AMD Announces Ryzen 7 1800X, 1700X, 1700 And Pricing, Pre-orders Begin Today

[JamesSneed]

It is Funny how in all the articles here on Tomshardware about the new AMD CPU you guys never mention that this CPU is ECC enabled as well ... sadly Tomshardware turned into a "gaming" PC site that cares only about gaming when it comes to CPUs .. the community as well.

It is and I haven't seen a motherboard yet saying they support ECC(Gigabyte show support but will run ECC in non-ECC mode). Most others say something like "4 x DIMM, Max. 64GB, DDR4 2666/2400/2133 MHz Non-ECC, Un-buffered Memory".

If there are no motherboards to support ECC it isn't much of an oversight by TomsHardware

you are joking right ? the CPU supports ECC and I dont care if you seen a motherboard or not yet. does not matter.

anyways Asrocks motherboards support ECC memory you can check the specs yourself if you visit their site.



And it is a mistake from Tomshardware site not to mention ECC support at all about the new AMD CPU. . because the i7-7700K DOES NOT

Maybe its an oversight and its nice now Asrock is showing support for it. I couldn't find any motherboards with ECC listed when I first posted. Hopefully its mentioned on the actual reviews as I know a lot of people who would get these CPU's for workstations will care.

 

[kyotokid]

...the issue is that the CPUs themselves only support dual channel memory, while Xeons and some i7s support 4, Phi CPUs support 6 and the forthcoming Zen/Naples CPU: 8. Phi and Naples CPUs are pretty much out of our league so for now quad channel is a the best we will see for a while. AS Bloodroses mentions above, for CG work and rendering it makes a difference because of the improved I/O handling

 

[mapesdhs]

The other nice feature, I can run this on W7 Pro.

Interesting point, all this stuff about how Ryzen will not support Win 7, one has to use Win 10, etc., so how come Gigabyte has Win 7 drivers on their site for their X370 Gaming 5?

http://www.gigabyte.co.nz/Motherboard/GA-AX370-GAMING-5-rev-10#support-dl

I really don't get why AMD isn't pushing for Win 7 support here, it's a huge potential market for them. I'm sure in response some will refer to features of Ryzen that are Win10-only, but most people won't benefit from such features. Fact is, looks like MS has been doing its usual arm twisting, otherwise market demand would mean AMD would happily promote compatibility with Win7, because that's what a lot of people want.

 

[bit_user]

I really don't get why AMD isn't pushing for Win 7 support here, it's a huge potential market for them.

Maybe they are. AMD has only so much leverage, especially with MS now supporting ARM.

Anyway, Win 7 is over 7 years old, with "mainstream support" having ended over 2 years ago. "extended support" ends in less than 3 years.

 

[mapesdhs]

Anyway, Win 7 is over 7 years old, with "mainstream support" having ended over 2 years ago. "extended support" ends in less than 3 years.

Not a rationale for forcing people to stop using it when they don't want to, and Gigabyte's site proves it's perfectly doable. Let's face it, "support" just means security patches, which wouldn't be so much of an issue if the OS was written better than a bag of holes tied together in the first place.

 

[bit_user]

Anyway, Win 7 is over 7 years old, with "mainstream support" having ended over 2 years ago. "extended support" ends in less than 3 years.

Not a rationale for forcing people to stop using it when they don't want to, and Gigabyte's site proves it's perfectly doable.

First, did you actually look at what drivers they have? They are normal device drivers - not any kernel fixes for things like better CPU scheduling. AMD can, and apparently did write device drivers for Win7. They don't control the kernel, and can't force MS to do anything to better support Ryzen in the kernel.

Now, who are you talking about "forcing"? It's no secret that MS is doing their best to "force" people onto Windows 10. AMD cannot "force" MS to add full Ryzen support in Win 7. I'm sure it's not AMD trying to force people off Win7.

 

[ttt_2017]

Anyway, Win 7 is over 7 years old, with "mainstream support" having ended over 2 years ago. "extended support" ends in less than 3 years.

Not a rationale for forcing people to stop using it when they don't want to, and Gigabyte's site proves it's perfectly doable.

First, did you actually look at what drivers they have? They are normal device drivers - not any kernel fixes for things like better CPU scheduling. AMD can, and apparently did write device drivers for Win7. They don't control the kernel, and can't force MS to do anything to better support Ryzen in the kernel.

Now, who are you talking about "forcing"? It's no secret that MS is doing their best to "force" people onto Windows 10. AMD cannot "force" MS to add full Ryzen support in Win 7. I'm sure it's not AMD trying to force people off Win7.

Why do people hate windows 10 ? I dont see it any different from Win7 at all , and you can customize it to look like win7 and feel like win7 anytime...

If you ask me , I liked winXP the most ... but I dont understand why people say win7 is better than win10

 

[mapesdhs]

Now, who are you talking about "forcing"? It's no secret that MS is doing their best to "force" people onto Windows 10. AMD cannot "force" MS to add full Ryzen support in Win 7. I'm sure it's not AMD trying to force people off Win7.

Point is, Gigabyte is the only company offering such drivers on its site, and the PR surrounding all this does not make clear that Win7 will run on Ryzen.

It's a very odd state of affairs when there is market demand for a particular thing and that demand is not provided with supply. It proves that the nature of running an OS on a PC is not a free market at all, it's a monopoly.

Why do people hate windows 10 ? ...

Because they've tried it and didn't like how it works, especially the lack of control, pushy commercial stuff, emphasis on socialisation of the user experience, etc. It wouldn't be such a problem if any of these was a lot easier to turn off, but it's not. MS wants it this way. People have the right to decide in this way if they wish. Of course MS is under no obligation to concede to such demands, but it does show that the ecosysem MS has created has nothing to do with genuine market demand. MS has to sell new OS versions because it has to, that's its business model. By definition they must move the OS on somehow to provide a rationale for persuading people to upgrade. Part of this has morphed into hw lockouts. Years ago most people on toms and elsewhere were pretty vocal against this sort of pressure, but now I see most don't really care. What sad times in the tech world.

Ian.

 

[ttt_2017]

Now, who are you talking about "forcing"? It's no secret that MS is doing their best to "force" people onto Windows 10. AMD cannot "force" MS to add full Ryzen support in Win 7. I'm sure it's not AMD trying to force people off Win7.

Point is, Gigabyte is the only company offering such drivers on its site, and the PR surrounding all this does not make clear that Win7 will run on Ryzen.

It's a very odd state of affairs when there is market demand for a particular thing and that demand is not provided with supply. It proves that the nature of running an OS on a PC is not a free market at all, it's a monopoly.

Why do people hate windows 10 ? ...

Because they've tried it and didn't like how it works, especially the lack of control, pushy commercial stuff, emphasis on socialisation of the user experience, etc. It wouldn't be such a problem if any of these was a lot easier to turn off, but it's not. MS wants it this way. People have the right to decide in this way if they wish. Of course MS is under no obligation to concede to such demands, but it does show that the ecosysem MS has created has nothing to do with genuine market demand. MS has to sell new OS versions because it has to, that's its business model. By definition they must move the OS on somehow to provide a rationale for persuading people to upgrade. Part of this has morphed into hw lockouts. Years ago most people on toms and elsewhere were pretty vocal against this sort of pressure, but now I see most don't really care. What sad times in the tech world.

Ian.

Actually I never liked Win7 or Win 10 , I still prefer Win XP over any other MS system ...

you can Turn off most of the annoying things in win 10 btw , but yes I agree takes alot of time and knowledge to do so .

 

[bloodroses]

Now, who are you talking about "forcing"? It's no secret that MS is doing their best to "force" people onto Windows 10. AMD cannot "force" MS to add full Ryzen support in Win 7. I'm sure it's not AMD trying to force people off Win7.

Point is, Gigabyte is the only company offering such drivers on its site, and the PR surrounding all this does not make clear that Win7 will run on Ryzen.

It's a very odd state of affairs when there is market demand for a particular thing and that demand is not provided with supply. It proves that the nature of running an OS on a PC is not a free market at all, it's a monopoly.

Why do people hate windows 10 ? ...

Because they've tried it and didn't like how it works, especially the lack of control, pushy commercial stuff, emphasis on socialisation of the user experience, etc. It wouldn't be such a problem if any of these was a lot easier to turn off, but it's not. MS wants it this way. People have the right to decide in this way if they wish. Of course MS is under no obligation to concede to such demands, but it does show that the ecosysem MS has created has nothing to do with genuine market demand. MS has to sell new OS versions because it has to, that's its business model. By definition they must move the OS on somehow to provide a rationale for persuading people to upgrade. Part of this has morphed into hw lockouts. Years ago most people on toms and elsewhere were pretty vocal against this sort of pressure, but now I see most don't really care. What sad times in the tech world.

Ian.

Actually I never liked Win7 or Win 10 , I still prefer Win XP over any other MS system ...

you can Turn off most of the annoying things in win 10 btw , but yes I agree takes alot of time and knowledge to do so .

There's quite a few free 3rd party programs out there that does that luckily.

As with Microsoft's profit making, their OS only accounts to about 16% of their revenue:

https://revenuesandprofits.com/how-microsoft-makes-money-understanding-microsoft-business-model/

Since it isn't their main part of the business model, it's why Microsoft made Windows 10 free for a while; to help keep their other sectors profitable.

 

[kyotokid]

Anyway, Win 7 is over 7 years old, with "mainstream support" having ended over 2 years ago. "extended support" ends in less than 3 years.

Not a rationale for forcing people to stop using it when they don't want to, and Gigabyte's site proves it's perfectly doable.

First, did you actually look at what drivers they have? They are normal device drivers - not any kernel fixes for things like better CPU scheduling. AMD can, and apparently did write device drivers for Win7. They don't control the kernel, and can't force MS to do anything to better support Ryzen in the kernel.

Now, who are you talking about "forcing"? It's no secret that MS is doing their best to "force" people onto Windows 10. AMD cannot "force" MS to add full Ryzen support in Win 7. I'm sure it's not AMD trying to force people off Win7.

Why do people hate windows 10 ? I dont see it any different from Win7 at all , and you can customize it to look like win7 and feel like win7 anytime...

If you ask me , I liked winXP the most ... but I dont understand why people say win7 is better than win10

...why do some of us dislike W10? First and foremost the force fed updating that gives the user no choice. MS assumed every user is a 70 year old grandmum or granddad so they took over total control over what goes on one's system even from those of us who know how to maintain and build systems. This means buggy updates can be installed (and have been) that affect system stability. True with the Pro Edition you can delay updates for several months, but in the end you still have to accept them, as well as all updates in a given patch since they are now issued as bundled "rollups" (no more "picking and choosing" which individual updates to install and which ones to reject). If you are on Home edition (because you are on a tight budget), your system is pretty much at MS's mercy, so, too bad if that overnight render job or animation batch process gets interrupted and crashes. or your system suddenly reboots in the middle of a modelling project before you are able to save what you've done. 199$ is a lot just to be able to procrastinate on updating.

Next there is the telemetry issue which some see as spying and others, like myself, see as a means for more advert spam. Then there's also the MS adverts (which you can do away with but only if you pay an annual fee). Apologies, adverts on a website are one thing as there are always ad blockers, on an OS it is just plain ridiculous.I see this process as little more turning the user community into MS's QA beta test department with no compensation for time or damaged hardware.

Next there is having to deal with a ridiculous personified "digital assistant" (which I like to refer to as the "spawn of Bob and Clippy") that even when "turned off" continues to run in background (I remember reading in one tech journal that since Anniversary Update, it cannot be removed and in the Home edition, even turned off). This is something that should be an "add on" app, not an integrated part of the OS. A computer is a machine, a tool, not a person and while we may sometimes yell at our computers (mostly because of the OS or software), giving a feature a human like personality is something I really don't need. Maybe that's nice in the 23rd century for a space ship where people are cooped up for months or years, but today it is just more bloat in my book.

Finally there is peripheral support you have a slightly older HQ large format photo printer which works just fine in W7 or 8.1, but not in W10. so you have to junk it, go out, and buy a new one. Suddenly that "free offer for W10 of a year ago doesn't sound like a very good deal when you are spending a couple hundred or more on a new device that is compatible.

 

[bloodroses]

...why do some of us dislike W10? First and foremost the force fed updating that gives the user no choice. MS assumed every user is a 70 year old grandmum or granddad so they took over total control over what goes on one's system even from those of us who know how to maintain and build systems. This means buggy updates can be installed (and have been) that affect system stability. True with the Pro Edition you can delay updates for several months, but in the end you still have to accept them, as well as all updates in a given patch since they are now issued as bundled "rollups" (no more "picking and choosing" which individual updates to install and which ones to reject). If you are on Home edition (because you are on a tight budget), your system is pretty much at MS's mercy, so, too bad if that overnight render job or animation batch process gets interrupted and crashes. or your system suddenly reboots in the middle of a modelling project before you are able to save what you've done. 199$ is a lot just to be able to procrastinate on updating.

Next there is the telemetry issue which some see as spying and others, like myself, see as a means for more advert spam. Then there's also the MS adverts (which you can do away with but only if you pay an annual fee). Apologies, adverts on a website are one thing as there are always ad blockers, on an OS it is just plain ridiculous.I see this process as little more turning the user community into MS's QA beta test department with no compensation for time or damaged hardware.

Next there is having to deal with a ridiculous personified "digital assistant" (which I like to refer to as the "spawn of Bob and Clippy") that even when "turned off" continues to run in background (I remember reading in one tech journal that since Anniversary Update, it cannot be removed and in the Home edition, even turned off). This is something that should be an "add on" app, not an integrated part of the OS. A computer is a machine, a tool, not a person and while we may sometimes yell at our computers (mostly because of the OS or software), giving a feature a human like personality is something I really don't need. Maybe that's nice in the 23rd century for a space ship where people are cooped up for months or years, but today it is just more bloat in my book.

Finally there is peripheral support you have a slightly older HQ large format photo printer which works just fine in W7 or 8.1, but not in W10. so you have to junk it, go out, and buy a new one. Suddenly that "free offer for W10 of a year ago doesn't sound like a very good deal when you are spending a couple hundred or more on a new device that is compatible.

It sounds exactly the direction Apple OSX, Apple IOS, and even Android is following. Unfortunately, Microsoft is just following the same example. It's also part of the reason Linux is gaining some traction in the market; when they aren't shooting themselves in the foot every time by spawning a new 'distro' out every time someone doesn't agree on a decision. It does make the market a pain in that regard.

 

[kyotokid]

...why do some of us dislike W10? First and foremost the force fed updating that gives the user no choice. MS assumed every user is a 70 year old grandmum or granddad so they took over total control over what goes on one's system even from those of us who know how to maintain and build systems. This means buggy updates can be installed (and have been) that affect system stability. True with the Pro Edition you can delay updates for several months, but in the end you still have to accept them, as well as all updates in a given patch since they are now issued as bundled "rollups" (no more "picking and choosing" which individual updates to install and which ones to reject). If you are on Home edition (because you are on a tight budget), your system is pretty much at MS's mercy, so, too bad if that overnight render job or animation batch process gets interrupted and crashes. or your system suddenly reboots in the middle of a modelling project before you are able to save what you've done. 199$ is a lot just to be able to procrastinate on updating.

Next there is the telemetry issue which some see as spying and others, like myself, see as a means for more advert spam. Then there's also the MS adverts (which you can do away with but only if you pay an annual fee). Apologies, adverts on a website are one thing as there are always ad blockers, on an OS it is just plain ridiculous.I see this process as little more turning the user community into MS's QA beta test department with no compensation for time or damaged hardware.

Next there is having to deal with a ridiculous personified "digital assistant" (which I like to refer to as the "spawn of Bob and Clippy") that even when "turned off" continues to run in background (I remember reading in one tech journal that since Anniversary Update, it cannot be removed and in the Home edition, even turned off). This is something that should be an "add on" app, not an integrated part of the OS. A computer is a machine, a tool, not a person and while we may sometimes yell at our computers (mostly because of the OS or software), giving a feature a human like personality is something I really don't need. Maybe that's nice in the 23rd century for a space ship where people are cooped up for months or years, but today it is just more bloat in my book.

Finally there is peripheral support you have a slightly older HQ large format photo printer which works just fine in W7 or 8.1, but not in W10. so you have to junk it, go out, and buy a new one. Suddenly that "free offer for W10 of a year ago doesn't sound like a very good deal when you are spending a couple hundred or more on a new device that is compatible.

It sounds exactly the direction Apple OSX, Apple IOS, and even Android is following. Unfortunately, Microsoft is just following the same example. It's also part of the reason Linux is gaining some traction in the market; when they aren't shooting themselves in the foot every time by spawning a new 'distro' out every time someone doesn't agree on a decision. It does make the market a pain in that regard.

..the sad part is most 3D programmes do not support Linux which is a pity. The only ones I know of are Blender, Modo, and Maya, two very expensive and the other employs a cumbersome UI which has it's own steep learning curve.

 

[genz]

A lot of people forget that the 2011-v3 motherboard prices start at $150 and AM4 will start closer to $60. That further adds to the gap, and means that we will soon see 2011 performance processors with powerful IGPs too... not to mention mobile 8/12/16 core units.

 

[kyotokid]

A lot of people forget that the 2011-v3 motherboard prices start at $150 and AM4 will start closer to $60. That further adds to the gap, and means that we will soon see 2011 performance processors with powerful IGPs too... not to mention mobile 8/12/16 core units.

..however those inexpensive AM boards have only 2 DIMM slots whereas a low end 2011 V3 can have 4 to even 8.which means greater memory expandability (up to in some cases 128 GB). If you are doing detailed non GPU based CG rendering, memory is your next best friend (after a high thread count CPU) and the more the better.

 

[littleleo]

Anyway, Win 7 is over 7 years old, with "mainstream support" having ended over 2 years ago. "extended support" ends in less than 3 years.

Not a rationale for forcing people to stop using it when they don't want to, and Gigabyte's site proves it's perfectly doable. Let's face it, "support" just means security patches, which wouldn't be so much of an issue if the OS was written better than a bag of holes tied together in the first place.

When has MS ever be rational, lol! They are the only company that still charges for their O/S. Free versions of office work just as good as their versions and are more backward compatible with old office files than MS own office programs are. Try installing Thunderbird email client compared to Outlook it is crazy. If they weren't getting millions from Android they be really hurting since all they make is sub-par these days.

 

[genz]

A lot of people forget that the 2011-v3 motherboard prices start at $150 and AM4 will start closer to $60. That further adds to the gap, and means that we will soon see 2011 performance processors with powerful IGPs too... not to mention mobile 8/12/16 core units.

..however those inexpensive AM boards have only 2 DIMM slots whereas a low end 2011 V3 can have 4 to even 8.which means greater memory expandability (up to in some cases 128 GB). If you are doing detailed non GPU based CG rendering, memory is your next best friend (after a high thread count CPU) and the more the better.

Irrelevant for low end Ryzen 5+3 stuff where that $40 saving is even a consideration. Who is buying a $60 mobo for 128GB of RAM anyway? How many users of 2011 socket motherboards have actually fully populated their boards with the max RAM possible at this point? I almost forgot to mention the cooler in the box too. Your extra 2 slots will cost $20 more tops so you don't really have a point.

 

[kyotokid]

A lot of people forget that the 2011-v3 motherboard prices start at $150 and AM4 will start closer to $60. That further adds to the gap, and means that we will soon see 2011 performance processors with powerful IGPs too... not to mention mobile 8/12/16 core units.

..however those inexpensive AM boards have only 2 DIMM slots whereas a low end 2011 V3 can have 4 to even 8.which means greater memory expandability (up to in some cases 128 GB). If you are doing detailed non GPU based CG rendering, memory is your next best friend (after a high thread count CPU) and the more the better.

Irrelevant for low end Ryzen 5+3 stuff where that $40 saving is even a consideration. Who is buying a $60 mobo for 128GB of RAM anyway? How many users of 2011 socket motherboards have actually fully populated their boards with the max RAM possible at this point? I almost forgot to mention the cooler in the box too. Your extra 2 slots will cost $20 more tops so you don't really have a point.

..depends on what you want to use the system for, if it's just gaming or doing everyday stuff, you're probably fine with one of the AM4 boards. If it's CG work and rendering, the extra cost for those extra slots that allow for more memory is a worthwhile investment.

I know a number of CG artists who have all memory slots filled as well as all the PCIe 3.0 x 16 slots as well, a few which do have 128 GB of memory on their boards.

 

[genz]

..depends on what you want to use the system for, if it's just gaming or doing everyday stuff, you're probably fine with one of the AM4 boards. If it's CG work and rendering, the extra cost for those extra slots that allow for more memory is a worthwhile investment.

I know a number of CG artists who have all memory slots filled as well as all the PCIe 3.0 x 16 slots as well, a few which do have 128 GB of memory on their boards.

Exactly. $30 is nothing if you are adding 128GB of RAM to your board. We obviously are not talking about them are we? If you want more then there's Naples as there was 2011.

 

[kyotokid]

..depends on what you want to use the system for, if it's just gaming or doing everyday stuff, you're probably fine with one of the AM4 boards. If it's CG work and rendering, the extra cost for those extra slots that allow for more memory is a worthwhile investment.

I know a number of CG artists who have all memory slots filled as well as all the PCIe 3.0 x 16 slots as well, a few which do have 128 GB of memory on their boards.

Exactly. $30 is nothing if you are adding 128GB of RAM to your board. We obviously are not talking about them are we? If you want more then there's Naples as there was 2011.

..Naples is useless as unless you run a big CG studio that uses Modo, Houdini and/or Maya (which support Linux) you are out of luck.

Oh, and I am in the process of configuring a 128 GB dual 8 core Xeon (Sandy Bridge) render system for about the price of a single Quadro P5000 GPU card. I also use render engines (Renderman, Carrara, and Vue Infinite) which do not support GPU rendering so the more CPU cores, memory, and memory channels, the better.

 

[bit_user]

...Naples is useless as unless you run a big CG studio that uses Modo, Houdini and/or Maya (which support Linux) you are out of luck.

So, why would it be useless in Windows?

And are you aware of anyone using Xeon Phi (Knights Landing) for CPU rendering workloads? The current generation runs Windows.

 

[kyotokid]

...Naples is useless as unless you run a big CG studio that uses Modo, Houdini and/or Maya (which support Linux) you are out of luck.

So, why would it be useless in Windows?

And are you aware of anyone using Xeon Phi (Knights Landing) for CPU rendering workloads? The current generation runs Windows.

...Read about the forthcoming high core count Naples CPUs and they only support Linux and as hinted, possibly Windows Server Edition. WSE is far more expensive than any desktop OS and has annual licencing fees, it also does not support graphics production as well as a desktop OS does (much slower for one).

Xeon Phi is a parallel co-processor pretty much intended for installation supercomputer systems, not desktop CG workstations. Fine if you are into climatological or geological modelling. At the prices just for 61 cores at 1.1GHz and 16 GB memory, one would be better off looking under the couch cushions for the extra couple hundred to get a Quadro P6000 with over 3,800 cores and 24 GB video memory.

Most people I know of who have Xeon based systems (single or dual) are using either Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge.

 

[bit_user]

Xeon Phi is a parallel co-processor pretty much intended for installation supercomputer systems, not desktop CG workstations. Fine if you are into climatological or geological modelling. At the prices just for 61 cores at 1.1GHz and 16 GB memory, one would be better off looking under the couch cushions for the extra couple hundred to get a Quadro P6000 with over 3,800 cores and 24 GB video memory.

The new x200 generation (AKA Knights Landing or KNL) Xeon Phi processors are used as a CPU. They have 64-72 cores, with 4 hyper-threads per core. They probably require Windows Server, to your point. They have 16 GB of HMC2, internally, which can act as a huge L3 cache. In addition, they have 6-channel DDR4, supporting up to 384 GB. Prices range from about $2500 to $6250.

I don't really see why they would be a bad choice for CPU-only 3D workloads, if one had pockets deep enough. That said, if my software also supports GPUs, then that's going to be a more cost-effective option.

Anyway, be careful about GPU core counts. The GPU industry has taken to multiplying the number of actual cores by the number and width of their SIMD engines. If you counted Xeon Phi cores in the same way, then they would have 2048 - 2304. Going the other direction, the GP102 that lies at the heart of the Pascal Titan cards and the P6000 (with 4x16 SIMD lanes per streaming multiprocessor) has only 60 independent cores.

 

[kyotokid]

Xeon Phi is a parallel co-processor pretty much intended for installation supercomputer systems, not desktop CG workstations. Fine if you are into climatological or geological modelling. At the prices just for 61 cores at 1.1GHz and 16 GB memory, one would be better off looking under the couch cushions for the extra couple hundred to get a Quadro P6000 with over 3,800 cores and 24 GB video memory.

The new x200 generation (AKA Knights Landing or KNL) Xeon Phi processors are used as a CPU. They have 64-72 cores, with 4 hyper-threads per core. They probably require Windows Server, to your point. They have 16 GB of HMC2, internally, which can act as a huge L3 cache. In addition, they have 6-channel DDR4, supporting up to 384 GB. Prices range from about $2500 to $6250.

I don't really see why they would be a bad choice for CPU-only 3D workloads, if one had pockets deep enough. That said, if my software also supports GPUs, then that's going to be a more cost-effective option.

Anyway, be careful about GPU core counts. The GPU industry has taken to multiplying the number of actual cores by the number and width of their SIMD engines. If you counted Xeon Phi cores in the same way, then they would have 2048 - 2304. Going the other direction, the GP102 that lies at the heart of the Pascal Titan cards and the P6000 (with 4x16 SIMD lanes per streaming multiprocessor) has only 60 independent cores.

...short of winning the Megabucks Lotto, that kind of hardware (along with Nvidia Quadro/Tesla) is pretty much out of reach for most of us anyway. The issue with mass market GPU cards is they are designed for gaming, not CG production as they are no designed to be driven at peak levels for extended periods of time such as during rendering, whereas the pro grade ones (Quadro and FirePro) are. There are also other features on the Pro cards which serve to enhance performance for CG production work that are not available on commercial cards.

Again as I mentioned, I also work with render engines that do not support GPU rendering so I need the most CPU/memory horsepower I can afford. Yes, it is a trade off, as with Iray CPU based rendering will take longer (though not as long as on my current system) but by the same token I'm not dumping 700$ - 1,200$ into a component, most likely having to cut corners elsewhere to offset the cost, when it benefits only one of four render engines I use.

For us in the 3D CG world at the enthusiast level, GPU based rendering is still a pretty new concept (Iray was rolled out only two years ago). Members of one 3D community had to wait about four months to be able to use their new 10 series Pascal cards due to delays in SDK/driver updates along with software testing. What will happen when the Volta cards are released next year? Or whatever follows that a year or so afterwards?

Oh yeah almost forgot, a 20xx series Pascal line is scheduled to be rolled out later this year.

This is part of why I have become somewhat ambivalent towards what I feel has become a pricey GPU "arms race".

 

[bit_user]

Again as I mentioned, I also work with render engines that do not support GPU rendering so I need the most CPU/memory horsepower I can afford. Yes, it is a trade off, as with Iray CPU based rendering will take longer (though not as long as on my current system) but by the same token I'm not dumping 700$ - 1,200$ into a component, most likely having to cut corners elsewhere to offset the cost, when it benefits only one of four render engines I use.

Do you ever use cloud-based render farms?

Just curious.