My predicted 3rd Gen threadripper prices

[Zenmastur]

Wikipedia says the Zen 2 chiplets have 8 cores:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_2

They do by design. But when a core is defective, AMD will sell it as a 6-core, 4-core, or even 1-core chiplet.

For example, the 8-core EPYC 7262 has 8x chiplets, 8x cores (1-working core + 7-defective cores per chiplet) and 128MB of L3 cache. https://www.servethehome.com/amd-epyc-7 ... ge-caches/

The huge aggregate L3 cache is useful in some workloads, and very cheap because 56 of the 64 cores are broken.

Actually the Epyc 7262 has two working cores per CCD ( 1 working core per CCX +3 defective cores), so 6 defective cores per CCD time 4 CCD's per chip. All else in your post seems correct.

Regards,

Zenmastur

[Dann Corbit]

Wikipedia says the Zen 2 chiplets have 8 cores:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_2

They do by design. But when a core is defective, AMD will sell it as a 6-core, 4-core, or even 1-core chiplet.

For example, the 8-core EPYC 7262 has 8x chiplets, 8x cores (1-working core + 7-defective cores per chiplet) and 128MB of L3 cache. https://www.servethehome.com/amd-epyc-7 ... ge-caches/

The huge aggregate L3 cache is useful in some workloads, and very cheap because 56 of the 64 cores are broken.

Actually the Epyc 7262 has two working cores per CCD ( 1 working core per CCX +3 defective cores), so 6 defective cores per CCD time 4 CCD's per chip. All else in your post seems correct.

Regards,

Zenmastur

This is something that really makes the chiplet idea seam brilliant. Turn something that would have been thrown away into an expensive product!

[Zenmastur]

Wikipedia says the Zen 2 chiplets have 8 cores:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_2

They do by design. But when a core is defective, AMD will sell it as a 6-core, 4-core, or even 1-core chiplet.

For example, the 8-core EPYC 7262 has 8x chiplets, 8x cores (1-working core + 7-defective cores per chiplet) and 128MB of L3 cache. https://www.servethehome.com/amd-epyc-7 ... ge-caches/

The huge aggregate L3 cache is useful in some workloads, and very cheap because 56 of the 64 cores are broken.

Actually the Epyc 7262 has two working cores per CCD ( 1 working core per CCX +3 defective cores), so 6 defective cores per CCD time 4 CCD's per chip. All else in your post seems correct.

Regards,

Zenmastur

This is something that really makes the chiplet idea seam brilliant. Turn something that would have been thrown away into an expensive product!

Precisely! This is why Intel will have trouble competing with their monolithic chip designs. Not only do you lose more chips to defects, the monolithic chips are harder to get good bins AND it's harder to distribute the heat across a large enough area that an air cooler is still effective.

Until Intel redesigns their chips to use a chiplet design they will have higher chip costs than AMD. Not a good place to be with AMD being so aggressive. This is one of the reasons I thought AMD would be much more aggressive with their HEDT pricing. I guess in the end they can still drop prices if Intel tries to undercut them. IIRC this is what AMD did pre-release to the RTX 5700 when Nvidia released the "Super" line just prior to AMD's launch date. I guess they can do the same with the HEDT chips if Intel cuts prices of their HEDT line.

In the mean time, it's probably good that AMD is taking some profit from all their hard work. I would have liked to see lower prices but I will learn to deal with it.

Now I just need to decide if the 64-core Threadripper is worth the wait AND I actually have the patience to wait another 2-3 months. I'm not sure I want to wait that long but if the price for a 64-core part is "only" $3,000 it may be worth it depending on the clock speeds.

Regards,

Zenmastur

[Dann Corbit]

I am guessing February or March when the 48 and 64 core versions are ready for sale.

Based on Epyc Single-Socket SKUs, I think we can make an educated guess as to cost:

Code: Select all

7702P	64 	$4,599.99  TR 3990x ($3800 - $4968) estimated price
mythic48* $3,500.00  TR 3980x ($2900 - $3780) estimated price
7502P	32  $2,399.99  TR 3970x ($1999) 83% of price
7402P	24  $1,299.99  TR 3960x ($1399) 108% of price

*mythic48 is the simple average of 7502p and 7702p which would have 48 cores

Now, one may object that at $5000 one should go ahead and get the server part.
But wait, the Threadripper will probably run at 3.6 GHz base freq, compared to 2.0 GHz for the 7702p.
So, for 8% more money you would be getting 3.6/2.0 = 1.8 times as much horsepower!
Still a wonderful bargain. And if it should come in under $4000, it's an incredible deal!

[Dann Corbit]

That is the same throughput as the EPYC 7H12 for chess, a $9500 chip!

[DustyMonkey]

This scatter chart says it all:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_value_ ... tter_graph

Intel is decimated, while having supply shortages, while rushing for a secure redesign.

[Zenmastur]

Approximate cost performance ratios for the R9 3900X, R9 3950X, Threadripper 3960X and Threadripper 3970X for a new build with a RTX2060 super and 64GB DDR4-3200 ram. The only specs that differ is the CPU, MB (AM4 vice TRX40), and power supply is larger for the two threadripper systems. Does not include keyboard, mouse, or monitor.

3900X $1235 @ ~45Mnps = ~ 36knps/$
3950X $1485 @ ~60Mnps = ~ 40Knps/$
3960X $2680 @ ~90Mnps = ~ 34Knps/$
3970X $3280 @ ~105Mnps=~ 32Knps/$

Note prices will vary by region so trying to be more accurate than this will need to be region specific. These prices are for the US region. Your mileage may vary.

These are approximate figures based on projected NPS. They aren't perfect but they do show that the best price to performance ratio is the R9 3950X.

So, if you are looking for a new system and are on a budget the 3950X looks to be the sweet spot followed by the 3900X.

Regards,

Zenmastur

[Dann Corbit]

Looking at this board:
https://www.gigabyte.com/us/Motherboard ... -rev-10#kf
I think maybe you could put 4x 2080 supers in there.
Of course, that would eat up ALL of your PCIe 4.0 slots.
I suspect that there may be (or will be) PCIe 4.0 GPUs available.

With the doubled bandwidth of PCIe 4.0, I wonder if LC0 could take advantage of 4 GPUs at once.
It seems that 2 is the max with PCIe 3.0.

If 4 GPUs is too many for one instance of LC0, you could always run 2.
The RAM limit on these boards is disappointing, though.
256GB is the max.

[Zenmastur]

Looking at this board:
https://www.gigabyte.com/us/Motherboard ... -rev-10#kf
I think maybe you could put 4x 2080 supers in there.
Of course, that would eat up ALL of your PCIe 4.0 slots.
I suspect that there may be (or will be) PCIe 4.0 GPUs available.

With the doubled bandwidth of PCIe 4.0, I wonder if LC0 could take advantage of 4 GPUs at once.
It seems that 2 is the max with PCIe 3.0.

If 4 GPUs is too many for one instance of LC0, you could always run 2.
The RAM limit on these boards is disappointing, though.
256GB is the max.

I don't see a problem with 4 GPU's. Above 4 scaling is an issue. I doubt that I will use more than two any time in the near future. Ram will always be a problem. Get used to it. Most mother boards can't support what the CPU can support. And even if they could you couldn't afford the dimms to populate the MB in a max memory configuration at least for large server MBs.

Regards,

Zenmastur

[Zenmastur]

https://www.newegg.com/nemix-ram-256gb- ... 003Z-016M2

So about $20K to fill 8 dimm slots. 2P systems would cost about $40K to fill assuming only 8 dimms per CPU socket.

Regards,

Zenmastur