AMD:s Threadripper Pro 5000 kommer för att krossa Xeon — igen

AMD looks to again turn the screws on Intel's Xeon chips with a new Ryzen Threadripper Pro 5000-series of workstation CPUs that it claims will be far more efficient and faster than Intel's best.

Byggd på samma Zen 3-kärnor som dess prisbelönta Ryzen 5000 stationära processorer, de efterlängtade Threadripper Pro-chipsen kommer i fem olika smaker, allt från 12 kärnor till 64 kärnor, sa företaget. Pro-serien av processorer fortsätter att erbjuda 8-kanals DDR4-stöd som den tidigare 3000-serien har.

New to the lineup is a 24-core Threadripper Pro that wasn't available in the previous 3000-based offerings. The big news is the move from the previous Zen 2-based cores to the latest Zen 3 cores.

AMD

Those cores feature the same base 8-core CCD structure as the previous design, wherein eight cores cores share 32MB of cache versus the previous 4-core CCD design that shared 16MB among the compute cores. The good news is that the new Ryzen Threadripper Pro chips still dominate the competition, AMD claims, and it's not like the older Threadripper Pro needed much help either. Unlike desktop and laptop PCs, where Intel has fielded its newest 12th-gen CPUs using its Golden Cove performance cores, Intel's workstation CPUs continue to be built on the Sunny Cove cores Intel originally released in its 10th-gen Ice Lake laptop CPUs.

Although built on a 10nm process, the 10th-gen Ice Lake did improve upon the even older 14nm CPUs but was hampered by a low ceiling in clock speeds. Combine the relatively low clock speed of Intel's top Xeon W-3375 and a relatively low count of 38-cores, and you get Threadripper Pro 5000 easily dunking on Intel's CPUs like it's 2021 all over again.

Till exempel sa AMD att Threadripper Pro 5995WX är upp till 40 procent snabbare i Unreal Engine-kompileringar, 58 procent snabbare i Adobe After Effects och 95 procent snabbare i Chaos V-Ray.

AMD

Inte nöjd med att bara göra en touchdown och slentrianmässigt promenera utanför planen, AMD spikar bollen och gör sedan en end-zone-dans i fem minuter, med 26 procent snabbare prestanda i PTC Creo, 58 procent mer prestanda i Solidworks och 200 procent mer prestanda i Keyshot.

AMD

It's been so ugly for Intel in workstations the last few years that AMD is citing a commanding 60 percent market share for workstations. That's a reversal from AMD's experience in the consumer market, where despite the company's impressive strides in consumer desktops and laptops, it still has minority marketshare. AMD said its success in workstations has lead companies to actually optimize software for Threadripper, which has boosted its performance over Xeon even more. For example, in Ansys mechanical simulation, optimized performance has lead to a 2.3x performance improvement, while Autodesk's Arnold delivered a 200x—not 200 percent—bump using the same CPU and GPU.

AMD fortsätter faktiskt att hävda att en enda 64-kärnig Threadripper Pro 5995WX kan överträffa inte en Intel Xeon Platinum 8280, utan två av dem, samtidigt som den erbjuder bättre energieffektivitet.

AMD

Where's regular Threadripper?

This all sounds amazing, but obviously Threadripper Pro is aimed straight at professionals, what with its 8-channel DDR4 support and limited availability to DIYers. This time around, AMD will initially launch Threadripper Pro exclusively in a Lenovo ThinkStation P620 workstation, with additional OEM workstations shipping later on. That means Threadripper Pro is unlikely to make it into the hands of DIYers initially, but that doesn't mean never. Remember, the previous OEM-only Threadripper Pro W3995X did eventually go on sale to DIYers. In fact, if you have $6,100, you can drop it on a 64-core Threadripper Pro på Amazon idag.

Not everyone needs eight channels of DDR4 though, so if you're wondering where the more pedestrian Threadripper and its 4-channel DDR4 is, AMD isn't saying. Today's launch is strictly focused on the Threadripper Pro lineup—the future of the Threadripper for the rest of us is remains cloudy. One question that's overlooked in speculation about a more affordable Threadripper, is that there may simply be no demand for it.

De som verkligen behöver 32 kärnor eller 64 kärnor behöver sannolikt också en galen mängd RAM och en galen mängd minnesbandbredd också, så det kan bara vara svårt för AMD att motivera investeringar i "vanliga" Threadripper-chips för en sådan nischad publik .