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AMD 16-Core ThreadRipper Enthusiast CPUs to Reportedly Utilize 4094 Pin Socket

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Re: AMD 16-Core ThreadRipper Enthusiast CPUs to Reportedly Utilize 4094 Pin Socket

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The i9 isn't new. Its a rebranded Skylake-X/KabyLake-X chip. This has been on their roadmap for over a year [1]; they just changed the name to trick consumers into thinking its something new. The hype between here and reddit about i9 is astounding to me. You've been able to get an i7 in a 10 core variant for a year now [2]. Need 6 cores? Take a time machine back to Q3'11 and pick up an i7 3930k [3]. And if you needed…

The problem is of course the fact that 6+ i7 chips don't actually fit the consumer motherboards, but you need to go to the server segment where MBs are significantly more expensive and lack a whole slew of additional features nice for desktop machines.

Intel have a high end desktop chipset related to the server boards which is used in such cases.

X79, X99, both are related to equivalent server chipsets in C602 and C612 respectively. Yes boards are more expensive but the HEDT platform has all the features you'd expect of a consumer/enthusiast board. also the high end i7s are all met with equivalent non overclockable Xeon E5-1* processors

Re: AMD 16-Core ThreadRipper Enthusiast CPUs to Reportedly Utilize 4094 Pin Socket

#72
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Mostly agree, but AMD's TDP estimates are slightly optimistic and in reality Ryzen's power usage is much closer to its Intel counterparts.

Unfortunately AMD and Intel don't use the same definition for TDP (look up AMD APC). AMD's values are more related to average power consumption during whatever they consider to be typical use. Intel's values on the other hand are more about the upper limit of power usage, "how high can it go" sort of thing. Both the average power and maximum power are useful bits of info, but it's obviously confusing and opaque for t…

Didn't Intel try to do the same thing with SDP?

Re: AMD 16-Core ThreadRipper Enthusiast CPUs to Reportedly Utilize 4094 Pin Socket

#73
post #36

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What about a socket that is like USB-C, there is no wrong way to insert it. Though I imagine such a socket would be an insane task to complete and have numerous problems with latency and speed.

Waste of pins. You would need to quadruple number of pins or so (with a square shape, it may be worth to just have rectangular to just double). It is possible, fairly sure, but not really practical.

Or maybe only double the pins, if you no longer make it square. But you're right, it's a waste of time and money.

Re: AMD 16-Core ThreadRipper Enthusiast CPUs to Reportedly Utilize 4094 Pin Socket

#74
post #67

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Cores come at a power cost. This is why Intel has been hesitant to move to consumer 8 or 16 core CPUs. There's a lot of pushback on using this much power and serious environmental concerns. Intel's engineering has been focused on power savings, so they've actually been going the opposite way for years now on the consumer end. This is also why you won't been seeing these 16c chips on non-specialist Dells and HPs. They…

The main reason they've been doing that is because it's been much easier to lower power consumption per core than increase performance per core. This way they could still claim "significant improvements" year over year. It's also a way better strategy to make "better server chips", because it means you can add more cores.

That's assuming there's no trivial single-core advancements possible at this fab size, which there might not be. The run up to Ryzen had a lot of AMD types cheering about "lazy" intel getting beat but Ryzen's per core performance is on par with a 2600k from 2011 and is consistently edged out by a 7700k at the same, or below, pricing.

Also Intel's gains have been modest, but very real outside of power savings. CPU passmark benchmark:

2600k (2011) : 8484

7700k (2016): 12196

Both are 4 cores so its a one-to-one comparison. A ~30% increase per core is pretty impressive this late in the Moore's law game. If it wasn't then we'd see Ryzen doing much better per core, but its not. My workloads cannot make effective use of 8 cores so its academic that I can buy a 8c chip now. It would literally be downgrade from my intel for me.

Re: AMD 16-Core ThreadRipper Enthusiast CPUs to Reportedly Utilize 4094 Pin Socket

#75
post #13

I wonder why it needs so many pins? It only has 4 DDR channels, which is going to be a bottleneck keeping those cores fed. 8 channels would be more appropriate for 16 cores and it would explain why so many pins.

The Naples chips also have 4094 pins and do have 8 channels as well as support for 2+ CPUs per board. Maybe these Threadripper chips are Naples chips where memory controllers or interprocessor communication controllers failed QA?

> Maybe these Threadripper chips are Naples chips where memory controllers or interprocessor communication controllers failed QA?

I'd be highly surprised if they were anything else.

Re: AMD 16-Core ThreadRipper Enthusiast CPUs to Reportedly Utilize 4094 Pin Socket

#76
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is of course the fact that 6+ i7 chips don't actually fit the consumer motherboards, but you need to go to the server segment where MBs are significantly more expensive and lack a whole slew of additional features nice for desktop machines.

>server segment where MBs are significantly more expensive False-ish Single socket server boards are on par with home motherboards. They only become expensive when you start wanting 2+ NIC's and A LOT of sockets. But then yes your feature thing is mostly true. > and lack a whole slew of additional features nice for desktop machines. False-ish Intel's server socket (for non E7's) is 2011v3 which is also their enthusia…

I got to my inexpensive build by buying trailing edge hardware, still much faster than what I had, buy cheaper than current generation hardware.

Re: AMD 16-Core ThreadRipper Enthusiast CPUs to Reportedly Utilize 4094 Pin Socket

#77
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is of course the fact that 6+ i7 chips don't actually fit the consumer motherboards, but you need to go to the server segment where MBs are significantly more expensive and lack a whole slew of additional features nice for desktop machines.

>server segment where MBs are significantly more expensive False-ish Single socket server boards are on par with home motherboards. They only become expensive when you start wanting 2+ NIC's and A LOT of sockets. But then yes your feature thing is mostly true. > and lack a whole slew of additional features nice for desktop machines. False-ish Intel's server socket (for non E7's) is 2011v3 which is also their enthusia…

You don't need to go to a server board for ECC - a lot of the X99 boards actually do support it. Not all of them (EVGA doesn't, a lot of Gigabyte boards don't) but a lot do (Asrock usually does).

And you can find motherboards in pretty much any price range except the barest of dirt cheap. There are motherboards like the GA-X99-SLI that regularly hit $125 or lower. Cheapest thing on Newegg right now is a $150 Asrock board that supports ECC.

The only price range that you "can't get" for X99 is the under-$100 price range, i.e. the super-shitty low-end chipsets. And you actually can get it if you are willing to take an open-box item. I paid $60 after tax for my last X99 board.

Also realize that most of the people who are bitching up a storm about X99's $150 motherboards likely turned around and paid $250 for an X370 board when Ryzen launched. I mean, you gotta get one of the nice ones with the external clockgen so you can get your $300 Samsung B-die memory kit to run stable, right? (but that's totally different! /s)

Re: AMD 16-Core ThreadRipper Enthusiast CPUs to Reportedly Utilize 4094 Pin Socket

#78
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>server segment where MBs are significantly more expensive False-ish Single socket server boards are on par with home motherboards. They only become expensive when you start wanting 2+ NIC's and A LOT of sockets. But then yes your feature thing is mostly true. > and lack a whole slew of additional features nice for desktop machines. False-ish Intel's server socket (for non E7's) is 2011v3 which is also their enthusia…

Motherboard price is square to the number of sockets. (This is actually accurate, look it up; and for somewhat good reason).

Once you move into 2+ sockets you're already paying $5000+ for a CPU so what's an extra $4000 for a main board?

Re: AMD 16-Core ThreadRipper Enthusiast CPUs to Reportedly Utilize 4094 Pin Socket

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waste of pins. You would need to quadruple number of pins or so (with a square shape, it may be worth to just have rectangular to just double). It is possible, fairly sure, but not really practical.

Or maybe only double the pins, if you no longer make it square. But you're right, it's a waste of time and money.

Couldn't you hypothetically design the pinout to be suitably symmetrical to avoid major part of the wasted pins. For example if the chip has 4 memory channels, then lay out the memory pins identically but rotated in each quadrant. Same principle should apply to other major pin count consumers (pcie lanes, power/ground pins), which leaves somewhat small area that needs to be duplicated/quadrupled.

Of course implementing such design would be ridiculously complicated with very little benefit. But it would be pretty cool though :)

Re: AMD 16-Core ThreadRipper Enthusiast CPUs to Reportedly Utilize 4094 Pin Socket

#80
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Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Processors/AMD-Ryzen-7-1800X-R... https://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2017/04/06/amd-ryzen-7-170... http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/8072/amd-ryzen-7-1800x-cpu-... http://hothardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-7-1800x-1700x-1700-... (bear in mind the 5820K/6800K/6850K are 6C, the 5960X/6900K are 8C, and the 6950X is 10C) Essentially AMD is rating their TDP under a very light load - like a singl…

TDP is and always was an expressly manufacturer- and product-specific number, though. It mainly exists for OEMs to match parts up with the correctly sized heatsink.

That argument stops holding water when the manufacturer starts marketing around the superior power efficiency of their processors based on that same number.
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