AMD revealed their 2nd generation of the Threadripper series at Computex 18; these processors are the successors of the 16-core Threadripper 1950X, 12-core 1920X and 8-core 1900X that were launched at the start of 2017. During their press conference, they announced that these processors would be available for the consumers to buy in Q3 2018. These new processors will start the next round of the core wars between Intel and AMD where Intel is going forward with their 28-core processor that can be overclocked up to 5.0GHz and more depending upon the cooling. We will witness another stride from AMD to achieve the best in the processor market on the 13th August as suggested by the latest rumors.
This time around only two models of the Threadripper will rip the PC enthusiast market rather than three models that were released last year. The flagship model will rock 32 cores while the other model which can be called a flagship in its own since it has a total of 24 cores and all of them are overclockable. Let’s dive into some little details of what we know so far.
32 core AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990X
The flagship processor consists of 4 dies that are manufactured using the new Zen+ architecture that gives the necessary performance boost we saw in the 2nd gen Ryzen processors. Additionally, AMD is going to include the latest precision boost and XFR clocking techniques that will aid in overclocking every core of the 32 core CPU. The chip is made up of the new 12nm process that will aid the fabrication process to add more transistors on a single die. Regarding performance, the 2990X is packing enough horsepower that rendering a 4k or 8k video will not be a process of hours anymore, for this processor it is a matter of minutes if not seconds.
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The processor has a base clock speed of 3.2GHz, and a boost clock speed of 4.0GHz that will be overclockable up to 4.2GHz with no further aid because AMD has already included precision boost if you want to go even higher on the clock, higher voltages and more robust cooling will be required. Other than this the four dies that are produced with the CCX configuration are connected via the infinity thread that AMD specially made so that its processors do not loose on the speed because the individual cores are divided in 4 dies.
While AMD had to disable two dies in the previous generation Threadripper, this time around for the 2990X model every die is fully functional and houses 8 Ryzen processors, that is why they were able to reach a total of 32 cores while maintaining the same clock speed and boosting the overclocked speed even further. The processor is rated at a maximum power draw of 250 Watts AMD is saying that the consumers can use the previous generation X399 motherboards for this too, but they are skeptical if that motherboard can deliver enough power to the CPU.
24 core AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2950X
The 2950X is the slightly restricted version of the Threadripper 2990X, but on paper, the specifications it is rocking are making sure that this processor stand on the flagship league. The manufacturing process is same throughout the 2nd gen Ryzen processors all of them are made with the 12nm process using the Zen+ architecture and are powered by AMD’s CCX configurations.
The 2950X processor just like its bigger version has the precision boost and XFR overclocking capabilities that will aid the user in overclocking. The base clock speed in this processor is also 3.4GHz and the boost clock speed of 4.0GHZ that can be overclocked up to 4.2GHz without any assistance.
The cache is also the same across the board with 16 MB of L2 cache and 64 MB of L3 cache that rounds up the cache amount to 80 MB available for a single chip. That means a single chip will process 80 MB of data number of times that will be depending upon the current clock speed of the processor.
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The only thing that the 2950X lacks is the eight extra cores; it has a six-core die that makes it a 24-core processor, and this is the only thing that differentiates the 2nd gen Threadrippers. The price and availability of this model is not revealed yet.
2nd gen X399 motherboard
The Threadrippers processors are slightly larger than an ordinary processor everyone has in their PC, that is why they require a bigger socket that is not common. With the release of the first gen Threadripper AMD released the X399 motherboard that provided enough space and power for the Threadripper to work in its full potential.
AMD has said that the 2nd gen Threadrippers can work with the last X399 motherboard, but they are not guaranteeing that it will be able to make use of the extra power of the new processor. That is why along with processor the 3rd generation of the X399 motherboard is also expected to be released on 13th August.
No Intel Chip will hit 5Ghz on 28 Cores in the next years. It was a tech demo with one carefully selected 10,000USD Xeon CPU, a custom motherboard and an huge cooling solution with alone draws 1kw power from the wall.