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AMD's Threadripper lineup launches in August starting at $799, Ryzen 3 in July

Ryzen 7 was a good introduction to AMD's Zen architecture, followed by Ryzen 5, which brought a bit more balance to the price/performance ratio. However, the buck does not stop there. AMD is readying a Ryzen 3 release to complete its mainstream desktop lineup, and for enthusiasts, Threadripper is right around the corner as well. Both are set to debut within the next couple of months, with AMD today announcing release time frames for Ryzen 3 and Threadripper, and pricing information for the latter.

Starting at the top, Threaderipper is headed to the high-end desktop (HEDT) market before the end of summer. While AMD did not share an exact release date, the company did say that Threadripper will be on store shelves in early August, which we take to mean within the first two weeks.

There will be two SKUs to choose from:

  • Ryzen Threadripper 1950X: 16 cores, 32 threads, 3.4GHz-4GHz—$999
  • Ryzen Threadripper 1920X: 12 cores, 24 threads, 3.5GHz-4GHz—$799

As you can see, clockspeeds will generally be the same, with the 1920X having a 100MHz faster boost clock and the same 4GHz Turbo speed. That should make it perform slightly better in programs that are not heavily threaded or otherwise do a poor job of utilizing multiple cores and threads, though the added cores and threads of the 1950X will more than make up for the base clockspeed difference in programs that do tap into available cores and threads.

One of those programs is Cinebench. In the latest version (R15), AMD demonstrates in a YouTube video the 1950X cruising through Maxon's professional grade benchmark and scoring over 3,000 points.

The 1920X is no slouch in multi-threaded applications, either. In the same benchmark, the 1920X scored 2,431 points, outpacing an Intel Core i9-7900X that scored 2,167 points. That bodes well for AMD, no matter how much shade Intel tries to throw on the competition.

A couple of notes here before we move on. One is the price point. With the cost of entry set at $799, AMD is undercutting Intel's Core i9 stack, which starts at $999. However, AMD is missing an opportunity here to render Intel's entire HEDT lineup virtually irrelevant—Core i7 Kaby Lake-X processors can be had for a few hundred bucks.

That said, the pricing makes sense from a business perspective. These are big boy/girl CPUs we are talking about here, and if you want a generous allotment of PCI Express lanes to play with, you have to step up to Threadripper (64 PCIe lanes starting at $799) or Skylake-X (44 PCIe lanes starting at $999). AMD also avoids cannibalizing its Ryzen 7 family.

Our own Jarred Walton also deserves kudos for correctly surmising that sites supposedly 'leaking' 14-core and 10-core models were guessing rather than using any concrete information. Jarred noted that to do a 10-core chip, AMD would have to use an asymmetrical CCX configuration (3 cores on two, 2 cores on two for a 10-core chip, or 4 cores on two and 3 cores on two for a 14-core).

Finally, in addition to featuring 64 PCIe lanes, Ryzen Threaderipper will use a new socket (dubbed TR4) and support quad-channel DDR4 memory.

AMD also announced specs and availability for its upcoming Ryzen 3 family. Ryzen 3 will land on store shelves two weeks from today (July 27) with the following models:

  • Ryzen 3 1300X: 4 cores, 4 threads, 3.5GHz-3.7GHz
  • Ryzen 3 1200: 4 cores, 4 threads, 3.1GHz-3.4GHz

AMD did not announce pricing information for Ryzen 3, though as a point of reference, the least expensive Ryzen 5 processor (Ryzen 5 1400) sells for around $160.

Paul Lilly
