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The AMD Threadripper 2 Teaser: Pre-Orders Start Today, Up to 32 Cores

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51–60 of 126 posts

Re: The AMD Threadripper 2 Teaser: Pre-Orders Start Today, Up to 32 Cores

#51

Bloody hell, this processor has more cores than the dual socket Xeon HPCs that my lab bought 2 years ago. Amazing. Honest question: Isn't the memory throughput an issue when you try to feed 32 hungry processors?

For TR kind of. In the newer models only half the cores have direct access to a DDR channel. This shows in memory bounded benchmarks, but Epyc (server line) elevates this problem by have 8 (!!) memory channels, instead of the consumer TR’s 4. Ultimately it depends on how cache friendly your workload is. The 32c/64t is kind of a marketting gimmick selling binned Eypcs. If your doing memory bound HPC consider the 16c/3…

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Re: The AMD Threadripper 2 Teaser: Pre-Orders Start Today, Up to 32 Cores

#52
post #34
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just abusive pricing. If you're stuck with Apple software then I guess you have no choice. I have a 10-core 128GB ram workstation that's two years old now, it cost me half as much as a MacBook Pro. I need a new laptop soon, but the difference between the i9 Dell and the i9 MacBook is $800 CAD. Plus the Dell is for sure going to work better with a Linux install, in terms of drivers, which is better for me for w…

He made that number up. The most expensive possible iMac Pro is ~$13.5K (see here: https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/imac-pro/3.2ghz-1tb ). Note that most price comparisons show that the iMac Pro is actually quite the deal.

Still heavily marked up. 32GB ECC isn't $800. Current nVidia GPUs will run circles around those Radeons - even more so with Turing.

Re: The AMD Threadripper 2 Teaser: Pre-Orders Start Today, Up to 32 Cores

#53
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they arent behind on process tech, then they arent using it properly. The numbers are there. All techs aside, AMD is building competative chips at lower pricepoints. Intel has to pull the rabbit from the hat if it wants to stay in the spotlight.

Yes but only because Intel hit the wall first. The still have tons of money and spend more time breaking that wall. Good for us anyway. Don't mind getting my Intel CPUs cheaper.

> Yes but only because Intel hit the wall first.

I fail to see how that's relevant. What matters is what products are available in the market and how much they cost, and AMD's offering is both cheaper and more performant than anything Intel managed to put together.

Re: The AMD Threadripper 2 Teaser: Pre-Orders Start Today, Up to 32 Cores

#54

While I can see Intel's leadership in single-core performance with 6 cores (overclocked 8700K can have 5+ GHz and future flagships probably will be even faster with 8 cores), at high-core workstation AMD is a winner, hands down. Competition is good.

AMD has always had great OC performance but my impression is that they have been power hogs. Is that incorrect or has it changed?

They had their ups and downs. The athlon 64 was a masterpiece in both performance and power consumption, in part because they made power management an integral part of the platform not just for laptops. At the time it was released Intel was busy pushing the pentium 4 to its limits, making it a great replacement for central heating during winter.

Then Intel was on top of the game again with the core architecture and while bulldozer (iirc) improved in that regard again Intel was still ahead, especially as bulldozer sucked pretty much in every other regard. Ryzen seems to be about on par with current Intel CPUs (performance per watt), depending on benchmark.

Re: The AMD Threadripper 2 Teaser: Pre-Orders Start Today, Up to 32 Cores

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Roughly linear pricing per core? What is this wizardry? It's called "marketing", and it's definitely not limited by the laws of physics as we know them. You too can learn the ways of marketing, but it comes at a very steep price: your eternal soul. (JK, that's sales.)

I think the modularity of the manufacturing process helps too.

Modularity helps cutting production costs, but that's just a lower bound. Prices are set based on marketing strategies and on how much the company is able to get for a product.

Re: The AMD Threadripper 2 Teaser: Pre-Orders Start Today, Up to 32 Cores

#56
It may be of no concern to many, but 3D artists constantly express problems with filling DIMM slots when using Threadrippers. Supposedly, 128 GB RAM is only reliable on a couple of motherboards. I just constantly read these stories on forums. (And to be sure, these aren’t situations where users were mixing RAM sets)

Re: The AMD Threadripper 2 Teaser: Pre-Orders Start Today, Up to 32 Cores

#57
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Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good god! Why on earth you need 32 core quad GPU workstation?

Rendering scales fairly linearly with hardware. If I'm rendering with Arnold for example, it can saturate all my cores pretty well and gives back an almost linear rendering time reduction. Same with GPU systems like redshift, alternatively I can dedicate half the machine to rendering and the other half to continued work.

Does 16+ threads actually contribute to render times with Redshift?

I know

Unless you’re using Houdini, I think you’ll get the same result using Redshift with 16 threads. Houdini is the only DCC that uses more than one thread to prep the scen

Re: The AMD Threadripper 2 Teaser: Pre-Orders Start Today, Up to 32 Cores

#58
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good god! Why on earth you need 32 core quad GPU workstation?

Rendering scales fairly linearly with hardware. If I'm rendering with Arnold for example, it can saturate all my cores pretty well and gives back an almost linear rendering time reduction. Same with GPU systems like redshift, alternatively I can dedicate half the machine to rendering and the other half to continued work.

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Re: The AMD Threadripper 2 Teaser: Pre-Orders Start Today, Up to 32 Cores

#59

Curious that there's quad-channel DDR4. AMD's similar Epyc processors that have four chips on the module are octal-channel (because there's a dual-channel controller on each chip). Won't these therefore perform worse than they should?

Ultimately they're limited by the number of pins that the socket they use has, even if the silicon could support more channels. They want to be able to maintain socket compatibility and they want to have some SKUs with just 2 working dies so 4 channels it remains.

Re: The AMD Threadripper 2 Teaser: Pre-Orders Start Today, Up to 32 Cores

#60
post #4

That pricing is actually more reasonable than I was expecting. I might get myself a 32 core quad GPU workstation. Unthinkable even just a year ago.

Good god! Why on earth you need 32 core quad GPU workstation?

Small to mid-scale CFD.
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