AMD Threadripper Prices Undercut Intel's Core i9 by as Much as $1,000

Megalith

Megalith

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AMD has disclosed the model numbers, price, and rough availability of both the 12- and 16-core AMD Threadripper chips: the 16-core, 32-thread 3.4-GHz Threadripper 1950X will run you $999, while the 12-core, 24-thread 3.5-GHz Threadripper 1920X will cost $799. The CPUs and motherboards are slated to ship sometime in August.

…we also know the difference between what Intel and AMD will charge for their respective offerings. You’ll pay $700 less for a 1950X than Intel’s 16-core, 32-thread Core i9-7960X, and a thousand dollars less than Intel’s 18-core, 36-thread Core i9-7980XE. On the lower end, the Threadripper 12-core 1920X costs $400 less than the 12-core Core i9-7920X, and $600 less than the 14-core Core i9-7940X. AMD says that it will begin shipping Ryzen Threadripper CPUs and motherboards in early August. The company also confirmed that preorders of Alienware’s Area-51 systems will begin on July 27.
 
GET'EM AMD!! This is only a positive for the end user. I'm quite pleased with how competitive Zen has been.
 
jfreund said:
Is that enough time for the motherboard makers to figure out the platform?
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lol. I have to say, it only took three months of BIOS updates for MSI to get my B350 Tomahawk entirely smoothly functional. It worked adequately from day one but it was clearly an unfinished product. For example, I had never seen a (otherwise functional) motherboard take a minute to POST before.
 
I expected these prices for a long time. The 12C / 24T should be close to Intel's 10C /20T i9 in highly threaded loads but lose in the per core performance. the 16C / 32T will still lose in per core performance versus the 10C i9 but it will win if you can use the 32 threads.

With that said I will likely purchase one of these for my windows based workstation. That may be the path to getting a Ryzen 7 - 1700 CPU for my linux based PVR / server as well (since I am still not sure what to make of the linux compiling instability),
 
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"Undercut".

Only takes a 6 core 7800X to beat the 1800X in production tasks as well as a large margin in other tasks. This also explains why TR is reduced to 2 SKUs.
 
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This is fantastic news indeed. I am loving AMD being competitive on the CPU and GPU side alike, as I've said before I find them to be a more consumer-friendly/ethical company than their major competitors. All other things being equal, this pretty much seals the deal on my next build being a 16-core Threadripper, but there are a few things I really want to see. First, I'd like to see overclocking potential. Across all those cores, how will it compare to Intel's offerings in terms of both OC room/stability (assuming a top of the line board like the Asus ROG Zenith) and heat output? Next, I'm curious about single-threaded (or low-threaded. Lets say up to 4 threads?) performance mhz to mhz with Intel? If it has to clock a lot higher to get the same power etc... that's no good. I'd also like to check how both HEDPs compare for general gaming performance; I seem to recall that people were saying that Ryzen wassn't up to the task in gaming compared to Intel, but if I recall once a few bugs were squished and updates were made this issue was eliminated. I just want to ensure that Threadripper can be a great general use/gaming CPU, as opposed to something that is underwhelming when not using heavily multithreaded workloads. For a HEDP at least for me, it has to cover the whole of Desktop use cases

At this price tier that encompasses the HEDP offerings, users are unlikely to accept much compromise nor should they. If it turns out that Intel holds the performance crown by 10%-ish across all (single thread vs heavy multithread etc) or in a handful of extremely specific circumstances, then I'll still think that's a fantastic win for AMD to be able to deliver something nearly as good at half the price. However, if it seems to stumble in serious ways (ie much lower performance in gaming or single/low thread workloads, huge amount of heat output/no OC headroom etc) it would be disappointing to see. After all, it is still a $1000 CPU!
 
There was a reason for the 1800X price cut
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I expect additional price cuts on the 1800X when the 6C/12T mainstream i7 is released.

I'm seeing a 10% difference in performance here amongst the 2. The Intel is a better CPU in these tests for sure and $100 less.
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Since the platform costs more on X299 the system cost will be similar.
 
It's cool to see many cores/threads - but what programs can actually use this functionality? Seems maybe 1-4 cores is still what most applications can utilize. Especially in gaming, it seems having 1-2 cores with maximum frequency tend to be advantageous over lower frequency/multiple (4+) cores.

Or am I wrong?
 
I'm still waiting for benchmarks to make an honest assessment. Looks like Intel may have to rethink their strategy and pricing though. Even if Intel has a bit of an advantage on IPC and clocks, AMD can beat them easily on # of cores, PCIe lanes, and very likely power consumption and temps.

Never thought I'd see AMD CPUs beating Intel on power and heat.
 
kidstechno3 said:
It's cool to see many cores/threads - but what programs can actually use this functionality? Seems maybe 1-4 cores is still what most applications can utilize. Especially in gaming, it seems having 1-2 cores with maximum frequency tend to be advantageous over lower frequency/multiple (4+) cores.

Or am I wrong?
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All of them, if you're running them simultaneously! :angelic: Otherwise, large compilations, DB workloads, VMs, modelling/ray-tracing are primary use cases. BLAS for cheapskates. This'll be my next Gentoo box *if* they've sorted out the GCC problems experienced by others. Considering the savings vs. Intel, it's probably worth putting up with the occasional crash but I'd rather avoid it if possible.
 
kidstechno3 said:
It's cool to see many cores/threads - but what programs can actually use this functionality? Seems maybe 1-4 cores is still what most applications can utilize. Especially in gaming, it seems having 1-2 cores with maximum frequency tend to be advantageous over lower frequency/multiple (4+) cores.

Or am I wrong?
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Depends on the workload. Lots of VM's, video encoding, multi-tasking out the ass.
 
I was going to buy 7820x but having hell of a time finding it in stock. I am going to wait now to see what thread ripper bring. I don't see it scaling much higher then Ryzen's 4Ghz oc.
 
vegeta535 said:
I was going to buy 7820x but having hell of a time finding it in stock. I am going to wait now to see what thread ripper bring. I don't see it scaling much higher then Ryzen's 4Ghz oc.
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I'd say right now isn't the time to buy either TR or an i9. Once TR benchmarks come out, the situation will change and it'll hopefully impact prices.

I'll bet TR follows Ryzen and has limited OC capability, but they may not need it if they can offer twice the cores for half the price..and half the TDP.
 
if they can offer twice the cores for half the price
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I don't see AMD doing that or at least now that their cores no longer have 1/2 the IPC.

and half the TDP.
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I would expect similar TDP between competitive products. Meaning an AMD system will need at least 2 extra cores maybe 4 extra cores to be in the same performance class since due to its lower IPC and lower clock frequency.
 
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Todd Walter said:
This'll be my next Gentoo box *if* they've sorted out the GCC problems experienced by others. Considering the savings vs. Intel, it's probably worth putting up with the occasional crash but I'd rather avoid it if possible.
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I plan on either a 12C or 16C TR +ECC for my windows workstation however after purchasing I will make sure it works in gentoo so that I can purchase a Ryzen7 1700 + ECC system for my gentoo based fileserver / PVR. Because of time and DDR4 prices this may happen in winter.


it's probably worth putting up with the occasional crash
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For me it is not. My gentoo box is on 24/7/365 and has been on for over 10 years now (core2quad). Stability is a must for this application.
 
Guess I'll wait to see how this all pans out and see if AMD can actually iterate. That's really going to be the key here for AMD, are one and done here or can they over time show incremental progress.
 
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drescherjm said:
I don't see AMD doing that or at least now that their cores no longer have 1/2 the IPC.

I would expect similar TDP between competitive products. Meaning an AMD system will need at least 2 extra cores maybe 4 extra cores to be in the same performance class since due to its lower IPC and lower clock frequency.
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It'd hard to tell on prices until they actually hit the shelves...The 10-core Intel part has been selling for around $1200 from what I've seen recently, so it's close to that "twice the price". Going by MSRP though, you can get 10 cores and 44 lanes from Intel or 16 cores and 64 lanes from AMD. We know that the Intel parts run hot and suck up a LOT of power especially with a decent OC. We don't know yet how AMD stacks up on that front, but we can hopefully extrapolate a bit from Ryzen results.
 
I've seen recently, so it's close to that "twice the price"
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The 12C TR is supposed to be $799. So to me the 10C i9 is clearly is no where near close to 2 times the price.

I would however agree with you if AMD sold the 12C / 24T for $599.
 
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Bandalo said:
It'd hard to tell on prices until they actually hit the shelves...The 10-core Intel part has been selling for around $1200 from what I've seen recently, so it's close to that "twice the price". Going by MSRP though, you can get 10 cores and 44 lanes from Intel or 16 cores and 64 lanes from AMD. We know that the Intel parts run hot and suck up a LOT of power especially with a decent OC. We don't know yet how AMD stacks up on that front, but we can hopefully extrapolate a bit from Ryzen results.
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So hotter and sucks up even more power then?
 
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face2palm said:
So hotter and sucks up even more power then?
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Stock Ryzen's 8 core sucked up roughly as much power as a Haswell 8 core, and Broadwell didn't save much on power. And ran quite a bit cooler. OC Ryzen didn't jump much in power, and still stayed cool even on air. The newer Intel i9 chips though are space heaters. They're fast, but they're damn hot and damn power hungry.
 
At this point as long as it's close I'd probably opt for an AMD chip. Just got a 1400 for my wife and if I had the production tasks that required that core count I'd get a threadrpper.

What I want to see is if the R3's can beat a g4600 or i3-7100 for the same or less money, oh and more B350 itx with AC boards, cheapest is over $100. I want to build an itx travel PC.
 
drescherjm said:
I plan on either a 12C or 16C TR +ECC for my windows workstation however after purchasing I will make sure it works in gentoo so that I can purchase a Ryzen7 1700 + ECC system for my gentoo based fileserver / PVR. Because of time and DDR4 prices this may happen in winter.




For me it is not. My gentoo box is on 24/7/365 and has been on for over 10 years now (core2quad). Stability is a must for this application.
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Did they confirm that threadripper will have ECC support? As far as I can tell, the intel x299 platform does not, so this would be in AMDs favor.
 
999 is reasonable for all those cores and I/O. I will be in for one as soon as I have the cash.
 
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