Can someone please learn me.

[beany_bot]

Right, I'm ignorant here. But want to learn. I know there will be a reason but I don't know what it is.

On the surface they are literally Identical. So why would you ever buy the TR? Also, to make an even more stark comparison swap that 1800x for a 1700 @ £270 that will clock to 4.0Ghz and be the same again.

 

[mattyg]

Quad channel DDR controller

 

[crinkleshoes]

Quad channel memory and other motherboard/socket orientated benefits

 

[beany_bot]

Thank you. I am learned.
What does this do exactly?

 

[sandys]

Quad channel ram, 64 PCIe lanes, 4 threads at max boost versus 2 plus the highest base clock on Ryzen if you decide not to OC.

It actually boosts to 4.2.

Of course the other reason is the name, ThreadRipper, come on, why wouldn't you, and the size man, the size!!!!

 

[BongoHunter]

It's a few things on the memory side; 128gb memory limit, 8 dimm slots, and quad channel memory

ECC support is better.

The main thing is the amount of PCiE lanes you get, for example you could find yourself with capacity for 2 graphics cards at full x16, have 2-3 M2 slots with at least x8, USB 3.1, loads of Sata ports etc, sometimes a U2 port or 10gb ethernet, and potentially still have at least 2 full size PCIE slots left with at least one at x16 (if you fancied a co processor or one of the new x16 m2 RAID cards etc).

Its a great base for a workstation that can still play games without costing £4k (which is why I went TR)

 

[Vince]

Quad channel ram, 64 PCIe lanes, 4 threads at max boost versus 2 plus the highest base clock on Ryzen if you decide not to OC.

It actually boosts to 4.2.

Of course the other reason is the name, ThreadRipper, come on, why wouldn't you, and the size man, the size!!!!

I literally only bought it because of the name. Well that and I wanted 16 cores 32 threads for less than a grand.

Like Bongo I wanted it to be able to do everything all in one box. Run literally anything and everything I throw at it like I would our VM infrastructure at work, so running duplicates of big server environments in ESXi with multiple SQL servers, web front ends and Indexing servers with huge datasets. To run that at acceptable speeds you need outright cpu power and most importantly lots of cores coupled with fast IO and that's really what threadripper is all about. Right now I can finish that and reboot into windows to do the basic stuff like compiling code, messing about with photoshop or playing a game or 2. In the future when I have the ESXI issues I have right now ironed out I should be able to play my game while running a mass of other servers in the background should I wish.

 

[Panos]

Quad channel ram, 64 PCIe lanes, 4 threads at max boost versus 2 plus the highest base clock on Ryzen if you decide not to OC.

It actually boosts to 4.2.

Of course the other reason is the name, ThreadRipper, come on, why wouldn't you, and the size man, the size!!!!

Wait for the Zen+ 16 core core hit the ThreadRipper lineup that will be "power man, the power".

 

[Goody_GTI]

Interesting read, as I wondered this as well - consider myself learned

 

[Doobedoo]

Right, I'm ignorant here. But want to learn. I know there will be a reason but I don't know what it is.

On the surface they are literally Identical. So why would you ever buy the TR? Also, to make an even more stark comparison swap that 1800x for a 1700 @ £270 that will clock to 4.0Ghz and be the same again.

For the box obviously.

 

[Panos]

Right, I'm ignorant here. But want to learn. I know there will be a reason but I don't know what it is.

On the surface they are literally Identical. So why would you ever buy the TR? Also, to make an even more stark comparison swap that 1800x for a 1700 @ £270 that will clock to 4.0Ghz and be the same again.

Many options.
a) more PCI-E Lanes (64). have a look here what you can do with that. Yes can use NVME drives for ramdisk

b) Can run 3 GPUs at full speed, since you aren't PCI-e lanes limited.

c) Supports quad channel ram, better ECC support.
d) TR4 is a platform going all way to 16core CPUs, at this moment. And the CPU is twice the physical size.
e) Ryzen 1700, while feels the same at the 1800X, actually is a chip that wasn't able to pass the AMD tests to be a 1800X. Yes might OC to 4Ghz, but there might be some defect with it, like the IMC not being able to handle high speed ram. (all Ryzen CPUs are SOC). Saying that, there is a batch of 1600Xs that actually are 8 core 1800Xs with no tricky unlock needed. Just plug on a system, it shows CPU at 1600X but 8 core at 4Ghz XFR.
So AMD process is again relative speaking. If they have high wields of 1800X, they can just brand a CPU what ever they like eg a 1700, instead of lowering the price of "the halo product".
Which ofc can be found new for sub 350, like the one got last night.

 

[ALXAndy]

I know a couple of guys who bought these for the PCIE lanes and free NVME RAID.

Also, not sure on this but TR has "Game mode" but I don't know if basic Ryzen does? no idea.

 

[Kei]

Game mode just cuts a threadripper chip down to half by disabling a whole die so a 1950x becomes essentially an 1800x with more pcie lanes and quad channel memory. A 1920x like I have becomes a 1600x and I'd guess that a 1900x drops to something like a 4c8t part. I think it's done to cut inter die latencies which helps in certain games.

 

[sandys]

It does more than that game mode profile also changes the memory config with the distributed/local switch which impacts memory performance in games, local creates 2 nodes that access the memory sticks local to them so they don’t go off hoping over to the other chips memory controller, normal Ryzen doesn’t need this, it has one controller.

 

[Kei]

I made a custom profile on mine and forced it into local mode as the performance was definitely better, probably because the latencies dropped by around 30ns or so. Weirdly I'm sure my bandwidth increased too, yet distributed is supposed to have superior bandwidth at the cost of latency. Pretty sure Aida test showed around 70GB/s bandwidth and low 90ns latency in distributed.

 

[sandys]

In distributed my read drops from 94 to sub 70 and latency jumps from 60 -80, I guess this is because the data can be anywhere in the memory pool, where as local, is staying local, so lower latency and higher bandwidth. but I haven't assessed impact of these switches in any real stuff yet, too much to play with

 

[DragonQ]

When I was looking into the possibilities of a Linux/Windows GPU passthrough system Threadripper looked tantalising because of its extra PCIe lanes. It's still nearly double the cost of an R7 1700 though so not really worth it for most people.

 

[sandys]

Indeed, but the cheapest way to get the lanes if you want/need them.

 

[mistersprinkles]

Thank you. I am learned.
What does this do exactly?

TR4 gives you a better platform. Better in terms of more RAM bandwidth, more PCIE lanes, etc. Does the avg user need this? No. I would argue that for 99.9 percent of users the TR4 8 core is a worthless product, other than the upgrade path to 16 cores that it leaves open. It's really pointless for most people. I don't think the 8 core TR4 CPU should even exist.

The average user has one M.2 SSD, 1 GPU, couple of hard drives, and for these people Ryzen 1700 overclocked for WAY less money is the right choice.

Ooh btw the TR4 CPUs come in a wayy cooool box. If that matters to you.

 

[Cleisthenes]

So triggered by that title