Opinion: AMD Ryzen Threadripper (TR/TR4) will be released this month

X399 is the new AMD Ryzen Threadripper (TR/TR4) motherboard platform which is accompanying the gigantic Threadripper CPU’s. The extra-large chips are huge and come with a special torque screw and mounting/sliding mechanism. I would recommend watching the clear and simple video by YouTuber Paul of Pauls Hardware if it’s your first time.

What to expect

The high-end market has been dominated by Intel for the last half-decade or so. AMD’s fans have been waiting for a truly high-end platform with a CPU and GPU to match. The Ryzen Threadripper on paper, at least, appears to be delivering what fans have been waiting for. The TR platform is a monster on paper as well as in physical size. Three torque screws keep the CPU’s from moving as well as an orange bracket to slide in the CPU. All the CPU’s have quad-channel memory which means up to 8 sticks of RAM.

What not to expect

AMD appears to be delivering on a promise of a cheaper platform for the high-end market. Creators and enthusiast including streamers and those with multiple “use cases” can expect to be able to take advantage of 64 PCI’e lanes. This means that multiple graphics cards as well as multiple peripherals are real options which aren’t on Intel’s X299 platform. The lower core count chips on Intel’s X299 platform see PCI’e lanes drop disappointingly to as low as 16 which is essentially just one graphics card with a peripheral or two attached to a higher cost X299 motherboard.

The KBL-X (Kabby Lake) chips are also only 4 cores with a limited 8MB of cache leading some to believe this to be a poorly thought out and rushed implementation of a professional X299 platform and thus many will be hoping for “Coffee Lake” to come out later next year.

The Core X series of CPU’s from Intel are also more expensive and apparently you will get less for more in terms of value. Intel has yet to confirm what the high-end Core X CPU’s can do. Intel was clearly not ready for the AMD TR CPU line-up with its lower end X chips only having two channels of memory support which is 4 RAM sticks which doesn’t sound like high-end to most of the groups of users being targeted. This has caused competition which means the consumer wins. You should not expect AMD TR CPU’s to be amazing at time of launch as it will take months for them to mature through updates to improve performance but at least all the chips are quad-channel and 64 PCI’e lanes appropriate.

The release dates are as follows:

AUGUST 10TH

1950X 16-Cores, 32-Threads 3.4 GHz Base 4.0 GHz Boost 64PCIe Lanes and 4 Channel DDR4 $999

1920X 12-Cores, 24-Threads 3.5 GHz Base 4.0GHz Boost 64PCIe Lanes and 4 Channel DDR4 $799

AUGUST 31ST

1900X 8-Cores, 16 Threads 3.8GHz Base 4.0GHz Boost 64PCIe Lanes and 4 Channel DDR4 $549