The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3960X and 3970X Review: 24 and 32 Cores on 7nm
Today's launch covers two products: the 24-core TR 3960X and the 32-core TR 3970X. Both of these processors are built from four Zen 2 chiplets paired with a single I/O die, with each chiplet having 6 cores or 8 cores respectively. Both CPUs support 64 PCIe 4.0 lanes, four DDR4-3200 memory channels, and are built on a new sTRX4 socket with a new all-AMD TRX40 chipset.
[...] I have never used the word 'bloodbath' in a review before. It seems messy, violent, and a little bit gruesome. But when we look at the results from the new AMD Threadripper processors, it seems more than appropriate.
[...] AMD has scored wins across almost all of our benchmark suite. In anything embarrassingly parallel it rules the roost by a large margin (except for our one AVX-512 benchmark). Single threaded performance trails the high-frequency mainstream parts, but it is still very close. Even in memory sensitive workloads, an issue for the previous generation Threadripper parts, the new chiplet design has pushed performance to the next level. These new Threadripper processors win on core count, on high IPC, on high frequency, and on fast memory.
AMD Pre-Announces 64-core Threadripper 3990X: Time To Open Your Wallet
Ever since AMD announced its latest enterprise platform, Rome, and the EPYC 7002 series, one question that high-end desktop users have been wondering is when the 64-core hardware will filter down into more mainstream markets. White today AMD is announcing their Threadripper 3000 platform with 24-core and 32-core processors, the other part of AMD's announcement today is that yes, they will be selling 64-core hardware to the masses, in the form of the Threadripper 3990X.
AMD isn't giving too many details away just yet. As we predicted, there was room at the top of AMD's naming strategy to expose more Threadripper hardware: one does not simply stop as the 3970X being the most powerful processor, and the 3990X will certainly take the mantle. AMD is announcing today that the 3990X will have 64 cores, 128 threads, and will have the full 256 MB of L3 cache.
Previously: 64-Core AMD Threadripper CPUs Suggested by Release of Cooler
AMD Announces 3rd-Generation Threadripper CPUs, Ryzen 9 3950X available on November 25th, and More
Related Stories
Arctic's Freezer 50 TR Air Cooler w/ RGB for AMD's Threadripper Launched
The manufacturer does not disclose the cooler's rated TDP, but says that it can cool down Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX as well as CPUs 'of 32 cores and beyond'. So as we've seen with some other air coolers of this size (which can handle upwards of 340W) it's a reasonable bet that the 50 TR can dissipate at least 250 W of heat, leaving some additional headroom for overclocking and/or future processors with a higher TDP.
The back of the box says "It is an extremely powerful cooling solution for AMD sTR4 Threadripper® CPU, capable of efficiently and quietly cooling even 32- and 64-core CPUs with a TDP up to 250 W." sTR4 = Socket TR4.
Other leaks suggest that 24-core and 32-core Threadripper models will launch in November, alongside the 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X, while 48-core and 64-core models will launch in January 2020. Some features, including 8-channel memory support, may require new motherboards.
Here's a speculated lineup of a 24-core 3960X, 32-core 3970X, 48-core 3980X, and 64-core 3990X alongside older models.
AMD has announced its latest Threadripper high end desktop CPUs, along with a launch date for the Ryzen 9 3950X:
AMD is set to close out the year on a high note. As promised, the company will be delivering its latest 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X processor, built with two 7nm TSMC chiplets, to the consumer platform for $749. Not only this, but AMD today has lifted the covers on its next generation Threadripper platform, which includes Zen 2-based chiplets, a new socket, and an astounding 4x increase in CPU-to-chipset bandwidth.
Reviews of the 16-core 3950X will appear on November 14, with retail availability on November 25. The "mainstream" CPU has a 3.5 GHz base clock, 4.7 GHz single-core boost clock, and 24 PCIe 4.0 lanes. Unlike most Ryzen CPUs, the 3950X will not come with a bundled cooler, and AMD has published a list of recommended coolers instead.
All Ryzen 3000-series CPUs can now be configured to use a lower TDP using AMD's software:
AMD Announces Ryzen Threadripper Pro 5000 WX-Series: Zen 3 For OEM Workstations
In 2020, AMD released a new series of workstation-focused processors under its Threadripper umbrella, aptly named the Threadripper Pro series. These chips were essentially true workstation versions of AMD's EPYC server processors, offering the same massive core counts and high memory bandwidth as AMD's high-performance server platform. By introducing Threadripper Pro, AMD carved out an explicit processor family for high-performance workstations, a task that was previously awkwardly juggled by the older Threadripper and EPYC processors.
Now, just under two years since the release of the original Threadripper 3000 Pro series, AMD is upgrading that lineup with the announcement of the new Threadripper Pro 5000 series. Based on AMD's Zen 3 architecture, the newest Threadripper Pro chips are designed to up the ante once more in terms of performance, taking advantage of Zen 3's higher IPC as well as higher clockspeeds. Altogether AMD is releasing five new SKUs, ranging from [core/thread counts of] 12c/24t to 64c/128t, which combined with support for 8 channels of DDR4 across the entire lineup, will offer a mix of chips for both CPU-hungry and bandwidth-hungry compute tasks.
[...] It should be noted that these new processors will be OEM-only, at least for now. This means that anyone looking to leverage AMD's Ryzen Threadripper Pro 5000 WX-series processors will need to turn to Lenovo (or eventually, other applicable vendors) to obtain a complete system.
AMD's 64-core, 128-thread processor for workstation/"prosumer"/enthusiast users has been reviewed:
- The 64 Core Threadripper 3990X CPU Review: In The Midst Of Chaos, AMD Seeks Opportunity
- AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X Offers Incredible Linux Performance
- System76 Launches Impressive Line Of Thelio Major Linux Workstations Powered By AMD Ryzen Threadripper - Including The 3990X
- CPUs From 2004 Against AMD's New 64-Core Threadripper 3990X + Tests Against FX-9590
- AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X 64 Core, The Ultimate HEDT CPU For $4000 US Unleashed – MSI, ASRock & ASUS Break Several World-Records
- Review: AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X - 64 processor cores and 128 threads in one CPU package
In summary, it's fast and power efficient. Many applications won't benefit from more than 32 cores, and different versions of Windows 10 handle 128 threads differently.
Linus Torvalds Just Made A Big Optimization To Help Code Compilation Times On Big CPUs
For those using GNU Make in particular as their build system, the parallel build times are about to be a lot faster beginning with Linux 5.6 for large core count systems. This landing just after the AMD Threadripper 3990X 64-core / 128-thread CPU launch is one example of systems to benefit from this kernel change when compiling a lot of code and making use of many GNU Make jobs.
Linus Torvalds himself changed around the kernel's pipe code to use exclusive waits when reading or writing. While this doesn't mean much for traditional/common piping of data, the GNU Make job-server is a big benefactor as it relies upon a pipe for limiting the parallelism. This technique though employed by the GNU Make job server is inefficient with today's high core count CPUs as all of the spawned processes are woken up rather than a single reader to be woken upon a writer's release.
Previously:
AMD Announces Ryzen 4000-Series Mobile Chips, 64-Core Threadripper Release Date, and More
AMD's Threadripper 3960X and 3970X Reviewed; 64-core 3990X Confirmed
AMD Announces 3rd-Generation Threadripper CPUs, Ryzen 9 3950X available on November 25th, and More
64-Core AMD Threadripper CPUs Suggested by Release of Cooler
AMD has announced its new Ryzen 4000-series mobile APUs for laptops, including 8-core parts for both 15W and 45W TDPs. The new chips all support up to 64 GB of LPDDR4X memory.
At the 15W TDP, Ryzen 7 4800U has 8 "7nm" Zen 2 cores (16 threads), and 8 "7nm" Vega graphics compute units (CUs) which perform better than the 11 Vega CUs from the previous generation, due in part to a much higher 1750 MHz clock speed. There is also an 8c/8t/7CU Ryzen 7 4700U, 6c/12t/6CU Ryzen 5 4600U, 6c/6t/6CU Ryzen 5 4500U, and 4c/4t/5CU Ryzen 3 4300U.
At the 45W TDP, Ryzen 7 4800H has 8c/16t at a 2.9 GHz base frequency (compared to 1.8 GHz for the 4800U), but only 7 graphics CUs. Ryzen 5 4600H has 6c/12t with 6 CUs, and the Ryzen 7 4800HS is identical to 4800H except for a lower TDP, and will be an ASUS exclusive chip for the first six months.
At the low end, there are two new Zen-based 15W laptop chips, a 2 core, 4 thread Athlon Gold 3150U, and a 2 core, 2 thread Athlon Silver 3050U.
AMD's 64-core Threadripper 3990X will be available on February 7th for $3,990, double the price of the 32-core TR 3970X. A 48-core version was not mentioned.
AMD has launched Radeon RX 5700M and RX 5600M discrete GPUs for laptops to complement the RX 5500M that was previously launched. A mid-range Radeon RX 5600 XT desktop GPU was also announced.
Also at cnet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 26 2019, @04:04PM (7 children)
You are not going to be able to take advantage of 64c/128t with less than 2gb per thread. And once you have so much, you are going to want it to be ecc. Does threadripper 3k support ecc memory? What about the motherboard? AMD is just so ahead of the curve here I hope there aren't annoying problems that pop up.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 26 2019, @04:29PM
64 cores should be enough for anybody.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Mojibake Tengu on Tuesday November 26 2019, @04:34PM (1 child)
That depends on the code you can run. With lockless data structures, it is possible and often quite useful to have many threads running effectively in the same address space.
Rust programming language offends both my Intelligence and my Spirit.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday November 28 2019, @06:08PM
Also re your current signature; Yeriḥo. Karthāgō. Sogdiana. Besièrs. 広島市 (Hiroshima-shi). For Love of God, what next?
There's no need to give Hiroshima twice. You can add the -shi if you think that's correct, but you're writing all the others in the latin script, with a few extensions a la ipa, unless you're deliberately trying to mark the last as super-duper special?
We don't even know what happened at Jericho. It was one of the earliest population centres in the world, one of the earliest areas to convert grass to cereal, but it also appears to have been depopulated multiple times, either simply by climate change or otherwise. The walled city described in the bible could be a memory of a time several centuries before Moses, but they cannot be historically accurate.
Nor should expect them to be. How many hints do you need?
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 5, Informative) by EvilSS on Tuesday November 26 2019, @04:59PM
(Score: 4, Informative) by richtopia on Tuesday November 26 2019, @08:00PM
256GB ECC is supported.
https://www.amd.com/en/chipsets/str40 [amd.com]
Example board with 256GB support: https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/Creator-TRX40/Specification [msi.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday November 26 2019, @09:23PM
Look out for a possible announcement of 8-channel memory versions in January.
Basis: https://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-threadripper-3000-cpu-trx4-wrx8-quad-octa-channel-memory-support/ [wccftech.com]
https://www.gamersnexus.net/news-pc/3510-hw-news-threadripper-8-channel-4-channel-leaks [gamersnexus.net]
Based on the second link, it drops to 1 DIMM per memory channel but adds support for the server memory types. So you have a chance of actually reaching 2 TB RAM, as long as you have the $$$.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @03:23AM
I'm pretty sure it supports ECC. Even AMD's more desktop oriented CPUs have had "semi-official" and unofficial ECC support:
https://www.overclock3d.net/news/cpu_mainboard/amd_confirms_that_ryzen_supports_ecc_memory/1 [overclock3d.net]
https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/hardware/motherboards-chipsets/23509-amd-am3-unbuffered-ecc-ram-supporting-motherboards [phoronix.com]