AMD’s 64-Core Threadripper 3990X, only $3990! Coming February 7th

[Flying Sausages]

https://www.anandtech.com/show/15318/amds-64core-threadripper-3990x-3990-sd

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The new 64-core AMD Threadripper 3990X is essentially a consumer variant of the 64-core EPYC 7702P currently for sale in the server market, albeit with fewer memory channels, fewer enterprise features, but a higher frequency and higher TDP. That processor has a suggested e-tail price (SEP) of $4450, compared to the new 3990X, which will have a $3990 SEP.

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Frequencies for the new CPU will come in at 2.9 GHz base and 4.3 GHz turbo, which is actually a bit more than I was expecting to see. No word on what the all-core turbo will be, however AMD's EPYC 7H12, a 64-core 280W CPU for the HFT market, is meant to offer an all-core turbo from 3.0-3.3 GHz, so we might see something similar here, especially with aggressive cooling. Naturally, AMD is recommending water cooling setups, as with its other 280W Threadripper CPUs. Motherboard support is listed as the current generation of TRX40 motherboards.

 

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AMD recommends that in order to maintain performance scaling with the 3990X that owners should have at least 1 GB of DDR4 per core, if not 2 GB. To be honest anyone looking at this chip should also have enough money in the bank to also get a 128 GB kit of good memory, if not 256 GB. As with other Threadripper chips, AMD lists the support as DDR4-3200, but the memory controller can be overclocked

Buy a $50k Mac Pro or build this 64 core 3990x Threadripper pc? If you are smart, you definitely will build this monster 3990x threadripper computer. 

That's right baby, only 4 weeks away than this 64 core and 128 thread threadripper will be on sale assuming if there is no issue in the supply or any technical issue to delay the 3990x sale date. 

 

@LinusTech 3990x is calling you, Mr. Tech Tips. 

[Antistatic12]

Here is Dr. Lisa Su's "massive" 3 screens of performance.

 

I don't think FreeSync was enabled

 

[cj09beira]

3 minutes ago, Antistatic12 said:

Here is Dr. Lisa Su's "massive" 3 screens of performance.

 

I don't think FreeSync was enabled

 

ya they forgot to enable eyefinity 

[TetraSky]

Not sure if that's expensive or not...

Whoever this is aimed at is probably salivating at it regardless of the price so there's that. Though I'm surprised it can turbo that high... But that's only on a few cores and not all cores, right?

[redbread123]

so they make it cost the name of it. not surprised because intel be like 7980xe 7,980$

 

wait nvm it's intel the XE stands for eXtra Economy? oh well 79,800+++++++++++$

 

lol 

[redbread123]

35 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

Not sure if that's expensive or not...

Whoever this is aimed at is probably salivating at it regardless of the price so there's that. Though I'm surprised it can turbo that high... But that's only on a few cores and not all cores, right?

no son, that right there is a 64c 128t benchmark shredding beast of a cpu 4k dollars is epic price

[SeraphicWings]

1 hour ago, TetraSky said:

Not sure if that's expensive or not...

Whoever this is aimed at is probably salivating at it regardless of the price so there's that. Though I'm surprised it can turbo that high... But that's only on a few cores and not all cores, right?

If you are wondering a $3990 CPU is expensive or not, just look at how it thrashes the TOTL server processor from Intel, and not just one but TWO of them in a dual configuration, and being ONE-FIFTH of the MSRP while we are at it.

 

This kind of CPU is aimed at extreme multi-threaded workload (though Linus would find a way for a 1 PC 16 gamers solution soon), where it requires stability over speed, so I assume the 4.2 boost clock is probably a short boost on a few cores, it should stay stable at around 3.2 to 3.5 all cores providing the cooling solution is adequate.

 

So unless Intel come up with something revolutionary, I'd say the Intel's entire prosumer and server market just got completely and absolutely obliterated by AMD at this point

[realpetertdm]

64 core CPUs finally unlocked for consumers. This is pretty freaking epic (pun?)

 

Slightly unrelated, but this just makes the Mac Pro more overpriced. A $50k workstation has 28 cores while there are 64-core CPUs in the consumer market for $4k. Threadripper's really fucking over the mac pro.

[SeraphicWings]

5 minutes ago, realpetertdm said:

64 core CPUs finally unlocked for consumers. This is pretty freaking epic (pun?)

 

Slightly unrelated, but this just makes the Mac Pro more overpriced. A $50k workstation has 28 cores while there are 64-core CPUs in the consumer market for $4k. Threadripper's really fucking over the mac pro.

I bet Apple has been malding ever since Zen 3 Threadripper was released months ago

 

This should be the last straw for Apple to finally ditch Intel and move to AMD, at least on prosumer and server product like the Mac Pro

[Commodus]

29 minutes ago, realpetertdm said:

64 core CPUs finally unlocked for consumers. This is pretty freaking epic (pun?)

 

Slightly unrelated, but this just makes the Mac Pro more overpriced. A $50k workstation has 28 cores while there are 64-core CPUs in the consumer market for $4k. Threadripper's really fucking over the mac pro.

Well, first, that $50K price is dictated by a whole lot more than the CPU...

 

I'd also like to see how that 64-core Threadripper stacks up against a 28-core Xeon -- notice how AMD compared it against a high-end consumer chip instead of the Xeon it's ostensibly competing against?  I still wouldn't be surprised if the Threadripper was ultimately faster, but I suspect the comparison would be considerably less flattering.

[sazrocks]

9 minutes ago, Commodus said:

Well, first, that $50K price is dictated by a whole lot more than the CPU...

 

I'd also like to see how that 64-core Threadripper stacks up against a 28-core Xeon -- notice how AMD compared it against a high-end consumer chip instead of the Xeon it's ostensibly competing against?  I still wouldn't be surprised if the Threadripper was ultimately faster, but I suspect the comparison would be considerably less flattering.

What are you talking about? They compared it against 2 28 core processors from intel.

[williamcll]

Overclocking this will really stress the motherboard. 

[RejZoR]

This ain't a gamer CPU. But if you get this encoding monster for 5x less than inferior Intel system, I'd say that's excellent value. And we're at point where AMD BIOS is mature enough to not really have any of those issues seen with first generation of Ryzen.

 

I just wish they'd also focus on gaming some more. Sure, give us moar cores, but there should be gaming series more focused on maximizing core clocks.

[porina]

I'm gonna need a $/core-GHz chart or something at this rate... this is exactly the product AMD needs to keep turning the thumbscrews on Intel. Few (but not none) will buy it, but solidifying their leadership position will help grow their lower products also.

 

I'd still throw caution in that, depending on the workload, a monolithic CPU can work better than multiple fragmented ones. 

[flashiling]

3 hours ago, sazrocks said:

What are you talking about? They compared it against 2 28 core processors from intel.

-snip-

seems like you won that encounter.

*tosses a gold coin*

[LAwLz]

3 hours ago, sazrocks said:

What are you talking about? They compared it against 2 28 core processors from intel.

Friendly reminder to never trust first party benchmarks because they are very often misleading to some degree. And yes, that is very much true for AMD as well. 

 

 

This seems like a really good chip, but I am starting to question who it is for. Servers will probably want to use EPYC, and at this price I can't see it ending up in many "prosumer" computers either. Workstations? If the processing needs are so high I'd hope the program offloads a lot of it to the GPU. If it can't do that I'd assume a renderfarm is used instead. 

I was screaming for more cores back when consumer and prosumer CPUs maxed out at 6 cores, but I think we have reached a point where more cores doesn't benefit us (and by us I mean people who aren't building servers, which is what EPYC is for). With the ever increasing prices I'm wondering if "more cores" is just an excuse to keep ramping up prices for what's considered "top of the line". It used to be 1000 dollars thst got you the best of the best. Now it's ~4000.

[porina]

17 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

This seems like a really good chip, but I am starting to question who it is for.

I think this is primarily a halo product. It demonstrates the best of the best and improves the perception of AMD and helps them to increase sales of lower CPUs. There will be some deep pocketed enthusiasts who will get it as a play thing regardless, but I suspect a good amount of them will go to the tech media/personalities and related to continue to spread the way of AMD. This will be a "must have" for top tier competitive overclockers, although they're probably all sponsored anyway so wont need to buy it themselves.

 

17 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

If the processing needs are so high I'd hope the program offloads a lot of it to the GPU. If it can't do that I'd assume a renderfarm is used instead. 

There are workloads that are simply not suited to GPUs which are much simpler in architecture. I guess the question is, what workloads are there that rely on a single system yet can be split over many cores?

 

In my personal interest area of prime number finding, a monolithic CPU is still best for performance scaling. Zen 2's Achilles heal is it's CCX structure which leads to fragmented L3 cache, and that limits the scaling somewhat in this use case, although still far better than NUMA for example. GPUs are an odd one here, they currently only have application in certain niches. I feel this is more a software/algorithm limitation that could be overcome in time, although some help is needed on the hardware side in providing adequate cache/bandwidth to enable the scaling. In that sense, many core CPUs are not so different from GPUs. Getting the data to where it is needed is as important or more so than actually doing the compute on it.

[realpetertdm]

4 hours ago, Commodus said:

Well, first, that $50K price is dictated by a whole lot more than the CPU...

 

I'd also like to see how that 64-core Threadripper stacks up against a 28-core Xeon -- notice how AMD compared it against a high-end consumer chip instead of the Xeon it's ostensibly competing against?  I still wouldn't be surprised if the Threadripper was ultimately faster, but I suspect the comparison would be considerably less flattering.

The CPU retails for $7000 and Apple charges $7000 for the upgrade.

 

 

[WereCat]

2 hours ago, RejZoR said:

This ain't a gamer CPU. But if you get this encoding monster for 5x less than inferior Intel system, I'd say that's excellent value. And we're at point where AMD BIOS is mature enough to not really have any of those issues seen with first generation of Ryzen.

 

I just wish they'd also focus on gaming some more. Sure, give us moar cores, but there should be gaming series more focused on maximizing core clocks.

umm... there is 

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

This seems like a really good chip, but I am starting to question who it is for. Servers will probably want to use EPYC, and at this price I can't see it ending up in many "prosumer" computers either. Workstations? If the processing needs are so high I'd hope the program offloads a lot of it to the GPU. If it can't do that I'd assume a renderfarm is used instead. 

It'll be used in a lot of workstations used for GPU compute, our researches want high end workstations with multiple GPUs but only a single socket as the GPUs can't be split across NUMA domains and PCIe boundaries through QPI links without being so harmful to performance having less is actually better. This is where TR would be so useful, those PCIe lanes that don't need to sit behind switch chips or PLX chips (which hurt performance too). Higher clocks also helps a lot too.

 

It's not like you'll buy the 3990X for this though, any TR will do. Anyone buying the 64 core model should be doing so to use the CPU cores, should.

 

There's a fair bit of academic computational research where many prefer to use a workstation or at least need to use one first before a server farm. I doubt these people and the 3D rendering (CPU) community are going to make these fly off the shelves though.

 

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

With the ever increasing prices I'm wondering if "more cores" is just an excuse to keep ramping up prices for what's considered "top of the line". It used to be 1000 dollars thst got you the best of the best. Now it's ~4000.

Yea $4000 for a non server part is too much, it's acceptable only in light of the very high-end workstations that do (or likely now used to) use Xeons. Intel already made that pointless with 18 cores on standard HEDT product line. When it comes to HEDT I'm not sure either company has a sound strategy at all in how they should sit in the market, it's not hurting them but I think they are losing sight of reality.

[greenhorn]

Looks very nice, but it seems to be a CPU solely made to hold the crown in the HEDT market in order to make a better impression on customers, which might boost sales of lower-end parts. At that price point, one could very well think about getting server parts.

32c/64t are nice, but if you factor in the maximum amount of RAM supported (still 256 GB as far as I know), that gives you "only" 4GB per thread if you use all 64 of them, which is not that much (I have used up more RAM per thread with some engineering simulations).

[williamcll]

I mean, the threadripper could do a lot of server work just not the really specialized ones.

[porina]

2 hours ago, williamcll said:

I mean, the threadripper could do a lot of server work just not the really specialized ones.

The differentiator there is more in the platform than the CPU. Server management stuff vs a more desktop-like experience. I suppose today, many buyers of server gear don't really need the server specific stuff, more it is the only way to get certain other features.

[Commodus]

9 hours ago, sazrocks said:

What are you talking about? They compared it against 2 28 core processors from intel.

Ah, thanks.  I'd only ever seen the slides comparing against the Core i9.

 

As LAwLz pointed out, though, you have to be careful about crowing over tests like this.  AMD, Intel, NVIDIA and others will always pick benchmarks that favor their hardware's strong points.  There's no doubt that "apps that can benefit from many cores" is a pretty good strong point to have, but this won't necessarily help with apps that have limited multithreading.

 

Also: what AMD also doesn't tell you is that the Xeon rig can support more than 256GB of RAM.  The Threadripper config would be useless in situations where you're memory-constrained... and yes, that happens in the market for workstations like the Mac Pro.

[Commodus]

4 hours ago, realpetertdm said:

The CPU retails for $7000 and Apple charges $7000 for the upgrade.

 

 

As I said, that $50K quoted price is only partly dictated by the CPU upgrade.  Most of it comes down to the 1.5TB of RAM, four workstation GPUs, the 8TB SSD... you get the idea.

 

Also, a dirty secret that Threadripper backers conveniently forget: even the 64-core model supports a maximum 256GB of RAM.  That's a lot, but it would also rule out high-end configs that some of Apple's customers will need.