The AMD Threadripper 2 Teaser: Pre-Orders Start Today, Up to 32 Cores
by Ian Cutress on August 6, 2018 9:00 AM ESTEnough Jibber-Jabber, Show Me the Money Chips
All-in-all, the new chips look a lot like the old ones:
AMD sampled us the 2990WX and the 2950X for our launch day review. Both of these CPUs are coming out in August, first with the 2990WX on the 13th, and then with the 2950X on the 31st.
On the rear, there are slightly different component arrangements to account for the different dies that are active:
2990WX (left) and 2950X (right)
The packaging is certainly different, with AMD taking into account the public's commentary about the packaging from the first generation. My only feedback to AMD on this is to make the new CPU packaging stackable – as a reviewer having these chips around un-stacked is an organizational nightmare.
Also in the box is a Torx screwdriver for the socket and an Asetek water cooler bracket, as with the first generation.
If we add some EPYCness to the mix, there’s a pretty pattern. Here are 172 cores of Zen:
AMD also bundled two motherboards with the press kits: a second revision of the ASUS X399 Zenith Extreme, with a new VRM cooling kit, and the MSI X399 MEG Creation, the 19-phase monster seen at Computex.
At first, Summer wasn’t interested.
Then she had a sniff.
Now they are good friends. I think. (ed: Ian, if you kill that processor with static electricity, I will end you)
A side note about stacking. The processors do kind of stack on their own.
But this isn’t an advised strategy.
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edzieba - Monday, August 6, 2018 - link
The gate thickness limit was hit around Sandy Bridge time and has stuck even with process node scaling. "Moar Cores" scaling was chopped off at the knees by GPGPU. There's just not many places to go to gain performance without massive power consumption increases (and even that hits areal power density limits as overall process scale shrinks).mapesdhs - Monday, August 6, 2018 - link
The irony of all this is that threaded support within application software is generally still pretty terrible, with many pro apps still only using one core. If anything there's much more to gain with better written software, but good programmers are expensive, and these days grud knows where they'd come from given the woeful education standards of many modern edu places, at least in the West anyway. Probably have to poach them from south east Asia, Israel, etc.Alaa - Monday, August 6, 2018 - link
Never heard that good programmers exist in Israel.edzieba - Monday, August 6, 2018 - link
It's not really a case of 'just program better', dual cores have been commonplace for a decade now: any workload that could be easily threaded has long ago taken those double-performance gains (and quadruple for the now ubiquitous quad-cores). Many tasks simply do not subdivide easily in a way conducive to threading (no good splitting into a bunch of sub-tasks if all depends on results of the previous task). Unlike HPC workloads that fall under Gustafson's Law scaling, desktop workloads are firmly in Amdahl's Law territory.jospoortvliet - Tuesday, August 7, 2018 - link
I would say party of the issue is the tools, most programming languages still have not added much multithreaded tools. Rust and go are of course designed for it but they will take time to be adopted. Nice to see Firefox leading here!hetzbh - Monday, August 6, 2018 - link
Hmm, lets see..1. They call the TR 2990WX - "for workstation" solutions, yet it doesn't have even a shred of remote management neither on the Chipset nor any motherboard...
2. Pre sales are starting today, yet performance benchmarks are not allowed to be published today, so buy those CPU's based on ... what? hype?
Intel999 - Monday, August 6, 2018 - link
@hetzbhWhile early adopters have been known to buy based on hype in the past, they only need to use common sense to pull the trigger on the 2990WX.
Only someone as dense as a rock won't be able to see that they will be getting double digit percentage increases over an Intel alternative that still, comically, costs $200 more.
Oxford Guy - Wednesday, August 8, 2018 - link
Hype? Not really.GPUs often come in around MSRP for preorders then, when things like Ethereum hit, those who preordered saved money. They also avoided shortages.
Plus, there is Ebay to sell on if the item doesn't measure up to your expectations. People will buy anything on Ebay for high prices.
Cooe - Monday, August 6, 2018 - link
CPU's are ALWAYS released for pre-order before review embargo's left. AMD AND Intel. Nothing new / worth complaining about here folks.Oxford Guy - Wednesday, August 8, 2018 - link
And, people who buy prerelease items can most likely recoup their money by selling on Ebay if the CPUs or GPUs don't turn out to be all that great.