For those convinced that the Threadripper is being held back by poorly endowed partners, [H]ard|OCP received the new XSPC RayStorm which has a cold plate as large as Threadrippers heatspreader. As you can see from the picture, new habits will need to e learned when spreading the TIM on such a large area so keep an eye out for tips or carefully experiment on your own. The heatsink let [H] reach a solid 4GHz on all 16 cores with a 3200MHz memory clock, at significantly lower voltages than Ryzen required to reach the same frequency. Even better news is that this is not the limit, [H] intends to test again using a more powerful radiator and expects to see an even better overclock.
"XSPC got us over one of its first waterblocks specifically designed to help handle Ryzen Threadripper CPU's heat while overclocking. We give you a quick unboxing, break down the block itself, and then we look at Threadripper long-term performance. We finally get it dialed in at 4GHz."
Here are some more Processor articles from around the web:
- AMD's Ryzen Threadripper 1920X and Ryzen Threadripper 1950X @ Tech Report
- Ryzen 3 vs. Core i5-2500K vs. FX-8370 @ Techspot
- AMD Ryzen 3 1300X and Ryzen 3 1200 @ Modders-Inc
- Athlon II X3 vs. Ryzen 3: How AMD's Performance Has Evolved & Performance-Per-Watt @ Phoronix
4GHz on all 16 cores?
4GHz on all 16 cores? impressive!
They should’ve used the
They should’ve used the spread method, the only method guaranteed to provide full coverage.
I assume that they are
I assume that they are keeping the best cores for Epyc and some of them end up as ThreadRipper. Epyc needs to have fully functional die, but they also bin for power consumption. The best die will be able to run at lower voltages, for lower power consumption, which is very desirable with Epyc placing 4 die. If they ran at Ryzen 1800x clock speeds with a 95 Watt TDP, that would be more than 380 Watts. I don’t know what the max for the socket is. I would expect very high, especially if they are planning a variant with an on-package GPU. Epyc should burn a bit more power than just Ryzen times 4 because the interprocessor links are not active in single die Ryzen. Infinity fabric should be very power efficient though, especially over the short lengths in an Epyc package. They obviously still have to run at lower clock speed for Epyc.
I have wondered if they have any flexibility on routing for defective HSIO links. A dual socket Epyc processor needs all 8 x16 links, 4 for interprocessor links and 4 for IO. A single socket Epyc would have one x16 interprocessor link unused. A ThreadRipper would have 3 out of the 4 x16 interprocessor links unused, although it would be interesting if they could use multiple physical links betweeen just two die. It actually only needs 2 of the 4 x16 IO links per die since two die with two links available makes 4 x16 total (64 lanes). So it could be using only 3 x16 links per die (48 lanes out of the 128 total lanes). I have wondered if they actually make multiple packages with different lanes routed to the output pins to make it such that devices with limited functionality can still be used. If you have 4 interprocessor links, and you only need 1 good one, is seems like a waste to limit that to a specific link, rather than any one of the 4. Although, It may not be worthwhile to make multiple package PCBs if their yields are good. Any without the right link being functional can just be sold as a Ryzen single die processor which doesn’t use hardly any of the total HSIO links.
It is unclear how they are working their binning process for ThreadRipper. It doesn’t need all of the links functional, but they are low volume, so they may be die with fully functional links that just failed some other verification or functionality test. Epyc supports many features, like memory encryption, that are not needed anywhere else, except maybe some Ryzen Pro variants.