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AMD Announces Ryzen Threadripper Pro: Workstation Parts for OEMs Only
- EricE 6y agoWith this I might be able to build a machine that can play Cities: Skylines with some speed when working on a large city!
- muro 6y agoI wondered when I can buy a AMD workstation with official ECC support, looks like that will finally be possible in September. Hope the price will be OK. There are higher base frequencies but lower turbo on the new TR Pro vs Ryzen 9: | name | CPUs | base | turbo| | 3955WX | 16/32 | 3900 | 4300 | | 3945WX | 12/24 | 4000 | 4300 | | 3950X | 16/32 | 3500 | 4700 | | 3900XT | 12/24 | 3800 | 4700 | Edit: the new, much higher TDP is not welcome news.
- lliamander 6y ago> the new, much higher TDP is not welcome news. The TDP is (in part) because the Epyc IO die consumes roughly 100W by itself. You can still cool a Threadripper on air though.
- tiffanyh 6y agoI firmly believe that TR (with their higher base freq) + ECC would be the ultimate SERVER. The TR 3970x in particular is amazing for a server. It's 32 core, all running at a base freq of 3.7Ghz. It's amazing to have that kind of high clock with so many cores.
- neurotixz 6y agoThis is probably part of the reason why it's OEM-only. That way AMD can control where it's used, avoiding it competing with it's own EPYC server chips.
- bryanlarsen 6y agoPeople typically run EPYC's at 4 sockets per U of rack space (2p-2u4n: 4 dual processor nodes in 2U). With these, you'd be lucky to get 1/4 of the density, more likely 1/8. Any savings on chips would be more than eaten up by rack fees.
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago> I wondered when I can buy a AMD workstation with official ECC support, looks like that will finally be possible in September. Hope the price will be OK. You don't have to wait. The current Ryzen 3000 series processors support ECC. ASUS, ASRock, and Gigabyte have several Ryzen 3000 motherboard options that support ECC RAM. Example: https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Pro-WS-X570-ACE/ https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Pro-WS-X570-ACE/
- binarycrusader 6y agoYes, but only a limited UDIMM variant which makes it much harder to source memory for. It's gotten a little easier over the last year, but these new Pro variants will have support for RDIMM, LRDIMM, etc. DIMMs which will make it much easier to find memory at a reasonable price.
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago16GB and 32GB ECC UDIMMs are easy to find and reasonably priced: https://www.cdw.com/product/samsung-ddr4-32-gb-dimm-288-pin-unbuffered/5899887 https://www.cdw.com/product/samsung-ddr4-32-gb-dimm-288-pin-... The real advantage of the PRO processors is that they support 8-channel memory and have more PCIe lanes. The higher TDP spec might allow for higher all-core turbo, too.
- kllrnohj 6y ago> The higher TDP spec might allow for higher all-core turbo, too. Same TDP spec as the existing non-pro threadrippers - 280W. > The real advantage of the PRO processors is that they support 8-channel memory and have more PCIe lanes. Those are advantages yes but the other DIMM types means you can also actually exceed 256GB of RAM, which with 64-cores is definitely also a bottleneck on the existing Threadripper lineup
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago> Same TDP spec as the existing non-pro threadrippers - 280W. The current 280W TDP Threadrippers are 24, 32, or 64 core. These new Threadripper PRO parts have 280W TDP even down to 16 and 12 core parts.
- parsimo2010 6y agoYou can already buy workstations with Epyc CPUs and have been able to for a while. ECC memory and more of it, plus extra PCI-E lanes.
- muro 6y agoNot from big OEMs, unfortunately.
- DCKing 6y agoRegular non-pro Threadripper has officially supported ECC from the start: https://www.amd.com/en/products/ryzen-threadripper https://www.amd.com/en/products/ryzen-threadripper The usual distinction is that Threadripper regular takes unbuffered ECC, whereas Threadripper Pro and Epyc take buffered ECC. But they're both ECC.
- znpy 6y agoI'm still mad that I cant buy the Ryzen 3600E processor (45W TDP) as it's reserved to OEMs. I know i'm sacrificing performances, but I want an energy-efficient processor.
- theevilsharpie 6y agoRyzen supports an Eco mode which will configure the power management functionality to assume a lower TDP. A Ryzen 3600 running in Eco mode will be functionally equivalent to a Ryzen 3600E.
- bearjaws 6y agoYou can lower the TDP on any Ryzen CPU, one time I accidentally set my power target to 15w instead of 150w, 8 cores at a blistering 1.2ghz.
- akerro 6y agoDepending on your needs, compromise on GPU and use SSD instead HDD. Take GPU like this one RX 570 https://www.newegg.com/sapphire-radeon-rx-570-100412p4gitxl/p/N82E16814202311 https://www.newegg.com/sapphire-radeon-rx-570-100412p4gitxl/... it's still good enough for many games, for me it's fine even with The Witcher 3, sure, not the top tier, but I also looked for energy efficient PC. As low energy Ryzens are hard to get, I took 5 3600 and compromised on GPU, storage and mobo.
- fabian2k 6y agoYou can set the TDP manually for the regular Ryzens, that does give you a significant reduction in power usage, at the cost of some performance. The difference in power usage is much larger than the drop in performance. I haven't followed the Ryzen versions like the 3600E you mentioned, so I'm not sure how much binning is done there to get power consumption even lower, but I'd guess that you can get most of the effect with a regular Ryzen and manually setting the TDP to 45W.
- sudosysgen 6y agoYou can buy a 3600 and mess around with p-states and voltages to get it to a lower power consumption.
- kinghajj 6y ago"However, it should be noted that these processors will only be available as part of pre-built systems, and no corresponding consumer motherboards will be made available." I'm pretty disappointed in this, but I suppose the market for such workstations leans more towards "large enterprise that needs reliability" than "hobbyist that needs low cost/likes to customize their rig."
- varispeed 6y agoIt doesn't sound like it is mutually exclusive. However restricting access to technology by AMD looks bad.
- smolder 6y agoIt doesn't really look bad to me... market segmentation isn't all about the silicon but the support and quality assurance. It seems like they want maximum control over quality for the big-spending money-making customers, which makes a lot of sense. What I'm surprised about is that they're branding this "Threadripper Pro" instead of branding it as a high end Epyc workstation chip. Threadripper is a watered down Epyc chip to start with, and all they've done here is raise base clocks, lower boost, and turn on the additional IO that Epyc already had which was disabled in TR.
- kinghajj 6y agoMy guess would be that they don't want to provide the same level of support/warranties for using these Threadripper Pro chips as mission-critical servers. Probably the expected lifetime is shorter due to increased voltage/thermals as a result of the higher clock frequencies.
- pdimitar 6y agoThat's pretty fascinating take (and I never thought of it as a possibility). Are you saying that these chips might last only like 2-3 years and one day just burn off on boot, even if cooled the best way possible?
- tiffanyh 6y agoSo how does this not cannibalize their Epyc business? It has higher base frequency than Epyc, typically a bit cheaper than Epyc and it now has up to 2TB of ECC RAM support. Not complaining. The perf/$ is amazing.
- theevilsharpie 6y agoPeople buying Epyc are concerned about perf/watt and density, which are both areas where Threadripper Pro isn't competitive with Epyc. There might be certain use cases where Threadripper Pro might displace Epyc, but for the most part, they aren't competing in the same markets.
- bitL 6y ago> People buying Epyc are concerned about perf/watt and density + Reliability and enterprise support
- simlevesque 6y agoYou can't buy just the CPU and build from scratch. If you want to do this you'll be stuck with Epyc.
- derision 6y agoIt does somewhat, which is why they're trying to control it through OEM channels.
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- parsimo2010 6y agoAMD, we're getting to the point of too many different product lines. I don't think that TR Pro adds anything that couldn't have already fit into regular Ryzen, Ryzen TR, or Epyc. Just for reference, we have: - Ryzen 3, 5, 7 which was fine - Ryzen Threadripper because for some reason we couldn't just call it Ryzen with a bigger number (maybe they anticipated needing the 9 later) - Epyc for servers that supports ECC memory - Now we have Ryzen 9 because Intel made Core i9 (I guess this makes sense for people comparison shopping) - Now we also have Threadripper Pro just because we can, not even as a response to Intel Epyc is the only distinction that needs to be made IMHO. The rest should just be Ryzen 3,5,7,9,11,13... for desktop parts. It's fine if Ryzen 11 and 13 had different sockets (like TR does). I don't need TR and I don't need TR Pro to denote product lines alongside the numbering scheme. I know this is a minor issue, but it shouldn't be that hard. Yeah, yeah, "there are only two hard problems in computer science..." But look at the crap that consumers have to deal with around USB naming and WiFi naming. Don't make CPU naming follow the same trend.
- onli 6y agoThreadripper was a halo product and does not use the same socket the Ryzen processors use. To give it its own series name was necessary, otherwise it would have lead to a lot of confusion. People would have bought Ryzen 11 expecting to run those processors on AM4 boards.
- parsimo2010 6y ago"It's fine if Ryzen 11 and 13 had different sockets (like TR does)." Intel uses a different socket for the i9-10980XE than they do for the i9-10900. They have done this in the past, it doesn't seem like it is an issue for them to put Extreme Edition (their halo line) into the same naming convention. They don't even make a new tier for it, they just stick it at whatever tier is highest.
- Macha 6y agoAnd it results in confusion like 10900X (a terrible CPU) vs 10900K. Why do you want one or the other? You probably don't want the i9-10900X, it's worse in every way except it works on the same socket as other Skylake-X parts. It has the same core count, on mostly an older version of the same architecture, at lower clocks, for higher power consumption, in a more expensive platform than the i9-10900X. In basically every use case, the extra clocks on the i7-10700K even make it superior for multi-threaded tasks despite having 25% less cores. So there's no simplification here. You can't look at i9-10900X and i7-10700k and go "Bigger numbers better, so simple". You're comparing the worst HEDT CPU to the upper end of consumer CPUs. The only reason to buy it is if you consider you're buying HEDT for the platform (you need the extra PCIe lanes). That information is not in Intel's model names, but AMD put it in theirs, which seems better at explaining that difference (also AMD don't have a third gen 16C/32T threadripper SKU to complete with their own 3950X).
- rbanffy 6y agoThat Lenovo box looks like quite a MacPro killer... Apart from the OS, of course.
- lliamander 6y ago> Apart from the OS, of course. Are you sure? I'm pretty sure it says that can come preconfigured with Linux :)
- vbezhenar 6y agoMac Pro is dead on arrival. Apple soon will abandon x86 and Mac Pro owners will have a choice between staying on old unpatched OS or paying that giga premium again. I think that it'll alienate even few remaining loyal workstation Apple customers.
- kjs3 6y agoI think that it'll alienate even few remaining loyal workstation Apple customers. Alienate them like every major transition Apple has ever made has (Classic MacOS->MacOSX, 68K->PPC, PPC->x86, NuBus->PCI, mono->color, all-in-one->expandable, etc., etc., etc.)? The thing about predicting the end of the world is that if you say it long enough and consistently enough, one day you'll be right. Be so kind as to let us know when Apple goes out of buisiness, will you?
- EricE 6y ago"Old unpatched OS" - Current Mac Pro's will likely have a minimum of 5 years of OS updates; probably 7 with Apple's past history, especially with the PowerPC to Intel transition. Power PC Macs had a LONG lifespan. Longer than the market that want's a Mac Pro keeps machines in production, anyway. Especially if the Apple Silicon Mac Pro's paste the Intel ones. Companies will change them out in a heart beat if they deliver solid productivity gains. Time is money is more than a pithy saying.
- eyesee 6y agoI think Mac Pro customers fall into two bins: 1) Genuine professional users who have demanding workloads and significant budgets, to which the price is not a barrier, and 2) Wealthy enthusiasts who always buy "the biggest and best available". If you're in category 1, you have a job to do today. Apple's roadmap isn't especially relevant as your job isn't going to wait 6 months to 2 years. If they are planning for the future, the decision tends towards the "safe bet". Mac Pro on Intel is a known quantity that works with their software and workflows today. Future Apple Silicon Mac Pro is a big unknown. They may choose to buy more Intel Pros today while they can, they may try the new ones when available. Or they might investigate switching platforms. I don't think sales here will be impacted greatly. Category 2 users may decide to wait to purchase a new Apple Silicon whatever when it comes out because they always want the latest and greatest. Whatever they decide to buy is cash in Apple's pocket. Either way, Mac Pro sales are a drop in the ocean in terms of Apple's revenue.
- bitL 6y agoAMD is becoming as user hostile as Intel; the only interesting Threadrippers for pros that need a lot of RAM, and all is restricted to OEMs only. After the x399 upgrade fiasco, here comes another blow to loyal users.
- derision 6y agoI'm a pro and have no qualms about an OEM machine. All my work machines have been OEM machines.
- smolder 6y agoThis doesn't strike me as user hostile at all. What is wrong with buying an OEM machine under warranty if you really have a use case for all that memory bandwidth? If you're custom building PCs, I really doubt you're under-served by their existing lineup. Any time savings you'd get working on a TR Pro machine over regular TR or Ryzen are probably negated by the time you spent fiddling around with assembling the computer and configuring it. IMO, there are too many computer enthusiasts out there fixated on having powerful machines as a sort of status symbol. It ends up being a waste of good computer parts.
- bitL 6y agoI am absolutely under-served by their existing line up - what's the point of a 64 core CPU that has only 256GB of RAM? That's only 2GB/thread. I can also build a far better machine than any OEM can provide me and select appropriate components for my needs, including a breathtaking case design that is nothing like a random workstation box provided by an OEM or a high-end water cooling for all subparts. If you are already spending money on 3990X, you can afford 1TB+ RAM, but there is no way... Assembling an own machine is a question of 2-3 hours tops. That's definitely a small fixed amount of time compared to life-time time savings - was that a joke?
- smolder 6y ago"breathtaking case design"? Is your reply a joke? What do you do with this powerful machine that you feel limited by 2GB per thread? What's stopping you from using Epyc if you need the ram? How long would it really take you to get back, say, 5 hours of building a computer, in cpu time savings from having a TR pro over regular TR? Maybe if you do video editing or a lot of compilation it would only take a month.
- Roritharr 6y agoThis is very saddening, I was looking forward to build a 16 core system on this platform to give me an insane amount of room for upgrade in the years to come. Threadripper 3960x will have to do then :(
- lliamander 6y agoThe CPU market is going to go through some pretty dramatic changes in the net year, especially with things like ARM possibly becoming the dominant architecture. I wouldn't try and future proof your system too much yet.
- TazeTSchnitzel 6y agoIt's weird how this is clearly not just slightly different SKUs of Threadripper like Ryzen Pro was to consumer Ryzen. Instead Ryzen Threadripper Pro seems to be EPYC in all but name?
- theevilsharpie 6y agoI'm not sure why they don't market it as an Epyc. (I suspect the TDP requirements exceed the limits of Epyc's SP3 socket.) Otherwise, it's essentially a single-socket Epyc with higher clock speeds and a higher TDP.
- foobarbazetc 6y agoPretty much the same as the P series EPYC chips, though they don’t seem to have SEV support and use a completely new chipset/socket instead of SP3.
- wmf 6y agoI have a feeling "WRX80" is a different name for SP3.
- soygul 6y agoThreadripper 3990X (also 64-core) can draw up to 1000 Watts (!) if you can keep it cooled and let the clock multiplier loose. [1] I imagine it would be nice to have a mini-AWS at home. Not sure how it would feel like to have a 1K Watt space heater permanently running though. [1] https://hothardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-threadripper-3990x-cpu-review?page=7 https://hothardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-threadripper-3990x...
- sandworm101 6y agoAt that sort of power level one could theoretically capture the heat and cycle it back into the board as electricity. How long before we see a little stirling engine spinning away atop AMD chips?
- tim44 6y agoJust run the whole thing off steam and a boiler. Can you imagine having a whistle too.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y agoWouldn't that kill cooling speed and thus kill your clock speed?
- zrm 6y agoThose sort of high wattage configurations are only really useful for seeing your system at the top of the benchmarking charts. Nearly everything that scales to 64 cores will scale to multiple machines, at which point you're getting much better performance per watt by adding a machine which doubles performance at double the power than by unlimiting clock speed which gives you a small percentage improvement in performance in exchange for quadruple the power consumption.
- sbierwagen 6y agoThe smaller the temperature difference, the worse the efficiency. The linked article said it got up to 85C, if you assume the cold end gets down to 25C, you could only recover 16.753% of the thermal power as useful work, theoretical maximum Carnot cycle.
- pdimitar 6y agoI really don't want to buy an NVIDIA Quadro RTX 4000/6000/8000. I want a very high-end non-GPU-focused workstation where I can pick any videocard since I'll also do some occasional gaming on it and I'd like that to be fast -- so an RTX 2080 Ti would be enough (although both NVIDIA and AMD promised better consumer cards than the 2080 Ti until the end of the year so that is interesting to keep an eye on as well). I'm quite OK with the limit of 1TB of RAM but the forced buy of a Quadro card is an absolute nope from me. I hope that when other vendors are allowed to build TR Pro machines that some of them will actually give you a bit more choice.
- ivalm 6y agoIve previously (aftermarket) added consumer GPUs to an hpe proliant server in a non-dc environment (using pcie riser card). Main issue was lack of appropriate supplemental power cabling, so I had to run a separate (consumer) power supply for supplemental power connection (but still from same ups/ground). I guess it would be possible to add a graphics card of your choice to this workstation as well.
- pdimitar 6y agoWell, I'm hopeful that this will not happen with the P620 since it seems to be in ATX form factor. And the Quadro cards use more watts than a 2080 Ti.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- lliamander 6y agoYou can do as low as a Quadro P620 for the GPU option. You could then add in your own consumer card. I think the main thing here with the list of choices in the need to provide ISV certification.
- pdimitar 6y agoThat would be a nice workaround. How do you know though? Is there an online configurator already? But won't opening the box to add your own GPU void warranty? This workstation kind of gives off that vibe of a professional machine that's pre-built for you and you're not supposed to open it. Hope I'm wrong.
- 013a 6y ago> There is also a small difference in DRAM support – TR Pro supports up to 2 TB, but EPYC supports 4 TB. All of the Ryzen Threadripper Pro processors are single socket only. This is probably a small misprint; EPYC only supports 2TB per socket, or 4TB on multi-socket boards. In that regard, TRPro looks like its just a re-branded EPYC chip.