Gamer you would looking at the 3600 none X and buying a high end GPU because its FPS rate is really close to the 3900X(or soon to be 3950X for high end Ryzen), I still believe that the next gen TR will be very good gaming CPUs that will hang with the 9900K while murdering/Curb stomping any HEDT from intel making them EOL products.

 

[scannall]

I don't think so. With mainstream, consumer grade machines becoming so much more capable than they were just a few years ago there is no need to.