I have not seen any indications on price yet so guess work based purely on current chip costs...
Epyc 7551 Launched at $3200 USD. I can't see the 32 Core Threadripper being that high as it is not a server part - but with the 1950X at $999 the 32 Core part launching at $1899 and the 24 core at $1399 seems very possible. If you add that into the HEDT price comparison list that would line up the 32 core part $100 lower than the 7980XE list price for significantly higher productivity performance and the 24 Core part alongside the 7940X just to rub it in.
The current comparable Xeon sitting at $10,000 then puts Intel in a far harder spot than AMD.
Does anyone have any rumors that can let us know if that is in the right ballpark?
Well 32 core Threadripper will only have 4 channels instead of 8 on EPYC, while Intel (if this thing doesn't get cancelled out of embarrassment along the way) has the full 6 channels the server chip does.
AMD won't price it at full EPYC prices, I'd be very surprised if that was the case and Intel... this is a PR thing and they have so much cash on hand, have been paying out literally billions in payments to people to buy their chips so the idea of selling chips at say 2k just to make AMD drop their prices is not insane. We're talking about probably, generously 10k chips that might get sold even if they were only priced at say 2.5k, so even if due to yields and due to not selling them as server chips in terms of a PR move it's cheap.
As such I wouldn't try to guess expected pricing off current pricing of the same chips in a different segment.
Next year will be interesting though, or maybe 2020 if we have two steps on server at 7nm, 48core then 64 core later, they may simply have moved 64 core up deciding 7nm yields are great and demand is so high that they had a chance to stamp on Intel. Also Intel's delays open up possibilities, making a statement of 64 core server before 2019 ends while Intel probably won't have 10nm server stuff till mid/late 2020, they'd have 64 cores going up against 28 core Intel. So their plans may simply have moved up to really take as much market share as possible before Intel gets ramped on 10nm.
Anyway, if/when they do move towards such large cores for both EPYC and Threadripper, then 8/4 channel memory starts to look a little anaemic along with the core count. I wonder if we might see say 48 core drop in replacement for SP3, but 64 core bring a new socket along with say triple channel mem controller per core. That would also work out for desktop as well, AM4+/5 for triple channel as again dual channel to feed 12-16 core Ryzen desktop looks a little tight. The alternatives here might be HBM, for desktop you could fit enough HMB on die to frankly replace system memory, 16-32gb should be easy. For server, if you got IF into an interposer such that it's smaller and the chips can essentially sit right next to each other you'd probably have room for HBM chips around the cores, though for server I would see the HBM being more like a massive L4 cache, then buttloads of system memory.
Maybe DDR5 is the easier answer, new boards, still two mem controllers but DDR5 provides the bandwidth boost required.
