During their event last month, AMD announced the new Threadripper CPUs. After years spent being the underdog, AMD is finally returning to the high-end desktop space. At the reveal, the Sunnyvale-based company did not reveal any firm timeline for a launch other than summer 2017. If this latest report is trustworthy, summer 2017 will mean July 27th, a little over a month from now.
The report is courtesy of Dell which announced some of their new upcoming PCs. The company is releasing the Area-51 Threadripper Edition later this year. Starting July 27th, the company will start taking pre-orders for these systems. Since most people won’t pre-order products without the details, AMD is likely to reveal Threadripper by July 27th. Even if AMD is keeping things under wraps, Dell may still reveal some juicy tidbits. For instance, specifications for the core count, cache size and frequency will likely be revealed.
Just like the Ryzen launch, AMD should lead with the high-end models first. The expectation is of 2 12 cores models and 2 16 core models. In the end, AMD will release a total of 9 different Threadripper models from 10 to 16 cores. Interestingly, Dell is only making this special edition PC for 2017. This either means Dell really wants to be a special edition or AMD will be following up Threadripper wth something new in 2018. Hopefully, we will get more details about the launch date and specifications as we head into summer. It looks like Intel will have competition for their Skylake-X processors soon.
9 cpus is too many and makes no sense. especially since the clock ceiling is likely the same. they only need 3-5 skus for DIY market. no more than 3 skus will sell anyway,
They can trickle out the models to websites, to ensure a steady stream of reviews over a couple of months from each site. Great for keeping a product in the public eye.