Having just recently crossed the one-year anniversary of AMD’s first Zen 4 architecture CPUs – the Ryzen 7000 series – we’re now at the point where the final Zen 4 products are landing in place. Thus far AMD has launched consumer desktop CPUs, multiple classes of mobile CPUs, and a bevy of server CPUs big (Genoa) and small (Siena). The one remaining gap in AMD’s product roadmap has been the workstation and high-end desktop market, which AMD will be filling next month with the launch of a pair of Threadripper product lineups.
Being announced today by AMD for a November 21st launch, this morning AMD is taking the wraps off of their Ryzen 7000 Threadripper CPUs. These high-end chips are being split up into two product lines, with AMD assembling the workstation-focused Ryzen Threadripper 7000 Pro series, as well as the non-pro Ryzen Threadripper 7000 series for the more consumer-ish high-end desktop (HEDT) market. Both chip lines are based on AMD’s tried and true Zen 4 architecture – derivatives of AMD’s EPYC server processors – incorporating AMD’s Zen 4 chiplets and a discrete I/O dies. As with previous generations of Threadripper parts, we’re essentially looking at the desktop version of AMD’s EPYC hardware.
With both product lines, AMD is targeting customer bases that need CPUs more powerful than a desktop Ryzen processor, but not as exotic (or expensive) as AMD’s server wares. This means chips with lots and lots of CPU cores – up to 96 in the case of the Threadripper 7000 Pro series – as well as support for a good deal more I/O and memory. The amount varies with the specific chip lineup, but both leave Ryzen 7000 and its 16 cores and 24 PCIe lanes in the dust.
Most notably for this generation of Threadripper parts, AMD is once again offering the HEDT-focused non-pro lineup. With the Zen 3-based Threadripper 5000 series, AMD only ever released the workstation-focused Pro parts, leaving HEDT hopefuls in the dust. But this time AMD has decided to bring the HEDT back, creating a pair of Threadripper lines in a very similar fashion to the Threadripper 3000 family in 2019.
