AMD Ryzen Threadripper: Five Things You Should Know About The Upcoming CPU

AMD held a press event in Los Angeles, California this weekend to detail its upcoming Radeon RX Vega graphics cards and Ryzen Threadripper CPUs. We learned a bunch of new things about AMD’s new high-performance CPUs and are going to outline five things you need to know about them.

We already knew that there will be two SKUs: the 1950X, 1920X. We learned that there will be a third lower SKU, the 1900X. They will all use a new sTR4 socket and will require an x399 chipset-compatible motherboard. AMD tells us that there will be motherboards from Asrock, Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI at launch.

All three SKUs represent high-end CPUs that are geared towards enthusiasts like developers, prosumers, and multitasking gamers who stream and run multiple applications at once.

We’ve outlined the specs for the three AMD Ryzen Threadripper CPUs below:

The 1950X CPU is going to be the first 16-core processor to hit the consumer desktop market. All of the CPUs support quad-channel memory configurations, carry a 180w TDP, and are unlocked (meaning they are overclockable).

With the 1900X, AMD says that the 8-core CPU will be able to boost up to 4.2GHz, provided the processor has adequate cooling.

Here are the prices for the three Threadripper CPUs:

• 1950x: $999

• 1920x: $799

• 1900x: $549

If all you need are strictly gaming CPUs, these processors are not for you. Threadripper is designed for streamers or users who game and like to run multiple compute-heavy workloads at the same time.

All SKUs come with a torque wrench, which you will need to install the processors, and a cooling bracket, which is required to install a closed-loop liquid cooler.

AMD claims that its 16-core $999 1950X runs 38 percent faster than Intel’s similarly-priced 10-core i9 7900X CPU in the Cinebench nT benchmark. AMD also claims that its $799 12-core 1920X processor is 11 percent faster than 7900X in the same test.

The company is pitching Threadripper as the “ultimate multi-tasking machine” and that it will allow you to do things like play games and render 3D graphics at the same time.

AMD also asserts that its 1950X is up to 29 percent more power efficient than Intel’s i9 7900X CPU in multi-threaded workloads.

AMD’s 1950X and 1920X Threadripper CPUs are set to launch August 10th. You can pre-order those processors starting July 31.

The 8-core 1900X is set to release on August 31.