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

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91–97 of 97 posts

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

#91
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is that you cannot have both via current (from 2011+ on) Intel route: high clock speed on the CPU(achieved by OC) AND ECC. You want ECC you have to get Xeons. You want OC you have to get regular mainstream K chips or enthusiast -E chips without ECC support. I think the last chipset which let you OC Xeons and still use ECC was X58 on 1366 socket. Disclaimer: I am not counting tiny BCLK OC available on Xeons.

Because ECC and OC are targeted at different audiences. If you want both... you don't understand one or the other. ECC is to guarantee system stability. Solving rare event that become regular once you have hundreds of boxes running. OC INCREASES system instability. You put more power into a chip, increasing the probability of incorrect or malformed answers. Now both these scenarios are rare, especially for single box…

ECC can help you ensure that your OC is still stable. And these chips are optimized for power use in servers. There is often a lot of room for stable overclocking.

You're also not guaranteed perfect operation inside the CPU without an overclock, so if it's idiotic to combine OC and ECC, it's idiotic to use ECC at all.

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

#92
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Workstation users. CAD, raytracing, and video editing people need as much CPU horsepower as they can get, and quad-channel RAM is pretty nice too. ("preview" rendering is done with GPU acceleration - but final encodes are still done on CPU for quality reasons) Small-business servers, databases, that kind of stuff too. We'll see where they go with this - but I would caution enthusiasts to tamp down their expectations…

I hear you. I'm a raytracing guy and I look forward to Ryzen and would love to try Naples. But this intermediate thing sounds like a 3rd platform squarely between those. It even has 16 cores rather than 8 or 32, so if the core count doubled or halved it would be very much be competing with one of the other market segments processor.

It seems 16c will be clocked at 3.1-3.6GHz, whereas Naples significantly lower (which is OK for servers). I'd go with 16c for sure for movie rendering (ehm, if only ReelSteady could do a multicore image stabilization rendering...?)

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

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought 3930K 6C/12HT in 2012 and still rockin' it. AMD was not even on radar back then.

My old 1090t from 2010 says hi.

I remember that one, the one that said hi to already-on-the-market i7 980x! :)

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

#94
AMD is a great company and I wish them every bit of success and luck with this but I can't help but thinking that fighting two formidable competitors on their home turf (Intel and NVIDIA) is a bit much. Just one of those would be a battle.

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

#95
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It needs a lot of pins because it's an I/O monster. The socket is going to support their high end server chips with 8 memory channels. Plus, all of their high end line supports 128 pcie lanes, and will have on board an unknown number of usb, sata, and networking lanes. All that adds up to needing a very large socket.

That article points out it's a different version of the core on the desktop, SP3r2 instead of the SP3 that is landing server side. SP3r2 is only coming with 4 DDR channels. It's not clear why they're deliberately using a crippled socket here for the desktop. I don't understand the value proposition, and can only envision it driving up motherboard prices. That CPU combined with a crippled socket is surely likely to en…

Sp3 is for 32-core chips wirh 8-channel memory. Sp3r2 is for 16-core chips with 4-channel memory. The reason the Sp3r2 platform exists is to make motherboards cheaper -- the lines for 8-channel memory force you to use more layers, increasing cost.

They are using the same large socket to reduce time to market -- they had validated the 8-channel socket, they don't currently have a modern 4-channel socket, and they think there is demand.

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

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engineering a socket like that has to be a low priority. It's not as though people are reseating their CPUs every day, and generally speaking, the people that do it can handle aligning it properly.

I helped a friend build a computer back in school and when he got the parts in the mail he hurriedly started building (against my advice to wait until I got there) he put the CPU in the wrong way and bent some of the pins. So it does happen more than you would think.

I'm not even mad. It's hard to jam them in the wrong way nowadays! What socket was this?

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

#97
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?

Ryzen = 1 piece of silicon, cheap, 4-8 cores, 2 mem channels Threadripper = 2 piece of silicon, midrange, 8-16 cores, 4 mem channels Naples = 4 pieces of silicon, high end, 16-32 cores, 8 mem channels.
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