A reason not to get the Pre-Production Threadrippers?

[WMGroomAK]

Thought this article was kind of interesting.  Apparently the guys over at Hot Hardware were testing an Alienware Area-51 TR system in Cinebench and AMD thought that the scores they were posting were a bit low.  So AMD contacted them with the suspicion that they were using a Pre-Production CPU in the Alienware and sent them a new production 1950X which bumped the Cinebench score from 2905 up to 3022.

https://hothardware.com/news/ryzen-threadripper-alienware-area-51-transplant

Quote

If you have not done so already, check out our hands-on coverage of Dell's Alienware Area-51 Threadripper Edition desktop with a pre-production Ryzen Threadripper 1950X processor inside. That sucker was decked out with 16GB of DDR4-2666 RAM, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti graphics card with 11GB of GDDR5X of onboard memory, and a 512GB M.2 NVMe PCI Express solid state drive flanked by a 1TB 7200 RPM hard drive for good measure. Woof!

 

After receiving the system and posting some benchmarks in Cinebench, AMD contacted us and said the scores we posted looked a little low. AMD suspected the Alienware Area-51 was running a pre-production Ryzen Threadripper 1950X CPU (which it was), so the company sent us a retail chip to re-test with, and we happily obliged. Below is a video the transplant, which itself is interesting due to the size of the Threadripper and unique way it's installed (compared to previous consumer CPUs). Check it out:

...

Those 16 cores and 32 threads clocked at 3.4GHz to 4GHz pounded Cinebench with a CPU score of 3,022. In our previous test with pre-production silicon, the same setup scored 2.905. While not a monumental jump, bear in mind that Cinebench is a brutal benchmark designed to reflect professional grade workloads, so a jump of more than 100 points is pretty impressive.

 

It's also nice to see that AMD was able to tweak and fine tune things for added performance from the time it shipped out engineering samples and pre-production CPUs. That means that all of the early benchmarks that leaked to the web are underselling what AMD's Ryzen Threadripper is capable of.

So I guess the question for the skeptic in me is did AMD send them a 'cherry-picked' CPU or is it better to wait for the full production CPUs?  Otherwise, as with all CPU launches, it does show that it is good to wait until after a product has fully launched to buy into the system...  

[RadiatingLight]

Any consumer systems will ship with a post-launch CPU. obviously.

so no matter when you pre-ordered, you would be getting the same CPU.

[Misanthrope]

Seems small enough that it might just be an OEM only SKU that's just clocked 50 mhz lower, tiny little bit less cache, etc.

[porina]

4% difference... I wonder if they did multiple runs to eliminate variation from that also. Assuming that difference is there, we could speculate on why they are different. I wouldn't expect functionality to be that different, unless the pre-release sample had things enabled or not enabled (to aid debugging perhaps) causing a performance variation.

[themctipers]

why would anyone get a pre production threadripper over getting a retail version? 

 

if you're buying threadripper, you probably are doing something that is sensitive to instability, and you shouldn't sacrifice stability over saving $10  

[Taf the Ghost]

3000 to 3200 Cinebench R15 scores is the expected range, depending on RAM speed and OC. That's been in the rumor mill for a couple of months. So it really does sound like they got an early version of the CPU that might not have had the better silicon. 

[porina]

3 minutes ago, themctipers said:

why would anyone get a pre production threadripper over getting a retail version? 

 

if you're buying threadripper, you probably are doing something that is sensitive to instability, and you shouldn't sacrifice stability over saving $10  

Cost is a big thing. Look at the ES Xeons on ebay. They go for a lot less than the retail versions. With enough price difference, a lot of people are going to look at it. I previously picked up a 14 core ES equivalent to a E5-2683v3 for less than the cost of an i5. The ES doesn't turbo as fast as the retail CPU eventually did, but it has done everything I can throw at it without problem so far. Even with the clock disadvantage, it is still about double the performance of a high end quad core.

 

Then again, there is no guarantee of any supply of pre-release Threadrippers. They might appear, they might not, and until they do their pricing will be anyone's guess.

[themctipers]

1 minute ago, porina said:

Cost is a big thing. Look at the ES Xeons on ebay. They go for a lot less than the retail versions. With enough price difference, a lot of people are going to look at it. I previously picked up a 14 core ES equivalent to a E5-2683v3 for less than the cost of an i5. The ES doesn't turbo as fast as the retail CPU eventually did, but it has done everything I can throw at it without problem so far. Even with the clock disadvantage, it is still about double the performance of a high end quad core.

 

Then again, there is no guarantee of any supply of pre-release Threadrippers. They might appear, they might not, and until they do their pricing will be anyone's guess.

I thought EPYC was server and threadripper was HEDT

[porina]

Just now, themctipers said:

I thought EPYC was server and threadripper was HEDT

Same socket, different marketing. Similar to how Intel 2011-3 covered both HEDT and server parts too. I run the Xeon on X99.

[themctipers]

2 minutes ago, porina said:

Same socket, different marketing. Similar to how Intel 2011-3 covered both HEDT and server parts too. I run the Xeon on X99.

yes

 

but shouldn't you still be buying EPYC for servers and not threadripper?

[Doobeedoo]

Nah. But looking forward to more tests and reviews. 

[Jito463]

8 minutes ago, porina said:

Same socket, different marketing. Similar to how Intel 2011-3 covered both HEDT and server parts too. I run the Xeon on X99.

Technically you could say they're the same socket, but from all reports, you can't run Epyc in a TR board and vice versa.

[WMGroomAK]

24 minutes ago, themctipers said:

why would anyone get a pre production threadripper over getting a retail version? 

I don't think that anyone would purposefully get a preproduction TR, however, if someone has a preorder in for a prebuilt OEM system, they may receive one of these chips and never know about it...  How big of a real world difference this will cause is probably negligible, however, it is something to consider if you are into buying prebuilt systems.

[LukaH]

hmm wonder if they contacted linus too. he got a 2866 score in CB in the LTX Vega/Area 51 video. But it seems he did a RAM swap not sure how that effected the score.

[porina]

26 minutes ago, Jito463 said:

Technically you could say they're the same socket, but from all reports, you can't run Epyc in a TR board and vice versa.

I haven't been following that closely so I haven't come across that. 

 

34 minutes ago, themctipers said:

but shouldn't you still be buying EPYC for servers and not threadripper?

If we got onto server from my earlier comment about Xeons, I apologise. I was using it mainly as a price example. Bottom line is, non-retail items which may perform differently will still have a market at the right price.

[themctipers]

19 minutes ago, porina said:

I haven't been following that closely so I haven't come across that. 

 

If we got onto server from my earlier comment about Xeons, I apologise. I was using it mainly as a price example. Bottom line is, non-retail items which may perform differently will still have a market at the right price.

their only market would be frugal buyers of HEDT i guess

to me, saving $50 on a CPU is not worth having the headaches in the future of it not working, having no warranty on it, not performing as good / overclock as good, etc (HEDT environment) 

[freewulf]

This just bad for Alienware

[porina]

1 minute ago, themctipers said:

their only market would be frugal buyers of HEDT i guess

to me, saving $50 on a CPU is not worth having the headaches in the future of it not working, having no warranty on it, not performing as good / overclock as good, etc (HEDT environment) 

I was thinking of a much bigger saving than that. Going back to my E5-2683v3 ES example, the Intel recommended price for that is $1846. No way I'm paying anywhere near that for it, and I didn't. I paid closer to 10% of that for the ES. Not suggesting it will ever happen, but hypothetically if there was a pre-production 1950X on offer for say $200, I think there will be a TON of interest.

[themctipers]

Just now, porina said:

I was thinking of a much bigger saving than that. Going back to my E5-2683v3 ES example, the Intel recommended price for that is $1846. No way I'm paying anywhere near that for it, and I didn't. I paid closer to 10% of that for the ES. Not suggesting it will ever happen, but hypothetically if there was a pre-production 1950X on offer for say $200, I think there will be a TON of interest.

pretty sure threadripper isn't that expensive

 

right now threadripper is brand new, and not even released yet, if someone is selling a preproduction one it wouldn't be for $200 since nobody even has one (consumer, ignoring reviewers)

 

its like selling an iphone 8 in august 2017, who the fuck would sell one for $800, let alone lower than $800

[Jito463]

8 minutes ago, freewulf said:

This just bad for Alienware

To be fair, this was a review piece, not a final production system, so it's not that big of a deal if they shipped it with a pre-production CPU.

[porina]

Just now, themctipers said:

pretty sure threadripper isn't that expensive

 

right now threadripper is brand new, and not even released yet, if someone is selling a preproduction one it wouldn't be for $200 since nobody even has one (consumer, ignoring reviewers)

AMD have put up their recommended pricing out already. We'll have to see what actually hits the shops soon enough. Also, I never said the pre-production CPU would be sold right now. More likely, it would be some time after launch. Everyone will have production samples then. Some of those might look at any early samples they got and think about shifting them. That's when they might go low on a well known auction site. When I got the previously mentioned Xeon, which is Haswell-EP, Broadwell-EP was already out. It was an earlier generation.

[freewulf]

1 hour ago, Jito463 said:

To be fair, this was a review piece, not a final production system, so it's not that big of a deal if they shipped it with a pre-production CPU.

Hopefully

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

No consumer should be buying pre-production of anything. There's a reason why car manufacturers will destroy their pre-production test units. When I say destroy, I mean they will destroy every piece. They will not part them out and sell them as parts. These cars can't be warrantied. There's no point potentially destroying your reputation by selling a few pre-production units for cheap. 

[handymanshandle]

1 minute ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

No consumer should be buying pre-production of anything. There's a reason why car manufacturers will destroy their pre-production test units. When I say destroy, I mean they will destroy every piece. They will not part them out and sell them as parts. These cars can't be warrantied. There's no point potentially destroying your reputation by selling a few pre-production units for cheap. 

Well I mean if it's the same part that's used in the production model and works just fine. I really don't see why they couldn't just re-use that part.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

7 hours ago, wcreek said:

Well I mean if it's the same part that's used in the production model and works just fine. I really don't see why they couldn't just re-use that part.

Well in the case of the automobile industry, they legally cannot sell pre-production units as a whole or in parts. For AMD, I don't see the point of risking the reputation of their new architecture over the sale of a few pre-production units. Because these pre-production units are tested and tortured, AMD can't guarantee their reliability in the long term. To us enthusiasts that could be getting these chips for cheap, that's fine. For AMD, if these units fail and reports come out that these chips are unreliable (remember, the mainstream media doesn't care about details), it's going to be hard for AMD to climb out of this hole that could've been avoided.