AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X
IT’S INCREDIBLE HOW far things have come in the last year. Let’s take a step back to October 2016 for a moment: Intel’s 14nm Skylake architecture was still kicking maximum ass, with its incredible IPC and strong I/O support, and the Core i7-6950X was still the only processor to have made the jump beyond that eight core count—but it came in at a staggering $,1000. AMD, on the other hand, was still lurking around in the world of super-budget FPU and APU rigs, with a convoluted platform and slim pickings when it came to performance.
The rumor mill was in full flow, though, with rumblings of Intel’s latest Kaby Lake architecture soon to launch, and the Ryzen hype train getting up to speed. That aside, core count seemed to be resolutely staying put—for the time being, at least.
Twelve months later, and the entire ecosystem has changed dramatically. Ryzen was a major game-changer, making eight cores the norm, and demolishing Intel’s four-core industry; it’s seen both HEDT and mid-range systems change for the better.
The culmination of all of AMD’s hard work lies within the beauty that is Threadripper. Needing a competitive platform to rival Intel’s X99 series, AMD took a cue from its server-grade EPYC chips, and pulled the entire platform into a consumer-friendly variant. Utilizing half as many cores (so far), and quad-channel support, as opposed to the octo-channel featured in EPYC, team red kept the I/O identical to its server-bound child, leading to a phenomenal 64 PCIe lanes available on every X399 board. Combine that with a staggering 16 Ryzen cores communicating across AMD’s infinity fabric, with multithreading, and you’re essentially looking at 32 threads capable of operating at a 3.7GHz stock frequency in multithreaded applications. Something even Intel has struggled to achieve so far on its higher end cores.
As though that’s not enough, it’s even possible to overclock the lot of them. Although we’re only talking a small increment of 300– 400MHz, when done across all 16 cores, the performance gains are almost unbelievable. Perfect for anyone using demanding processing applications.