Ryzen Threadripper 7000 Dominance: Master Your Craft
AMD’s new Ryzen Threadripper 7000 lineups Pro and non-Pro offer more cores and I/O to high-end desktop and workstation users using AMD’s Zen 4 architecture and TSMC’s 5nm process.
The 64-core 7980X, the 32-core 7970X, and the 24-core 7960X. Since its inception, AMD’s server-derived processors have offered more CPU cores, memory channels, and PCIe lanes than AMD’s desktop platform to meet desktop users’ demands for extreme multitasking and high throughput for complex workloads.
While the basic Threadripper lineup differs from the professional workstation-focused Threadripper Pro chips, such as AMD’s new Threadripper 7000 WX-series, it lacks some of the more ‘Pro’ features and CPU/memory/IO hardware of the more powerful Pro chips.
Things looked bleak for the high-end desktop (HEDT) market after AMD skipped releasing a vanilla Threadripper processor in their Zen 3 architecture family, the Ryzen Threadripper 5000 series. Intel skipped HEDT that generation by not bringing down their troubled Ice Lake server silicon to HEDT products, so it looked like more powerful desktop processors may have pushed HEDT out.
After a generation, the HEDT market appears to have improved. AMD is bringing back HEDT models of the Threadripper 7000 series with three new chips up to 64C/128T with full Zen 4 cores to capitalize on their Zen 4 architecture’s success.
TRX50 chipsets launch with Threadripper chips. Like Threadripper processors, the TRX50 uses the new 4844-pin sTR5 socket, which AMD derived from their SP6 socket for their cheaper EPYC 8004 (Siena) processors. The pin count is the same, but sTR5 and SP6 are not pin compatible.
There is generational cooler compatibility. The 58.5mm x 75.4mm sTR5 socket accepts previous socket sTRX4 Threadripper coolers. This means sTRX4 chip upgraders can recycle their cooler. It would be necessary to support 350 W of TDP.
TruX50 supports 4-channel DDR5 memory and 80 PCIe lanes for memory and I/O. With 48x PCIe 5.0 lanes and 32x PCIe 4.0 lanes, the latter is an unexpected mix. AMD has limited motherboard manufacturing costs by not running as many max-speed PCIe lanes as PCIe Gen5 is more complicated and requires re-drivers for longer runs.