2023-10-26 06:03:06
A year ago, AMD launched its architecture Zen 4 and associated Ryzen 7000 processors. This range was very well received, because AMD brought good architectural developments with measured consumption and excellent performance. Over the year, the company added mobile chips to the range, but also versions for servers (Epyc) and versions designed for gamers (the Ryzen 7000 “3D”). There was only one box missing in the range: the very high-end “general public”.
AMD is cutting into Intel’s croupiers.
We are talking here about the Threadripper range and its Threadripper Pro variant, two lines of processors which target workstations but also performance enthusiasts. AMD has always highlighted the number of cores in this series: 16 cores in 2017 (Threadripper 1000), 32 cores in 2018 (Threadripper 2000) and 64 cores in 2020 (Threadripper 3000). These chips are the equivalent of Intel’s Core
The Threadripper 7000 range (to follow the Ryzen 7000) therefore uses the architecture Zen 4 with chips equipped with 24 to 64 cores (with SMT, the equivalent ofHyper-Threading which allows two threads to be executed on one core). The frequency is high (up to 5.1 GHz on the high end) and the chips support a lot of PCI-Express lines. This year we find 48 PCI-Express 5.0 lines and 32 PCI-Express 4.0 lines, enough to support numerous GPUs or NVMe SSDs.
Pro or not Pro?
In addition to the Threadripper 7000, AMD also offers “Pro” versions, which go up to 96 cores. The maximum frequency remains the same, the TDP (consumption) too – 350 W – but the cache memory increases (it goes from 256 to 384 MB) as does the number of PCI-Express lines. The best CPUs support 128 PCIe 5.0 lanes and 8 PCIe 4.0 lanes. Another small difference between the classic versions and the Pro variants is the memory: the latter manage 8 DDR5 channels (compared to 4) and can accept 2 TB of RAM in total (compared to 1 TB). Please note, the platform is derived from servers and therefore requires RDIMM type memory, which is more expensive.
A fairly wide range
In the Threadripper 7000 Pro, the chips contain between 12 and 96 cores, with a price that is not known. For the classic Treadripper 7000, the 24-core version is priced at $1,500, the 32-core version goes for $2,500 and the 64-core variant is priced at $5,000. In addition to these fairly high prices, we must not forget the price of memory but also that of motherboards: AMD uses a new connector (the sTR5) and there are two chipsets, the TRX50 (for the general public) and the WRX90 (for workstations). Motherboards for this high-end platform are also offered at a fairly high price, and exceeding €1,000 is not uncommon.
The three “general public” variants
In an alternative world, these chips could have powered an “x86” Mac Pro, but in practice they are found in (very) high-end PCs and in workstations from major manufacturers like Lenovo.
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