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A March 2022 Threadripper product would all but certainly just be a Zen 3 update. So compare the performance gains going from a 3950X to a 5950X or from Epyc 70

A March 2022 Threadripper product would all but certainly just be a Zen 3 update. So compare the performance gains going from a 3950X to a 5950X or from Epyc 7002 to 7003. Just that but applied to Threadripper (so something like +15% performance)

pdimitar 5y ago
Thank you. In the HEDT space a 15% improvement is quite good though. And I am not sure Zen 4 Threadrippers would even be available this year but who knows. Plenty of rumours. I better start saving up money because I want to invest in a workstation that will last me at least 10 years (minus SSD wear). And Zen 4 / PCIe v5 / DDR-5 look preeeeeeeetty good.
jagger27 5y ago
I don’t understand the logic of waiting so long to launch an already outdated platform when Zen 4 is nearly ready to go. It’s just so late in the product cycle. I agree that a March launch would mean it would be on Zen 3.
- kllrnohj 5y ago
  Zen 4 is on TSMC 6nm and so is the new line of laptop skus running Zen3+, so I'd guess that they are just waiting for sufficient volumes to release another 7nm Zen 3 product. Epyc & Ryzen almost certainly pull much higher volumes for AMD than TR/TR Pro, and although Ryzen at least has been mostly available for the past couple months it was in short supply for quite a while there. I'd guess they planned on TR / TR Pro being a quicker followup after Epyc 7003 launched, but then chip capacity just wasn't there to justify it. And now it probably is, especially as their new stuff is on a different node.
  - jagger27 5y ago
    But from a product perspective if there are still no competitors to the extant 2019 Threadripper SKUs, what's the point of such a minor bump today? I don't buy the capacity argument for the exact reason you mention: it's low volume. That's the whole beauty of the Zen architecture, right? They can shift capacity around after the wafer stage. The way I see it, Zen 2 Threadripper is still a good enough product for its goals of a shit load of cores. Zen 3 didn't increase core counts, but Zen 4 does. My suspicion is that AMD probably overproduced Zen 2 TR and is letting its supply run down until it can launch another category redefining product built on Zen 4. Plus, it would look even better in their comparison charts.

pdimitar 5y ago

Thank you. In the HEDT space a 15% improvement is quite good though. And I am not sure Zen 4 Threadrippers would even be available this year but who knows. Plenty of rumours. I better start saving up money because I want to invest in a workstation that will last me at least 10 years (minus SSD wear). And Zen 4 / PCIe v5 / DDR-5 look preeeeeeeetty good.

jagger27 5y ago

I don’t understand the logic of waiting so long to launch an already outdated platform when Zen 4 is nearly ready to go. It’s just so late in the product cycle. I agree that a March launch would mean it would be on Zen 3.

kllrnohj 5y ago
Zen 4 is on TSMC 6nm and so is the new line of laptop skus running Zen3+, so I'd guess that they are just waiting for sufficient volumes to release another 7nm Zen 3 product. Epyc & Ryzen almost certainly pull much higher volumes for AMD than TR/TR Pro, and although Ryzen at least has been mostly available for the past couple months it was in short supply for quite a while there. I'd guess they planned on TR / TR Pro being a quicker followup after Epyc 7003 launched, but then chip capacity just wasn't there to justify it. And now it probably is, especially as their new stuff is on a different node.
- jagger27 5y ago
  But from a product perspective if there are still no competitors to the extant 2019 Threadripper SKUs, what's the point of such a minor bump today? I don't buy the capacity argument for the exact reason you mention: it's low volume. That's the whole beauty of the Zen architecture, right? They can shift capacity around after the wafer stage. The way I see it, Zen 2 Threadripper is still a good enough product for its goals of a shit load of cores. Zen 3 didn't increase core counts, but Zen 4 does. My suspicion is that AMD probably overproduced Zen 2 TR and is letting its supply run down until it can launch another category redefining product built on Zen 4. Plus, it would look even better in their comparison charts.