Hahaa, you've spotted my dilemma! I probably will go with Intel as I like the idea of optane memory and later down the line this may go some ways to futureproofing my build... But will defo be waiting till fall of summer as you say.
Still, at the end of the day it looks like its going to be a super fun year to get back into building with all these nice new shinny components XD
Are you looking to build/upgrade this year AllBodies? Would be helpful to know which route you professional/semi-pro folks are thinking of taking with this new lineup...
I actually already did upgrade to the Zen R7 1700, overclocked it to 3.9 GHz, and have 32GB 3200 MHz RAM. I did this already mostly because I was moving on from an i7 3770k, which only had 2 SATA 3 ports for example. So really felt the need to double my cores ASAP, and on the cheap.
I'm then quite likely to upgrade quickly-ish again after this, to the 7nm Zen2 generation of Threadripper (or Intel's X299 refresh, whichever is better at the time). My assumption being this will be end-2018 to early-2019, and getting around 14 cores would be £500 or so.
Optane support was something I had to think about for a bit too, but came to the conclusion it hopefully won't matter. Bear in mind Micron and Intel developed it together, so AMD users will have the option of whatever Micron makes. So although that locks you in to 1 provider instead of 2 (since Intel platforms can chose either Intel or Micron), hopefully that won't matter because if you go off SSD offerings, Micron is better/cheaper than Intel anyway.
threadripper has the same ipc as ryzen (it's literially two 1700s stuck together)
skylake x, at minimum has skylake s ipc, apparently it's been improved by 13% with 1mb physical l2 cache vs 256kb l2 cache of skylake s, increasing successful hits (which in theory improves ipc)
lucky_noob (big overclocker) got 7900x at 4.5ghz all cores with just 1.15v, so it should run much much cooler than threadripper (that will need the same 1.4v for 4ghz as ryzen)
This is very speculative though, we won't know for sure till reviews.
Also on the cooler running, you can't really compare voltages between these chips to make predictions on heat. Since there are 3 major differences in play.
- The process itself. Samsung 14LPP vs Intel 14nm++
- The design of the processor die/package. Threadripper is 2 R7 1700 dies separated some distance physically, whereas Skylake-X is a monolithic design.
- The TIM vs Soldering. Intel is using crap TIM, whereas AMD is using solder
So from that, all I can say is I very strongly predict Threadripper would run much cooler at
the same voltage. But then who knows what the voltage difference would make, i.e. a 1.4V Threadripper may or may not run hotter than a 1.15v Skylake-X.
Also, what situation's would call for more than 44 PCIe lanes? Excluding going bonkers and doing 4 way SLI/XFIRE
Optane is only really useful if you're still using HDD and to a lesser extent, SATA SSDs. If you've made the switch to NVMe, there's no reason to go for optane:
http://www.storagereview.com/intel_optane_memory_review
In reference to both of these, Optane may become more attractive + you might need more than 44 Lanes, if they start producing PCI express X16 drives.
NVMe M.2 is essentially just a PCI X4 slot with a difference interface. And the reason Optane isn't a great upgrade over M.2 SSDs is because they're both pushing the limit of the interface, which is 4 GB/s theoretical maximum.
There's nothing in principle stopping a X16 drive being made, and that would up the maximum bandwidth to 16 GB/s, which should then show Optane's true abilities.
And again, remember Micron also has the rights to make it, so it doesn't have to be only Intel to make the choice to produce faster drives.
