HEDT is back - Zen 4 TR pro and non-pro

[mackerel]

AMD Unveils Ryzen Threadripper 7000 Family: 96 Core Zen 4 for Workstations and HEDT

www.anandtech.com

Still looking through the details now.

Pro models support 128 PCIe 4.0 lanes and 8 channel memory. Non-pro has 80 PCIe lanes, made up of 48 5.0 lanes and 32 4.0 lanes, along with 4 channel memory.

Non-pro starts $1499 for 24 cores, up to $4999 for 64 cores. Pro doesn't have pricing yet but is offered from 12 to 96 cores.

Be interested in seeing what mobo pricing is like. With Intel's two tiers of WS offerings, I actually found the higher one more interesting since the lower one wasn't cheap enough for the losses. I wonder if AMD will follow a similar path. I think a 12 or 16 core non-pro would have been sweet, especially if mobo pricing could be controlled.

Edit: Intel nearest offerings for comparison:
W-3400 series: 12-56 cores, 112 5.0 lanes, 8 channel ram. $1189-$5889
W-2400 series: 6-24 cores, 64 5.0 lanes, 4 channel ram. $359-$2189

 

[EarthDog]

I miss seeing HEDT. Good way to bridge the gap between, I can't afford real server stuff and desktop isn't enough. Overkill for my uses, but incredibly fun to play with nonetheless.

 

[Railgun]

Will be a nice upgrade when I see the MB selection.

 

[Woomack]

I bet I could get some RAM kits for reviews, but probably no one will send a motherboard, not to mention the CPU. It's like $2k above my current budget in the cheapest Pro option
It's hard to call it HEDT anymore. Prices are too high to put a desktop there.

 

[mackerel]

It's hard to call it HEDT anymore. Prices are too high to put a desktop there.

AMD only describe the non-Pro as HEDT. I think the problem we have now is there is no lower high end desktop. LHEDT? Historically on Intel side at least, low end HEDT started about the same point as high end consumer. When I was considering X99, it was 5820k vs 6700k. CPU was near enough same price, slightly more for the X99 mobo but not a deal breaker. Similarly for X299, 2017 was a busy year. We had 7700k at the start, 8700k at the end, and X299 in the middle. I got 7800X at the time.

Now 7960X is ball park 2x the highest consumer CPU, 7950X3D? And I don't expect matching mobos to cost anywhere near consumer tier ones.

 

[Woomack]

HEDT, as we know, died with X299. Intel went with workstation Xeons and AMD with Threadrippers Pro. It wouldn't be a problem if not the prices. Since regular desktop series went up in price and motherboards are at sick prices right now, it's obvious that higher series have to cost even more. The cheapest reasonable option is $1k for CPU and $1k for mobo ... and we still need RAM and other things. Stupid people pay for everything, even though prices are ridiculous. However, the same is with other things like smartphones. Each new generation prices are higher and the user's experience is without significant changes.
AMD X3D CPUs are something "new". It's like a series dedicated to gamers; there was nothing like that before, and there is nothing similar on the Intel side, as Intel CPUs are not focused only on home/gaming computers but also on cheaper workstations. I mean all those branded PCs.

Right now, I see no point in non-Pro Threadripper, and the Pro version costs too much. Even a 12-core CPU with 8-channel RAM would be fun to play with ... but it's like $3k for the test rig.

 

[Railgun]

There’s a $150 uptick difference between the difference of the then top Ryzen vs TR for Zen 2 as there is for Zen 4 ($650 vs $800). Is that $150 increase justified? Meh. “Trying economic times.” Or, “Inflation.” This is of course, not including motherboards, considering there is jack regarding any motherboard product yet. Even Gigabyte has pulled their page.

Would need to scrape Zen 2 threads to see if similar comments about the gulf between were made.

 

[TerranBrackiatt]

i will be watching this thread for sure...

since i'm mostly a gamer... (who does a minor bit of audio editing)
~ i prefer the lower Core count so i don't need to disable at least half the cores.
~ i'm certainly curious about OC'd RAM [5200 seems way too slow for gaming after DDR4 basically swet-spotted at 3600 without professional tweaking (for AM4 rigs), yeah, i'm thinking 7200 (DDR3 was base 1600, x2 is 3200 for DDR4, so another x2 is 7200 for DDR5)]
~ i hope mobo pricing doesn't go insane
. ~ is it sad that i bought the Extreme mobo for aesthetics? mainly the direction of the plugs on the right, "front" edge of the board?
. ~ with more lanes, hopefully something like the Extreme mobos can exist for reasonable prices without needing those extra NVMe DIMM-style slots next to the RAM, as one can use the PCIe x16 cards to add more NVMe's
~ more lanes means more NVMe's and possibly more GPUs (if DX12 Ultimate actually works like they hype it, being able to utilize multiple GPUs without SLI-style bridges), without having to shuffle lanes correctly
. ~ caveat: NVMe's benefit load times for MMO's, but don't seem to make a difference in offline games compared to SATA SSDs, but at least more lanes gives more options for upgrading.