AMD Reveals First ThreadRipper Prices, Early August Launch

[pmorph]

Lower than eBay? You missed the point. There is a difference between value and cost.

I think it really is difficult to see your point there.
From value pov, a product new to market can typically compete with a second hand part only in some rare corner cases.

[bridgman]

I wasn't trying to point out my own preferences, I was just saying: when AMD's performance is in the same league as Intel, so is their pricing. As opposed to some people's expectations that AMD will simply massively lower prices across the board.

My casual impression was that we did effectively lower prices across the board, and then Intel responded by lowering theirs as well (on their comparable new products). The price/performance between vendors will always tend to track over time, but it could by by others lowering their prices rather than us raising ours.

[ddriver]

I was just saying: when AMD's performance is in the same league as Intel, so is their pricing.

Except that it is not. AMD offers intel's performance at 50-65% of intel's prices. That's not "the same league".

Now if you expected AMD to launch 8 core chips at 150$ and 16 core at 300... that's just wildly unrealistic expectations.

[edwaleni]

Really?And how is that a better deal?

1 - the market is not exactly overflowing on complete 12c/24t Westmere-EP systems below 1k, but if you have a source, please share with us
2 - it is a used product, and it was likely used 24/7 for its entire warranty period, so reliability is highly questionable, I personally never buy used, much less at "throw away" prices
3 - highly doubt 2x6 core Westmere-EP will hit anywhere nearly 80% of TR's performance, more like 50%, 60% at best
4 - while providing roughly half of TR's performance, it will use double the power, so prepare for about 1/4 of the power/performance of RT, and electricity costs money too you know


So yea, your "superior" choice of a hypothetical refurbished server will end up burning through that 300$ that are choking you in no time, as your alleged workloads will have half the throughput per unit of time at double the power usage.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion.

You can get a wealth of quality refurbs through the Server Store, Server Monkey,Tech Turn and a host of others. And yes, if you shop it right, you can find plenty under $1k. (I recently picked up a lightly used dual Westmere EP for less than $400)

In some cases they are brand new, never sold, reboxed inventory, just a reduced warranty. In other cases (read cheaper) they are C Stock that yes, have run 24x7 in some datacenter for 3 or 4 years. You can be picky as there are plenty of choices.

I am not saying that is answer for all workloads for all people. Would I run an enterprise on refurb, no of course not. Would I run a startup on it who needs cheap compute, sure. It works great for me and that is all that matters.

When the time comes i will jump on the Ripper.

[duby229]

And you will not see Intel competing against Threadripper at its price points. Their costs for their chip line includes exclusive bribes to third party OEMs for choosing them over several years. It's legal kickbacks. Now that the big OEMs are building Threadripper systems and the costs of Fab production has skyrocketed for Intel [AMD has no debt wrt Fabs anymore] they have to keep those prices higher to offset that balance sheet.

You're right AMD has no debt with regards to fabs, it's just that fabrication now costs them 3 times more and it's due strictly up front now.

[bug77]

My casual impression was that we did effectively lower prices across the board, and then Intel responded by lowering theirs as well (on their comparable new products). The price/performance between vendors will always tend to track over time, but it could by by others lowering their prices rather than us raising ours.

Top end CPUs are still around $1k, a well rounded desktop CPU still hovers around $200. Prices may have moved, but not significantly imho.
I mean, years ago, when I got an AthlonXP (two actually) or an Athlon64 (again, two), I was getting Intel's level of performance for much lower TDP and at almost half the price. That's not what we see today. But it's ok, AMD had to cover a lot of ground, they should be allowed to cash in on their efforts. They're still a business at the end of the day, not a charity.

Except that it is not. AMD offers intel's performance at 50-65% of intel's prices. That's not "the same league".

Now if you expected AMD to launch 8 core chips at 150$ and 16 core at 300... that's just wildly unrealistic expectations.

chithanh posted above a best case scenario and AMD commands a 30% lead for the same price. It's lower, but still "in the same league" in my book.

[jrch2k8]

After seeing the power number on EPYC and the price of TR, I'm sure enough TR is gonna destroy sky-X.

I'm drooling now for that sexy 12/24c TR especially if there is a non X in the firmament XD

I guess I'll go with this

* TR 1920/x
* X399 mobo with at least 4 M.2 full PCI-e(M.2 sata is for intel peasants)
* 32 or 64Gb Quad channel(speed waiting for benches )
* 4 256/512 M.2 Samsung 960 Pro NVMe (for a ZoL ZFS Raid 10 main boot array, OMG those speeds)
* 2 4TB+ regular HDD with ZFS Raid 1 for cold storage.
* 1 RX-580 or Vega(depending price and benches ofc)
* Archlinux or Gentoo FTW

With this I can play like a boss(I'm not an FPS junkie so I don't care the i7 get me moar fps as long as I get at least 60 fps at ultra) on my breaks, with systemd containers I can emulate all my developing needs server infrastructure(specially awesome once NVMe 1.3 hit the kernel and I can segment the array), I can use kvm to emulate clients VPS/servers systems too, compile like a boss and use systemd infrastructure to trigger my automated testing containers plus all my browsing needs plus IDE and documentation plus listen to all my h265 music videos(which my current Xeon e3 1231v3 sweat blood to convert) ALL AT THE SAME TIME and prolly I can save 4 cores to handbrake my videos into x265 in the background.

I can't wait for August, AMD Thank you for finally bringing the heat and innovate beyond the eternal 4 cores Intel has been milking us for years.

Now AMD guys make sure you have enough availability and mobo testing and some buckets to collect Intel Salt and grab some healthy market share

[duby229]

Top end CPUs are still around $1k, a well rounded desktop CPU still hovers around $200. Prices may have moved, but not significantly imho.
I mean, years ago, when I got an AthlonXP (two actually) or an Athlon64 (again, two), I was getting Intel's level of performance for much lower TDP and at almost half the price. That's not what we see today. But it's ok, AMD had to cover a lot of ground, they should be allowed to cash in on their efforts. They're still a business at the end of the day, not a charity.



chithanh posted above a best case scenario and AMD commands a 30% lead for the same price. It's lower, but still "in the same league" in my book.

It's not really a comparable situation. Thunderbird had a 120mm^2 die. The wafers were smaller and it was all about maximum number of dies per wafer. Die sizes were much more limited back then.

[Stankami]

You're right AMD has no debt with regards to fabs, it's just that fabrication now costs them 3 times more and it's due strictly up front now.

How do you know? I haven't known any CPU fabrication costs ever, let alone the new Zen CPU's.

[chithanh]

chithanh posted above a best case scenario and AMD commands a 30% lead for the same price. It's lower, but still "in the same league" in my book.

Be aware that price does not linearly increase with performance. If you compare the price of similarly performing products you will get a better picture who is in which league.

Also keep in mind that these are Intel reaction prices. If you compare to previous generation Intel products, AMD has much bigger price/perf advantage. So it is not AMD who approached Intel pricing, it is instead Intel who (grudgingly, it seems) approached AMD pricing.