Ever since the company fell behind on performance, AMD has been emphasizing their price performance. In that past, that meant sacrificing real performance in one aspect or another. That usually meant choosing between multi-threaded or single-threaded performance. With their Zen architecture, AMD has largely solved this dilemma. At the same time, the company has not forgotten price performance. Just as Ryzen hammered home that point, so is Threadripper doing so now.
AMD’s new Threadripper HEDT platform targets Developers, Prosumers, Creators and Multitasking Gamers. At the heart of Threadripper is the scalable Zen MXM design. Using a simple 4 core unit, AMD is scaling up designs all the way from 4 cores to 16 cores for consumers. By utilizing the modular design, AMD is able to keep costs down and continue to offer superb price performance. During the Threadripper launch, the company repeatedly emphasizes this point.
AMD Offers More CPU For Less
For instance, AMD claims the similarly priced 1950X offers up to 38% more performance than the i7 7900X. This ranges from 14% in Premiere Pro, to 21% and 55% in Handbrake and Veracrypt respectively. The $200 cheaper 1920X manages to eek out a marginal victory in everything but Premiere Pro. The simple fact of the matter is that AMD is willing to offer up more CPU for the same price. Depending on the specific product, AMD is either offering up about 60% more CPU for the same price for 20% more CPU for 20% less.
Since it is unlikely that AMD is selling at a loss, the simple fact is that AMD is hungry for marketshare. With still slightly declining CPU share, the company is willing to compete and bet heavily on the market responding to their value. I have no doubt that AMD will continue to offer better value in most cases so long as they are the underdog. However, the real question is if the two rivals reach parity one day, will AMD still offer better value?
