
AMD Announces Ryzen Threadripper Pro: Workstation Parts for OEMs Only - pulse7
https://www.anandtech.com/show/15910/amd-announces-ryzen-threadripper-pro-workstation-parts-for-oems-only
======
muro
I wondered when I can buy a AMD workstation with official ECC support, looks
like that will finally be possible in September. Hope the price will be OK.

There are higher base frequencies but lower turbo on the new TR Pro vs Ryzen
9:

    
    
      | name   | CPUs  | base | turbo|
      | 3955WX | 16/32 | 3900 | 4300 |
      | 3945WX | 12/24 | 4000 | 4300 |
      | 3950X  | 16/32 | 3500 | 4700 |
      | 3900XT | 12/24 | 3800 | 4700 |
    

Edit: the new, much higher TDP is not welcome news.

~~~
PragmaticPulp
> I wondered when I can buy a AMD workstation with official ECC support, looks
> like that will finally be possible in September. Hope the price will be OK.

You don't have to wait. The current Ryzen 3000 series processors support ECC.

ASUS, ASRock, and Gigabyte have several Ryzen 3000 motherboard options that
support ECC RAM. Example: [https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Pro-
WS-X570-ACE/](https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Pro-WS-X570-ACE/)

~~~
paulmd
> You don't have to wait. The current Ryzen 3000 series processors support
> ECC.

The post you were responding to asked when they would get _official_ ECC
support. ECC is not officially supported on Ryzen. If it works on your
particular board/BIOS, great, but it's not officially validated or tested, so
nobody besides you will actually be testing whether it works, and if it
doesn't work in some edge case (or at all) then sucks to be you. If ECC
doesn't work right on some future BIOS revision that fixes a security issue or
some other critical bug, and there is never an updated version that does
support ECC, sucks to be you.

That is specifically the problem that people are looking to avoid by asking
for _official_ support.

As it stands, you can probably count the number of boards that anyone would
bother to validate ECC on on a single hand - Asrock Rack has two server
boards, Asus has some "WS" series that might, maybe some of the high-end
Asrock consumer boards. And it will never be officially supported by AMD, if
there is a critical bug then welp.

As such I think "ECC is supported on AM4" is a bit of an exaggeration or a
clever bit of terminology spin from some fans. If you call up AMD and ask,
they will tell you they don't go out of their way to disable it (except in
APUs) but it's not supported. I think "functional" or "enabled" is a better
term.

(Intel validates support on their consumer processors, by the way... i3s and
Pentiums _officially_ support ECC. Supermicro/Asrock Rack/etc test those
configurations and if they don't work then you can complain and they will fix
them.)

~~~
marmaduke
thanks for the informative reply,

> i3s and Pentiums officially support ECC

my experience is that OEMs like Dell won't support ECC except for Xeon
configurations. You can get the same machine with an i9 but not ECC memory or
the Xeon and ECC.

~~~
jmole
i9 and Xeon (officially) use a different PCH. So it's not really the same
machine.

~~~
fomine3
Explaining in opposite: Pentium supports both PCH lines and supports ECC
because they don't want to sell such cheap Xeon-branded CPU.

------
kinghajj
"However, it should be noted that these processors will only be available as
part of pre-built systems, and no corresponding consumer motherboards will be
made available."

I'm pretty disappointed in this, but I suppose the market for such
workstations leans more towards "large enterprise that needs reliability" than
"hobbyist that needs low cost/likes to customize their rig."

~~~
varispeed
It doesn't sound like it is mutually exclusive. However restricting access to
technology by AMD looks bad.

~~~
smolder
It doesn't really look bad to me... market segmentation isn't all about the
silicon but the support and quality assurance. It seems like they want maximum
control over quality for the big-spending money-making customers, which makes
a lot of sense.

What I'm surprised about is that they're branding this "Threadripper Pro"
instead of branding it as a high end Epyc workstation chip. Threadripper is a
watered down Epyc chip to start with, and all they've done here is raise base
clocks, lower boost, and turn on the additional IO that Epyc already had which
was disabled in TR.

~~~
kinghajj
My guess would be that they don't want to provide the same level of
support/warranties for using these Threadripper Pro chips as mission-critical
servers. Probably the expected lifetime is shorter due to increased
voltage/thermals as a result of the higher clock frequencies.

~~~
pdimitar
That's pretty fascinating take (and I never thought of it as a possibility).

Are you saying that these chips might last only like 2-3 years and one day
just burn off on boot, even if cooled the best way possible?

------
pdimitar
I really don't want to buy an NVIDIA Quadro RTX 4000/6000/8000\. I want a very
high-end non-GPU-focused workstation where I can pick any videocard since I'll
also do some occasional gaming on it and I'd like that to be fast -- so an RTX
2080 Ti would be enough (although both NVIDIA and AMD promised better consumer
cards than the 2080 Ti until the end of the year so that is interesting to
keep an eye on as well).

I'm quite OK with the limit of 1TB of RAM but the forced buy of a Quadro card
is an absolute nope from me.

I hope that when other vendors are allowed to build TR Pro machines that some
of them will actually give you a bit more choice.

~~~
theevilsharpie
These workstations are aimed at business customers, and so the customizations
offered by Lenovo are going to be limited.

If you wanted a TR Pro workstation with a consumer graphics card instead of a
Quadro, you could work with a third-party reseller. You and the reseller would
have to verify compatibility yourselves (e.g. will the card fit in the
chassis, will it have the necessary airflow, will it have the needed power
connectors and will they reach, etc.), but it's doable.

~~~
pdimitar
I really hope some resellers proactively test the "I want this to be my
workstation and a gaming machine" setup and have people ready to put an RTX
2080 Ti in. So I hope you're right.

------
soygul
Threadripper 3990X (also 64-core) can draw up to 1000 Watts (!) if you can
keep it cooled and let the clock multiplier loose. [1]

I imagine it would be nice to have a mini-AWS at home. Not sure how it would
feel like to have a 1K Watt space heater permanently running though.

[1] [https://hothardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-
threadripper-3990x...](https://hothardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-
threadripper-3990x-cpu-review?page=7)

~~~
sandworm101
At that sort of power level one could theoretically capture the heat and cycle
it back into the board as electricity. How long before we see a little
stirling engine spinning away atop AMD chips?

~~~
zrm
Those sort of high wattage configurations are only really useful for seeing
your system at the top of the benchmarking charts. Nearly everything that
scales to 64 cores will scale to multiple machines, at which point you're
getting much better performance per watt by adding a machine which doubles
performance at double the power than by unlimiting clock speed which gives you
a small percentage improvement in performance in exchange for quadruple the
power consumption.

------
013a
> There is also a small difference in DRAM support – TR Pro supports up to 2
> TB, but EPYC supports 4 TB. All of the Ryzen Threadripper Pro processors are
> single socket only.

This is probably a small misprint; EPYC only supports 2TB per socket, or 4TB
on multi-socket boards.

In that regard, TRPro looks like its just a re-branded EPYC chip.

------
znpy
I'm still mad that I cant buy the Ryzen 3600E processor (45W TDP) as it's
reserved to OEMs. I know i'm sacrificing performances, but I want an energy-
efficient processor.

~~~
gruez
>but I want an energy-efficient processor.

any particular reason why? power costs? cooling?

~~~
znpy
electric power bill mainly, if I want to let that run 24/7 at home

------
TazeTSchnitzel
It's weird how this is clearly not just slightly different SKUs of
Threadripper like Ryzen Pro was to consumer Ryzen. Instead Ryzen Threadripper
Pro seems to be EPYC in all but name?

~~~
foobarbazetc
Pretty much the same as the P series EPYC chips, though they don’t seem to
have SEV support and use a completely new chipset/socket instead of SP3.

~~~
wmf
I have a feeling "WRX80" is a different name for SP3.

------
Roritharr
This is very saddening, I was looking forward to build a 16 core system on
this platform to give me an insane amount of room for upgrade in the years to
come.

Threadripper 3960x will have to do then :(

~~~
lliamander
The CPU market is going to go through some pretty dramatic changes in the net
year, especially with things like ARM possibly becoming the dominant
architecture. I wouldn't try and future proof your system too much yet.

------
rbanffy
That Lenovo box looks like quite a MacPro killer...

Apart from the OS, of course.

~~~
vbezhenar
Mac Pro is dead on arrival. Apple soon will abandon x86 and Mac Pro owners
will have a choice between staying on old unpatched OS or paying that giga
premium again. I think that it'll alienate even few remaining loyal
workstation Apple customers.

~~~
eyesee
I think Mac Pro customers fall into two bins: 1) Genuine professional users
who have demanding workloads and significant budgets, to which the price is
not a barrier, and 2) Wealthy enthusiasts who always buy "the biggest and best
available".

If you're in category 1, you have a job to do today. Apple's roadmap isn't
especially relevant as your job isn't going to wait 6 months to 2 years. If
they are planning for the future, the decision tends towards the "safe bet".
Mac Pro on Intel is a known quantity that works with their software and
workflows today. Future Apple Silicon Mac Pro is a big unknown. They may
choose to buy more Intel Pros today while they can, they may try the new ones
when available. Or they might investigate switching platforms. I don't think
sales here will be impacted greatly.

Category 2 users may decide to wait to purchase a new Apple Silicon _whatever_
when it comes out because they always want the latest and greatest. Whatever
they decide to buy is cash in Apple's pocket.

Either way, Mac Pro sales are a drop in the ocean in terms of Apple's revenue.

~~~
rbanffy
> Either way, Mac Pro sales are a drop in the ocean in terms of Apple's
> revenue.

Indeed. It's their "supercar". It's there to show how impressive an Apple can
be and, in that, it doesn't fail - it's a great machine and a solid example of
how a well designed computer should be easy to maintain.

I seriously doubt the Lenovo can be opened in less than 10 seconds.

~~~
lliamander
Judging from the exploded view, it looks like the side-panel has a simple
latch, and other parts (including power supply) have tool-less access as well.

~~~
rbanffy
Still, the MacPro exposes all sides in a more accessible way by rotating a
handle. I don't think there's anything that comes close.

~~~
Macha
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQGfVFpMpuQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQGfVFpMpuQ)

Here's a video of them opening up.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQGfVFpMpuQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQGfVFpMpuQ)

Here's a video of the case I used in my last build, released 2017.

The side just latches off with minimal effort, this feels even more accessible
than having to pull the entire cover off. Both the define r6 and the mac pro
have extra steps to get to additional components, like the latch to remove the
memory cover on mac pro or the latch to access the top fan mounts on the
define r6.

------
bitL
AMD is becoming as user hostile as Intel; the only interesting Threadrippers
for pros that need a lot of RAM, and all is restricted to OEMs only. After the
x399 upgrade fiasco, here comes another blow to loyal users.

~~~
smolder
This doesn't strike me as user hostile at all. What is wrong with buying an
OEM machine under warranty if you really have a use case for all that memory
bandwidth?

If you're custom building PCs, I _really_ doubt you're under-served by their
existing lineup. Any time savings you'd get working on a TR Pro machine over
regular TR or Ryzen are probably negated by the time you spent fiddling around
with assembling the computer and configuring it.

IMO, there are too many computer enthusiasts out there fixated on having
powerful machines as a sort of status symbol. It ends up being a waste of good
computer parts.

~~~
bitL
I am absolutely under-served by their existing line up - what's the point of a
64 core CPU that has only 256GB of RAM? That's only 2GB/thread. I can also
build a far better machine than any OEM can provide me and select appropriate
components for my needs, including a breathtaking case design that is nothing
like a random workstation box provided by an OEM or a high-end water cooling
for all subparts. If you are already spending money on 3990X, you can afford
1TB+ RAM, but there is no way... Assembling an own machine is a question of
2-3 hours tops. That's definitely a small fixed amount of time compared to
life-time time savings - was that a joke?

~~~
smolder
"breathtaking case design"? Is your reply a joke? What do you do with this
powerful machine that you feel limited by 2GB per thread? What's stopping you
from using Epyc if you need the ram? How long would it really take you to get
back, say, 5 hours of building a computer, in cpu time savings from having a
TR pro over regular TR? Maybe if you do video editing or a lot of compilation
it would only take a month.

~~~
bitL
EPYC is typically ~30% slower than a TR. With TR Pro I would be able to do
tasks that require >256GB of RAM, so the time saving compared to TR would be
infinite. Now please spare me telling me how almost no tasks need that much or
a similar prose - be happy that in your case it's sufficient. Thanks!

------
tiffanyh
So how does this not cannibalize their Epyc business?

It has higher base frequency than Epyc, typically a bit cheaper than Epyc and
it now has up to 2TB of ECC RAM support.

Not complaining. The perf/$ is amazing.

~~~
simlevesque
You can't buy just the CPU and build from scratch. If you want to do this
you'll be stuck with Epyc.

~~~
tiffanyh
These chips are the perfect platforms for AWS/Azure/GCP to offer as compute.

I hope one of them will.

~~~
bearjaws
Pretty sure only Epyc is licensed to cloud providers.

------
EricE
With this I might be able to build a machine that can play Cities: Skylines
with some speed when working on a large city!

------
parsimo2010
AMD, we're getting to the point of too many different product lines. I don't
think that TR Pro adds anything that couldn't have already fit into regular
Ryzen, Ryzen TR, or Epyc. Just for reference, we have:

\- Ryzen 3, 5, 7 which was fine

\- Ryzen Threadripper because for some reason we couldn't just call it Ryzen
with a bigger number (maybe they anticipated needing the 9 later)

\- Epyc for servers that supports ECC memory

\- Now we have Ryzen 9 because Intel made Core i9 (I guess this makes sense
for people comparison shopping)

\- Now we also have Threadripper Pro just because we can, not even as a
response to Intel

Epyc is the only distinction that needs to be made IMHO. The rest should just
be Ryzen 3,5,7,9,11,13... for desktop parts. It's fine if Ryzen 11 and 13 had
different sockets (like TR does). I don't need TR and I don't need TR Pro to
denote product lines alongside the numbering scheme.

I know this is a minor issue, but it shouldn't be that hard. Yeah, yeah,
"there are only two hard problems in computer science..." But look at the crap
that consumers have to deal with around USB naming and WiFi naming. Don't make
CPU naming follow the same trend.

~~~
mdszy
"AMD, we're getting to the point of too many different product lines."

I legitimately do not understand writing your post directly addressing AMD as
if they're actually listening to you.

~~~
sound1
They might be, this is HN after all!

