AMD will be launching their 3rd Gen Ryzen Threadripper processors premiering with 24 cores next month. While there have been various rumors about the platform and socket support, it looks like MSI has leaked out one of their own motherboards, confirming a few theories for AMD’s 3rd HEDT lineup.
MSI Readies Creator TRX40 Motherboard For 3rd Gen ‘HEDT’ AMD Ryzen Threadripper CPUs
Spotted by Videocardz, the MSI Creator TRX40 was listed on a promo page by MSI which lets users redeem a $25 Steam gift card if they purchase an eligible product. One of those products as you might have guessed is the new Threadripper series motherboard and the naming convention more or less confirms that earlier reports were true. Previously, the MSI TRX40 PRO 10G motherboard was also registered at EEC which confirms that there will be not one but several models displayed by MSI for the new Threadripper lineup.
Motherboard makers are currently busy preparing a range of HEDT products for both Intel & AMD processors. We have already seen the Creator X299 which was announced yesterday and puts a lot of focus towards the creator market. Features such as more I/O, more capacity and higher power stability through the use of best-in-class VRMs (90A Power Stages) are just a few highlights of MSI’s Creator lineup.
There are no details mentioned for the Creator TRX40 but considering that it’s now listed by a manufacturer and the new 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen Threadripper CPUs launch next month, an official introduction of these boards may not be that far away. Other TRX40 motherboards from Gigabyte and ASUS have also leaked out prior to this which include:
ASUS PRIME TRX40-PRO
ASUS ROG STRIX TRX40-E GAMING
TRX40 AORUS Xtreme Waterforce
TRX40 AORUS Xtreme
TRX40 AORUS Master
TRX40 AORUS Pro WIFI
TRX40 DESIGNARE
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3000 Series CPUs – Here’s What To Expect In Terms of Price, Specs, and Performance
The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3000 series family is internally known as “Castle Peak” and is stated to bring dominant leadership in the HEDT market. The family will prove to be a new watermark in performance and overall efficiency while new platform features will be introduced on the new and enhanced motherboards to take them to the next level.
Currently, reports state that there will be two separate platforms for enthusiasts and workstation chips, the TRX40 and WRX80. The details of these platforms are listed below.
AMD TRX40 ‘Enthusiast’ Ryzen Threadripper 3000 Processors
The TRX4 HEDT platform would feature quad-channel memory, UDIMM memory support with 2 DIMMs per channel and up to 256 GB of capacity per channel. This means that the platform will support up to 1 TB of memory. There would also be support for 64 Gen 4 PCIe lanes with 16 lanes switchable with the SATA interface. There also seems to be info regarding TDPs and we can also notice the segmentation here too. The Group ‘A’ series processors, which are the HEDT lineup for the TRX40 platform with 280W TDP, Tcase Max temperature of 60C and Tctl Max of 100C.
AMD WRX80 ‘Workstation’ Ryzen Threadripper 3000 Processors
Now coming to the WRX80 series, we are looking at a pure workstation lineup. Even the processors built around this platform are spec’d similar to the EPYC 7002 variants, featuring 8-channel DDR4-3200 support in UDIMM, RDIMM, LRDIMM flavors. The platform would support 1 DIMM/channel featuring support for up to 2 TB of memory. There wouldn’t be any OC support like the TRX40 series but you get 96-128 Gen4 PCIe lanes with 32 switchable lanes to SATA. The Group ‘B’ series processors which are the workstation lineup for the WRX80 platform will also feature a 280W TDP but different temperature range of Tcase Max temperature of 81C and Tctl Max of 100C.
Considering that AMD would want to remain in a dominant position with the Threadripper 3000 series, we will be looking at some spectacular amounts of multi-threaded performance numbers which will only get better with the added clock speeds thanks to the 7nm process node. The CPUs will also be getting major core bumps, but AMD would like to keep prices close to current levels.
AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su:
“You know. it’s very interesting, some of the things that circulate on the Internet—I don’t think we ever said that Threadripper was not going to continue—it somehow took on a life of its own on the Internet,” Su said, speaking to a small group of reporters following her keynote. “You will see more [Threadripper] from us; you will definitely see more.
If mainstream is moving up, then Threadripper will have to move up, up—and that’s what we’re working on.”
If we look at the trend with AMD’s jump from Ryzen Threadripper 1000 to Ryzen Threadripper 2000, we saw that the new processors with core parity of the previous generation were priced around the same with a $200-$300 shaved off from their previous price tag. The 1950X became 2950X and cost $200 US less. The higher core count parts were at a different market tier entirely, costing north of $1200 US but at the same time, much cheaper than their Core-X competitors.
In terms of raw performance output, the new die layout remains to be tested, but since it is more refined over the previous two generations with a stronger interconnect between them, the cache and latency performance may end up giving a bigger boost to total system responsiveness. AMD will definitely be aiming for both LGA 2066 and LGA 3647 lines with their new chips. Intel has said that their upcoming Core-X series will offer a much better value proposition with 2x better perf per dollar compared to Skylake-X, but that remains to be seen in real-world benchmarks and reviews.