- AMD announced Threadripper™ PRO
their competitor for Intel Xeon W
designed for workstations back in July of 2020.
And it's taken us all the way until now
to actually get our hands on one.
And it's still not available to the broader market.
So there is no way for you to just go
and buy one of these at your local store.
- [Announcer] Just kidding.
AMD announced retail Threadripper™ PRO
while we were editing this video.
They are expected to be available in March
- But dry those tears, because we haven't even told you
if you should want one yet.
To find out we'll be taking the Lenovo ThinkStation P620
for a little test drive.
Yes, my friends, this configuration right here
has a sticker price of over $18,000.
But then there's a nearly $8,000 discount
which is like, whoa, what is even happening here?
I don't know what going on.
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It's really unusual for AMD to restrict access
to their products.
I mean, even the fanciest Epyc Server CPU's
are readily available on www.newegg.com
but these Threadripper™ Pros launched exclusively
alongside Lenovo's new ThinkStation P6220 workstation
with no publicly disclosed length
to the term of exclusivity and no apparent intention
from AMD to sell these chips
in anything other than OEM Systems at all.
Before we get to talk about why they're exclusive though,
let's talk about the CPU's for a bit.
When AMD launched first gen Ryzen and Threadripper,
they were finally re-entering the CPU market in a big way.
On desktop, they had everything from budget quad-cores
all the way up to 16 core monsters that targeted enthusiasts
and they followed their desktop re-entry up with Epyc,
which by its second generation
was spanking Intel in the server and data center market.
With Threadripper™ Pro then, they're finally coming back
to the last major computing market, workstation
and that's for the first time since AMD Opteron was a thing.
Back in those days, though,
the distinction between a desktop and a workstation
was a lot more clear.
If you wanted lots of RAM, ECC RAM, many CPU cores
which usually required multiple CPU's on a single board
or if you needed lots of PCI Express expansion,
workstation was sort of your only option.
Since then though regular Threadrippers,
like our test bench right here,
along with RYZEN's semi universal support
for unregistered ECC memory,
and for that matter, the way that Intel's HEDT chips
moved to very high core counts
and more PCI Express lanes to counter AMD's threat
meaning that the line has blurred a lot
especially considering that relatively speaking,
the cost of these CPU's is not actually that exorbitant
from a certain point of view.
So why would AMD launch this Threadripper™ Pro
based on their soon to be replaced Zen 2 Architecture.
The lineup consists of four models, a 64 core, a 32 core
and yes, that is correct both 16 and 12 core models.
Our unit here is equipped with the 3975WX, a 32 core
with a 3.5 gigahertz base clock and 4.2 gigahertz boost.
Now it's along with the 64 core model
has an obvious non-pro Threadripper counterpart.
So those will be easy to compare to,
but 16 and 12 core.
Well, those would be very interesting
for folks who want Mondo RAM bandwidth
and PCI express lanes,
but don't actually want a ton of cores.
What else actually sets them apart though?
The most glaring difference is clock speeds.
On the 32 and 64 core models,
both base and boost clocks are lower on the pro chips,
but this kind of makes sense
as it's likely to help them better conform
to thermal limits and to help improve their stability.
You're also not going to have certain features
that you enjoy on regular Threadripper
like the ability to overclock the CPU's or the memory.
As for the 12 and 16 core models,
oddly, these have really high base clocks
nearly four gigahertz on both of them
which is actually higher
than their Zen 3 gaming equivalents.
So, they might pack a hefty punch for certain applications
but unfortunately we don't have them on hand
because we can't just go buy one to pop in here
and see how it goes.
Speaking of which, I mean, how proprietary is this thing?
Got a little schematic there.
Oh, that's interesting, one, two, seven, eight.
Is this eight channel memory?
- [Jake] Correct.
- Whoa.
Wait, so that means with only four dims installed
we're not even taking advantage of it all.
Gosh, darn it.
Oh, wow tips really zip.
Oh, interesting.
That's because it's using a very proprietary
vile looking power supply.
So this is a 12 volt only power supply,
meaning that any conversion to five or a 3.3 volt
is actually done on the motherboard
rather than on the power supply
which means that this motherboard
is also gonna be very proprietary though.
That would explain the cooler that it's got right here
with these 12 volt connectors going,
wait, where do they run to?
Hello?
Oh, these.
Oh, okay, these are for graphics cards.
So the graphics card auxiliary power
comes from the side of the motherboard there
and then, oh, no way.
Oh, that's trippy.
There's a handle here for the power supply
that goes into like a solid,
almost looks like a PCI Express 8X slot or something
connector on the board.
Huh?
It's amazing how much engineering, you know,
the OEM System integrators do
for like to reinvent standards that mostly kind of exist.
Good for you.
(laughing)
Oh, what else we got here?
We got one, two, three, four, five.
Thought lots of PCI Express expansion.
All of these 69 slots are like fully pinned out.
I mean, that makes sense
because there's 128 PCI Express lanes on this thing.
Cooling is a little funny on this thing.
There's all this ventilation room at the front
like it's completely open
but there's only a single 92 millimeter fan in there
when it looks like they could easily
have a 120 or even a 140.
And then the back is just a single 92 millimeter fan again.
Like this is RTX 6,000 Quadro graphics card
and a 32 core CPU.
You'd think they'd put a little bit more airflow in it.
Oh, that's fun.
When's the last time you saw a RAM cooler.
Surface level weirdness aside,
there's actually some deeper weirdness
to talk about in here.
While it looks the same as a normal Threadripper,
you don't get your CPU in your motherboard and all that,
underneath that trippy cooler
is an all new platform called WRX80 with a new socket in it
that's called SWRX8.
Now, there's not a ton of information out there about it
because we aren't getting any retail motherboards
with this platform in the socket.
But we do know some key differences from the launch event
which include most of Threadripper™ PRO selling points.
So we're talking 128 lanes
of PCI Express gen four connectivity,
eight channel memory with a max capacity of two terabytes
up from quad channel with 256 gigs of max capacity,
support for registered ECC memory
which might help us explain the coolers
on the RAM sticks there.
Full memory encryption and AMD Pro management.
So on the surface,
it seems like this is just a slightly modified Epyc CPU
on a server board, but with extra steps.
But if you look closely, AMD server boards
don't have a chip set because Epyc is technically an SOC.
This board does have a chip set.
That's how it has support for workstation features
like AMD's Raid configurator.
Epyc has no such thing.
Weirdness aside, we can still make some educated guesses
as to how the system will behave.
And overall, I'm expecting gaming performance
to of course be worse
with Threadripper™ PRO definitely having the upper hand
in anything that requires lots and lots
of memory capacity and bandwidth.
Remember if you fully kit out a 64 core 3990X
with 256 gigs of RAM,
that leaves you with only two gigs of RAM per thread,
pretty measly figure for some professional
and commercial applications,
but let's try it for real.
Drag race time one, two, three, go.
Threadripper™ versus Threadripper™ PRO
big show down, yeah.
I didn't big surprise to absolutely nobody
when you've got architecturally,
basically the same bloody thing
but like one of them is clocked better.
One of them will give you slightly faster.
Yeah. Now we know.
Hey, thanks Linus Tech Tips
Wait, oh dammit, I forgot to tell it to run.
Ah, only one time.
45,400,
41,800
Of course, Cinebench is not the be all and end all
of CPU performance.
So we've taken the liberty of running a few more benchmarks
to demonstrate that yes in fact water is wet
and the sky is blue.
But what about pricing?
Because these CPU's are only available from Lenovo
in a pre-built form,
we don't really have like an MSRP for them.
Leaving us to go off of with the pricing on Lenovo's website
which is frankly terrifying.
The price difference between the 12 core and the 64 core
is nearly 15,000 US dollars.
Holy schnikes.
But then there's, like the multi thousand dollars discounts
or whatever, so we just have no idea.
As for the exclusivity,
we don't know specifically what AMD's intention.
It really is weird how companies can be cagey
about the strangest things, isn't it?
But we can at least make some educated guesses.
First off, when launching a product aimed at professionals
the understanding is that
many of the aforementioned professionals
don't want to or don't have the time
to spec and build custom machine.
They're probably ordering in bulk
likely through their IT department.
That means that focusing on an OEM like Dell, HP
or Lenovo could actually make sense
since the people that AMD expects
to actually buy these CPU's,
likely don't have much interest in retail chips.
It can also lower the overall development cost
and the timeframe of releasing a product significantly
if you limit the scope of compatibility.
AMD clearly knew that Zen 3 was coming
when they started this project.
So if you only have one system model available at launch,
that means you only have to optimize one BIOS
and you only have to work
with one company during development.
If you were working with a whack load
of retail board partners,
like they do for something like Ryzen,
that could easily delay something like this
by weeks or even months, by which time
there might not be any point launching it at all.
It can also help save on distribution and marketing costs
because they would be shared with you OEM partner
which in this case would be Lenovo.
The unfortunate side effect of this
is that we have much more limited variety
as consumers or prosumers.
Fewer motherboard manufacturers means less choice
if you want cool features
like IPMI for remote management,
Thunderbolt for high-speed connectivity, et cetera et cetera
at least for now.
As for what I think,
well, I'm kind of off because I just bought
a bunch of new regular Threadrippers for our video editors
and now they're gonna be obsolete.
So, thanks AMD.
But I'm also grateful
because thanks to AMD building cool shiz all the time,
CPU's actually get obsolete again
instead of just being re-released
with the same re-imagined technology over and over again.
- [Jake] And over and over
- So, thanks AMD.
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