Now Shipping: AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1900X & Ryzen Pro CPUs
by Ryan Smith on August 31, 2017 9:30 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- AMD
- Ryzen
- ThreadRipper
- Ryzen PRO
Back when AMD announced their leading-edge Ryzen Threadripper 1950X and 1920X, the company also tucked in an announcement that there would be a third, cheaper Threadripper: the 1900X. Now after about a month’s wait since the first two chips launched, the 1900X is finally hitting the streets.
| AMD High-End Ryzen SKUs | ||||||||
| Cores/ Threads |
Base/ Turbo |
XFR | L3 | DRAM 1DPC |
PCIe | TDP | SRP | |
| TR 1950X | 16/32 | 3.4/4.0 | +200 | 32 MB | 4x2666 | 60 | 180W | $999 |
| TR 1920X | 12/24 | 3.5/4.0 | +200 | 32 MB | 4x2666 | 60 | 180W | $799 |
| TR 1900X | 8/16 | 3.8/4.0 | +200 | 16 MB | 4x2666 | 60 | 180W | $549 |
| Ryzen 7 1800X | 8/16 | 3.6/4.0 | +100 | 16 MB | 2x2666 | 16 | 95 W | $499 |
| Ryzen 7 1700X | 8/16 | 3.4/3.8 | +100 | 16 MB | 2x2666 | 16 | 95 W | $399 |
Of AMD’s Threadripper product stack, the 1900X is easily the most unusual of the chips. Whereas the 1950X and 1920X were the full-fledged version and the cheaper-but-still-thread-heavy-alterative respectively, the 1900X doesn’t really fit into either of those buckets. In fact with just 8 cores active, it has more in common with the Ryzen 7 1800X than it does the rest of the Threadripper family.
So why is AMD releasing an 8 core version of Threadripper when one Zeppelin die can accomplish the same thing at $100 less and almost half the TDP? Because while the 1900X may be a few cores short of a full Threadripper, it retains the platform’s immense I/O and memory bandwidth capabilities. In other words, 4 DDR4 memory channels and 60 + 4 PCIe lanes, offering twice the cumulative memory bandwidth and three times as many freely available PCIe lanes as AMD’s standard Ryzen processors. In fact other than cores, the only other thing it loses out on from the 1950X is L3 cache, with 16MB rather than the 32MB of its higher core counterparts. Conversely, its 3.8GHz base clockspeed makes it the highest base clockspeed of all of AMD’s Ryzen CPUs, standard and Threadripper.
It does bear mentioning that Threadripper’s multi-die layout does comes with the same potential caveats as the other SKUs, which is why the 1900X isn’t going to be equal to or better than the 1800X in all scenarios. However with a MSRP of $549, the 1900X is now the cheapest way to get a high-I/O x86 processor. So for tasks that require a more limited number of threads and a lot of I/O and memory bandwidth, the 1900X should fit comfortably in its niche.
As for reviews of the new processor, unfortunately AMD did not sample the 1900X in advance. We're angling to get one in soon, so please stay tuned for that.
Meanwhile also shipping out the door from AMD today is their Ryzen PRO processors. Announced back at the end of July, these are enterprise IT -focused versions of AMD’s standard Ryzen processors, offering longer support periods along with features such as enhanced security and added manageability features. Accordingly, AMD’s partners have started showing off their latest enterprise-systems, with Dell, HP, and Lenovo all set to begin shipping Ryzen PRO-equipped systems in the following weeks.
| AMD Ryzen PRO Specifications | ||||||||
| Cores/Threads | Frequency | Cache | TDP | |||||
| Base | Boost | L2 | L3 | |||||
| Ryzen 7 PRO 1700X | 8/16 | 3.5 GHz | 3.7 GHz | 4 MB | 16 MB | 95 W | ||
| Ryzen 7 PRO 1700 | 3 GHz | 3.7 GHz | 65 W | |||||
| Ryzen 5 PRO 1600 | 6/12 | 3.2 GHz | 3.6 GHz | 3 MB | ||||
| Ryzen 5 PRO 1500 | 4/8 | 3.5 GHz | 3.7 GHz | 2 MB | ||||
| Ryzen 3 PRO 1300 | 4/4 | 3.5 GHz | 3.7 GHz | 8 MB | ||||
| Ryzen 3 PRO 1200 | 4/4 | 3.1 GHz | 3.4 GHz | |||||
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
19 Comments
View All Comments
eek2121 - Thursday, August 31, 2017 - link
Are they shipping review samples? I already have a 1950X, but I'm curious as to how the 1900X stacks up against the competition.Manch - Thursday, August 31, 2017 - link
I want to see the 1800x vs the 1900x specificallyRyan Smith - Thursday, August 31, 2017 - link
"Are they shipping review samples?"No, they are not.
MajGenRelativity - Thursday, August 31, 2017 - link
Just wondering, what are the scenarios that would need a lot of I/O + Memory, but not a lot of cores? I can think of 4-way SLI/Crossfire, but I know there HAS to be other uses that aren't gaming.zepi - Thursday, August 31, 2017 - link
In servers many kind of Memcaching / PCI-E SSD / storage servers might not require much CPU, but benefit from plenty of IO / memory as you want to just server as much traffic as possible over multiple 10Gbe / 40Gbe etc. network interfaces from a terabyte or of memory / huge amount of SSD etc.In workstation environment... I can't think of many situations where such CPU would make much sense.
zepi - Thursday, August 31, 2017 - link
Well, maybe you want to run multiple PCI-e GPU's doing rendering tasks. But I don't really know if it makes sense to save $250 if you plan to have $2500 worth of GPU's installed.sor - Thursday, August 31, 2017 - link
I want to have some VMs with dedicated PCI-e cards passed through on my workstation. I don't necessarily need 16 cores for my use case.Also, an important point to note, I believe the 1900X has the highest base clock of any Ryzen processor, and in the big Threadripper package it may have better XFR/overclocking behavior. I believe it will be the single threaded king of the Ryzen chips (for now).
peevee - Thursday, August 31, 2017 - link
3-4 graphics cards would be useful for every software which offloads most of its work to GPUs: CAD, 3D rendering, video processing, photoshop, "bitcoin" mining...OTOH paying extra $450 for 2x CPU performance sounds reasonable if you are paying for 4 $400-$1000 GPUs anyway.
phoenix_rizzen - Thursday, August 31, 2017 - link
This will be a great processor for storage boxes running ZFS. You don't need a lot of cores, but the more PCIe lanes for storage expansion, the better. You can stick a lot of x8 HBAs into a motherboard with 60 PCIe lanes available. :) And hang a lot of SATA drives off of them. Sure, you might not break any throughput or IOps records that way, but you can easily get into petabytes of available space.ddriver - Thursday, August 31, 2017 - link
If you use mostly GPU compute then you only need the CPU to schedule work.