OEM Only Workstation Parts

Last year we discovered that AMD was in the market to hire a new leading product manager for a ‘workstation division’. This was a categorically different position than the main PM for the high-end desktop, so we speculate what this really means. Today, AMD announces its first set of workstation products, under the brand name Ryzen Threadripper Pro. However, please note that these processors will only be available as part of pre-built systems, and consumer motherboards will not be available corresponding.

Taking Threadripper to Pro

AMD’s product lineup has included Ryzen Pro and Ryzen Mobile Pro hardware for a couple of generations – these processors offer ECC-enabled variants along with corporate support in OS security, manageability, and image consistency. Most of us had assumed that while Ryzen had a Ryzen Pro variant, the most natural variant for Threadripper was AMD’s line of EPYC server processors. The server market and the high-end desktop / workstation market have always overlapped, and up to this point, if a user was interested in a workstation-like design, with ECC and software validation, they would look for EPYC.

Today AMD is changing that dynamic with Ryzen Threadripper Pro.

Ryzen Threadripper Pro hardware will reflect single socket EPYC in its features: eight memory channels up to DDR4-3200, 128 lanes of PCIe 4.0, support for RDIMM and LRDIMM, support for secure memory encryption, support for DASH and image management capabilities operating system consistency as part of AMD’s Pro Business Ready program.

Where Ryzen Threadripper Pro differs is in the core / frequency / TDP count settings.

AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro
AnandTech	Cores	Base Freq	Turbo Freq	Chiplets	TDP	DRACHM
3995WX	64/128	2700	4200	8 + 1	280 W	8 x DDR4-3200
3975WX	32/64	3,500	4200	4 + 1	280 W	8 x DDR4-3200
3955WX	16/32	3900	4300	2 + 1	280 W	8 x DDR4-3200
3945WX	12/24	4000	4300	2 + 1	280 W	8 x DDR4-3200

There is also a slight difference in DRAM support: TR Pro supports up to 2TB, but EPYC supports 4TB. All Ryzen Threadripper Pro processors are single socket.

The superior processor, the 3995WX, will offer all 64 cores. It goes beyond the traditional EPYC 7742 (225 W, 2.25 GHz / 3.4 GHz) and even the 7H12 (280 W, 2.6 GHz / 3.3 GHz), by offering more base frequency at 2.7 GHz and a much higher turbo frequency at 4.2 GHz for 280W TDP. These processors could be taking advantage of the same manufacturing update provided by recent Ryzen 3000XT processors to drive these higher frequencies.

AMD says its number of cores and frequency confiThe configurations are designed to accommodate a variety of different license models, for software that has licenses per core (where high-frequency models are recommended) or per socket (where more cores are recommended).

OEM only

One of the cool things about TR Pro is that it is configured to be an exclusive OEM product. This means that interested parties will have to speak to Lenovo or others to obtain the hardware. As it stands, Lenovo is set to be the launch partner for the TR Pro family, where it will be offered as part of its ThinkStation P620 family. Lenovo will offer its P620 in all different flavors, with up to 1TB of DRAM and two RTX 8000 GPUs (or four RTX 4000 GPUs).

The Lenovo P620 uses the socket in a rotated orientation to assist with airflow, but this also limits the socket to only one DIMM per channel, therefore we have the maximum memory support of 1TB. The system will utilize many of Lenovo’s ThinkStation innovations such as fans and removable drives and more.

The goal with something like the P620, just like the goal of EPYC, is to replace both high-end single socket configurations, but also to replace dual socket workstation configurations. Lenovo is configured to position the P620 TR Pro version to cover both its P520 single socket and P720 dual socket products.

The ThinkStation P620 will be available to consumers beginning in late September.

At this time, none of the other OEM workstation providers have commented on their offerings, however by the end of the year I can imagine some other offerings on the market targeting different verticals.

Technically, this system uses a WRX80 motherboard. You may recall an article I posted earlier this year in January, claiming that TRX80, WRX80, and Intel LGA1159 don’t exist. In that article I talked to traditional consumer motherboard manufacturers as well as an OEM, none of which had TRX80 or WRX80 on their roadmaps, and with AMD partnering exclusively with Lenovo for this product line, we can see why, the traditional consumer / HEDT motherboard manufacturers were not part of that collaboration. No WRX80 motherboards will be sold at retail, and CPUs will not be sold at retail.

We asked AMD about this, since Ryzen Threadripper Pro is positioning itself against the Intel Xeon W-3200 and Xeon W-2200 series of processors. Some of these processors are available in box form, and others are sold as tray parts to consumers, and there are a number of commercial motherboards available for each. AMD’s response was simple: With their product line, they felt it was inappropriate to develop a new category of consumer products in their portfolio. For those purposes, TR Pro and WRX80 will be OEM only for the time being. For anyone interested in having TR Pro hit the regular shelf market, let AMD know.

Competition

AMD’s main competition here will be Intel’s own line of workstation processors. If you haven’t been following what Intel is doing, don’t worry, it’s a confusing mess. We will take it in stages:

1. Before Intel released scalable Xeon, it offered variants of its E5-2600 line of processors as ‘workstation’ models, such as the E5-2687W v2 / v3 / v4. These were socket compatible with Intel’s high-end desktop processors without ECC, or could be used on server grade motherboards with ECC validation.
2. Following this, Intel released the Xeon W-2100 family, built on Skylake, and offering up to 18 cores with four-channel memory. These were in the high-end LGA2066 desktop socket, but required special motherboards that used server-only chipsets. These were updated with the Xeon W-2200 variants, built at Cascade Lake.
3. Along with this, Intel had Xeon W-3100 and Xeon W-3200 workstation processors, for the LGA3647 socket, which allows for six-channel memory and offers up to 28 cores. Intel even offered a special model W-3175X that could be overclocked.
4. Now this year, Intel has added the Xeon W-1200 family to its line of workstations, using the consumer’s LGA1200 socket, but again with motherboards that have a server-only chipset installed. These W-1200s actually replace the E-2300 processors, and the Xeon E family has been transformed into Xeon W.
5. In addition to all of this, Intel has Xeon Scalable Cascade Lake, which has also been widely used on workstations.

AMD’s argument here is that TR Pro will compete with all of Intel’s Xeon W offerings. Where Intel has more than 80 different options in a variety of sockets, AMD will have just four that will cover most of the market and Ryzen Pro for the low-end ones.

Naturally AMD believes they are in a winner, and just as the 64-core Threadripper 3990X pitted dual Xeon 8280 processors, AMD has done the same with the 3995WX:

The only thing missing is that AMD will not release official MSRPs for its new processors. Because these are OEM-only, the company claims, they won’t release any prices. This makes performance comparisons per dollar very difficult to manage.

Summary

AMD launches its new Ryzen Threadripper Pro product line with launch partner Lenovo, as part of the new ThinkStation P620 series. The P620 will be available from the end of September. These new processors will only be available as part of prefabricated OEM systems, but will offer better core / frequency combinations than AMD’s line of EPYC processors in a single-socket variant.

Unfortunately, AMD is not testing these processors to the press for review, but rather indicates that we should ask Lenovo for the P620 sampling. We are investigating it.