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I don't ordinarily write "just" and "$iv,000" in the same sentence. Near of the fourth dimension, particularly in the CPU market, that kind of pricing is a contradiction in terms. At CES 2020, AMD appear that its upcoming 64-core CPU, the 3990X, will have a price tag of just $4,000.

To say that this undercuts Intel would exist an understatement. The top-terminate Intel HEDT CPUSEEAMAZON_ET_135 See Amazon ET commerce you can purchase, the Cadre i9-10980XE, is $one,000 and packs eighteen cores. A 2S Intel system built around the Xeon Platinum 8280 would offer 56 cores but has a sticker toll of $xx,000 just for the CPUs. AMD isn't only undercutting Intel; they're practically giving their top-end CPU away past comparison.

The 3990X has a ii.9GHz boost, a four.3GHz max turbo, and an unknown all-core turbo (expected to be in the low-to-middling 3GHz territory). Scaling, at least in Cinebench, isn't expected to be equally skilful from the 32-core to 64-core mark, every bit shown below:

AMD'south claimed performance of ~25K is almost 1.5x higher than the 3970X, but Cinebench has typically shown stronger scaling than this. Then again, nosotros've never tested the awarding on this many cores, either. It's possible that the poor scaling is just related to the application not addressing that many cores properly. There would be some historical precedent for this; Cinebench R10 scaled worse than R15, which was updated to provide better support for higher core count CPUs, among other things. It isn't clear, in other words, if we should care for a i.5x scaling gain equally typical for the platform, and vendor benchmarks are e'er best taken with a grain of table salt.

Threadripper-3990X

With merely 4 RAM channels to feed 64 cores, the 3990X is more than memory bandwidth constrained than the Ryzen nine 3950X is on AMD's desktop platform, simply the 3950X proved capable of running just fine with 2 retentivity channels.

Chips are set to ship on Feb. vii, which is earlier than I would have expected. AMD is recommending at least 64GB of RAM for these chips, simply 128GB or 256GB might be more appropriate for relevant workloads, depending on how you intend to apply it. The CPU will support DDR4-3200, merely tin can technically be overclocked — though how the IMC volition fare handling that much RAM is an open question. DDR4-3600 might be possible, though, and that would give the CPU an extra 1.13x memory bandwidth. If the CPU does endure from bandwidth constraints, we should exist able to exam for it by checking performance confronting RAM clock relative to other CPUs in the Zen ii family unit.

It's non clear if there's a Threadripper market for $4,000 CPUs outside of people who would only buy an Epyc to commencement with. But as a halo production, the 3990X offers a core count Intel tin can't remotely friction match right at present.

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