AMD’s “i9-Killer” Ryzen Threadripper CPUs Starts at Only $549

While at Siggraph 2017, AMD made several announcements which also includes officially launching the much-anticipated Ryzen Threadripper CPU line. While rumours of an additional, more affordable Ryzen Threadripper CPU surfaced a few days ago, it is finally verified at the LA event. Although the rumoured Ryzen Threadripper 1900 was not part of the announcement (at least not yet), the Ryzen Threadripper 1900X is. Best of all, it is priced much lower at $549.

Ryzen Threadripper CPUs for X399 Platform

At the top of the Threadripper stack sits the Ryzen Threadripper 1950X which has 16-cores and 32-threads. The 1950X has a baseclock of 3.4GHz and a boost clock of 4.0GHz. This is the same boost clock as the 1920X which has 12-cores/24-threads. Although the 1920X starts the base clock slightly higher at 3.5GHz. The 1900X on the other hand starts much higher at 3.8GHz and also boosts up to 4.0GHz although it has half the core-count and thread-count of the 1950X at 8 and 16 respectively.

All three CPUs support XFR with 4.2GHz and all offer 64 PCIe 3.0 lanes and 180W TDP. Pricing and availability differs with both the 1950X and the 1920X available as soon as August 10. The 1900X will not be available until August 31st, although it costs only $549 compared to the 1920X at $799 and the 1950X at $999.

Intel i9 and X299 Platform Comparison

Like AMD’s Threadripper HEDT line, Intel’s X299 platform with Skylake-X CPUs feature quad-channel memory support and massive core and PCIe lane counts. However, even Intel’s top-end 18-core/36-thread i9-7980XE only provides up to 44 PCIe 3.0 lanes on the X299 platform. This CPU is also twice the price at $1,999. The i9-7900X matches the 1950X in terms of price at $999, but that too only has up to 44 lanes of PCIe 3.0. All other CPUs lower than the Intel i9-7900X have 28 or 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes. The closest equivalent is the i9-7820X which is an 8-core/16-thread CPU at $599 with 28 PCIe 3.0 lanes.