News High-End Desktop CPUs Disappearing from the Market — Puget Systems

[Admin]

HEDT users have to settle for desktop CPUs or pay extra for workstation processors, says Puget Systems.

High-End Desktop CPUs Disappearing from the Market — Puget Systems : Read more

 

[escksu]

Hmm, its not surprising. Given the demand for server/workstation CPUs, there is really no point in making threadripper, AMD would rather devote the resources to Ryzen and threadripper Pro. Demand for HEDT is also very low to begin with compared (compared to other end user CPUs)

There is also no point in having threadripper and threadripper Pro (2 lines), so AMD now only have threadripper Pro which still works on existing boards

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

Or could it be that AMD wants to not be stuck with any of these high margin yet narrow market CPUs that they can't shift without taking a loss when the next generation version featuring DDR5 and PCIe 5, among other things, come to market?

It's the same thing we see with the 5950X. Retailers are struggling to keep it in stock, with it having gone out of stock for at least a week at Newegg, Amazon, and B&H concurrently not long ago (still out of stock at B&H and BestBuy), and AMD has not reduced pricing on it, with them happy to still charge $800 for it on their storefront even though it's a year and half old.

Yes it sucks, yes the customer loses, and yes I hate AMD for doing it and hope their stock price crashes, but it's a logical business decision.

 

[Deleted member 2783327]

The mainstream CPUs are not challenging the HEDT CPUs!
HEDT comes with loads more PCIe lanes and often that is the deciding factor.
Indeed, the only reason I buy HEDT is because of the extremely low number of PCIe lanes on mainstream CPUs. If they came with 28+ lanes I'd never have bought HEDT, which might have saved me 10's of thousands of Adollars.

 

[hannibal]

At this moment it is better to start going for Zen4 based threathrippers!
In productivity ddr5 makes much more sense than in gaming, so dropping old ddr4 based model makes much more sense in threathrippers than in normal consumer products.

 

[Paul Connell]

Or could it be that AMD wants to not be stuck with any of these high margin yet narrow market CPUs that they can't shift without taking a loss when the next generation version…

Could be, but they’ve been essentially unavailable for a longer period than would make sense if that were the case. I had made up my mind to build my nest system around a 3990 at least a year and a half ago. Never saw one in stock anywhere near MSRP, they were all either listed as backordered or marked up to nearly double. With Zen4 still not out, it would seem unlikely they’d end production leaving 2 years worth of sales on the table.

I get that it’s a small market, but between the scalper pricing and then AMD staying they’ll only be making the Pro versions going forward, and only provifing them to OEMs leaves a really bad taste in my mouth and makes me unlikely to consider AMD in the future. Not an Intel fanboy by any means, but at least they’re actually interested in selling me their products.

 

[XaveT]

I'm still hoping for more PCIe lanes... 16/20 is just not enough. 32/36 should at least be an available option. If I could get a Threadripper 1900X but in a modern series I would take that too.

 

[edzieba]

The HEDT market is rapidly shrinking because the HEDT use-case itself is rapidly shrinking. There are very few workloads that both benefit from more than the (already excessive, but that cat isn't going back in the bag again) number of cores that current desktop CPUs possess, but simultaneously do not scale enough to benefit from the number of cores that GPGPU offers, and simultaneously need to run locally rather than remotely on a shard of a hyperscale compute provider.

 

[Joe from Corgitech]

Yeah I can confirm this anecdotally via some of my distributors. They have either flagged them as "no allocation Q2", "discontinued", or backordered with no units on order. Some integrators have some still but are requiring it to be incorporated into a workstation order or purchased with a bundle of products they're trying to clear out that don't sell.

 

[Co BIY]

The HEDT market is rapidly shrinking because the HEDT use-case itself is rapidly shrinking.

There are very few workloads that both benefit from more than the (already excessive, but that cat isn't going back in the bag again) number of cores that current desktop CPUs possess, but simultaneously do not scale enough to benefit from the number of cores that GPGPU offers, and simultaneously need to run locally rather than remotely on a shard of a hyperscale compute provider.

This makes sense to me. HEDT is getting squeezed between a much more capable mainstream desktop and cloud-based solutions. Software to use the power is always running behind the hardware.

Add to that limited wafer starts that force (allow) the producers to focus on their most profitable products (Enterprise).

 

[hotaru.hino]

This makes sense to me. HEDT is getting squeezed between a much more capable mainstream desktop and cloud-based solutions. Software to use the power is always running behind the hardware.

In certain situations sure, but there aren't that many use cases where a problem is embarrassingly parallel. The only one off the top of my head that a given consumer would have any interest in is video editing or non-realtime 3D rendering. Maybe super high resolution photo editing can fall into that as well. Everything else hit its diminishing returns because the problem can't be parallelized further and/or there were already a plethora of optimizations done in the pipeline.

 

[InvalidError]

I'm still hoping for more PCIe lanes... 16/20 is just not enough. 32/36 should at least be an available option.

It is already available "as an option" if you count Z/X chipset PCIe lanes: Alder Lake has 20 on-CPU PCIe lane (+8 for the chipset link) and the Z690 chipset adds up to 28 for a maximum possible total of 48.

30+ PCIe lanes directly from a mainstream CPU probably won't happen due to the cost of adding PCIe regen buffers between the CPU and anything more than 2" away from the CPU socket and the relatively small number of people who will ever use 'em.

 

[KyaraM]

Or could it be that AMD wants to not be stuck with any of these high margin yet narrow market CPUs that they can't shift without taking a loss when the next generation version featuring DDR5 and PCIe 5, among other things, come to market?

It's the same thing we see with the 5950X. Retailers are struggling to keep it in stock, with it having gone out of stock for at least a week at Newegg, Amazon, and B&H concurrently not long ago (still out of stock at B&H and BestBuy), and AMD has not reduced pricing on it, with them happy to still charge $800 for it on their storefront even though it's a year and half old.

Yes it sucks, yes the customer loses, and yes I hate AMD for doing it and hope their stock price crashes, but it's a logical business decision.

That's not really the case here in Europe, it didn't go out of stock all of 2022 so far; didn't look in 2021. Retailer stock is quite good and it's actually currently even slightly less expensive than the 12900K. As always, it depends where you live.

 

[atmapuri]

HEDT was created due to artificial market segmentation by Intel. As soon as you dont have reserve performance in your products due to the need to match the mainstream of the competition, your "high-end" for a premium price evaporates. PCI lane count has also been marginalized with PCI 4.0 and PCI 5.0 standards, which offer 2x and 4x higher performance for the same lane count. Another virtual market segmentation is between "mobile" and "desktop". Last two years all the desktop PCs that I bought use a mobile CPU in the NUC format. They cost half the price and you dont have to waste money on to 15" displays, if you can have 2 or 3 displays with 30" on your desktop.

 

[tamalero]

Considering the MASSIVE jump of prices from one gen to the other and the abandon of AMD of the Threadripper for enthusiasts and focusing on "workstation" type EPYCs with huge prices.. yeah no surprise.

 

[Johnpombrio]

" You want to buy ALL of my servers in rubles?"
"Dah."

 

[Spuwho]

Threadripper demand is being driven by a large OEM and integrators because that is where the margins are. So Lenovo's Workstation division, who has many relationships with these vertical integrator's did a deal with AMD to get first dibs on new TR releases. Same division @ Lenovo had built a large following with these same vertical's as part of the Intel Xeon Thinkstation marketing ramp up. But at CES 2019, they said they were going to engage AMD due to a large number of customer requests. Same integrator's and end users were challenging the lost value and quick depreciation of Intel based hardware.

This sudden and quick shift from Intel to AMD platforms caught a lot of non-captive horizontal integrator's by surprise. They had built a large quantity of HP and Dell prefabricated workstation platforms (mostly Dell) because for awhile there was no competition and Xeon was all their was. (so the margins were pretty darn good) Now many are them are stuck with these Xeon capable workstation "shells" that are depreciating and losing compute value really fast. Since Lenovo has the Threadripper locked up, there is no one to compete with them underneath.

Lenovo, who seems to have their ears better tuned to the biz crowd, responded in kind and took advantage of a profitable niche. Dell on the other hand was still trying to exploit their low cost to fabricate by engaging "anyone" vertically or horizontally and promptly dumped a lot of Intel gear on their laps. Now much of it is hitting the discount markets as they are unloaded to cut inventory. 3 years from now, there is going to be a boat load of unused Xeons hitting the resale markets at goofy prices as these horizontals unload the last of their CPU inventory.

 

[hotaru.hino]

HEDT was created due to artificial market segmentation by Intel.

That's funny considering the first processor considered to be a High End Desktop one was AMD's FX-51.

Another virtual market segmentation is between "mobile" and "desktop". Last two years all the desktop PCs that I bought use a mobile CPU in the NUC format. They cost half the price and you dont have to waste money on to 15" displays, if you can have 2 or 3 displays with 30" on your desktop.

I wouldn't call that artificial or virtual market segmentation. The design characteristics between mobile and desktop processors are different. One is designed to be as efficient as possible because its target market is going to be on something battery based. The other throws that out the window for performance. However that does not preclude that neither can end up in the other's market. For instance, just as you mention that mobile parts are in desktop computers, desktop parts can be in mobile computers. You just have to understand the pros and cons of throwing something that wasn't particularly designed for that system.

Like for instance, for most NUCs, you can't do much in the way of internal expansion outside of memory and storage. And for the desktop parts in a portable computer, you're not going to last long on the battery, it's there more as a UPS so you can safely shut down.

 

[cryoburner]

The mainstream CPUs are not challenging the HEDT CPUs!
HEDT comes with loads more PCIe lanes and often that is the deciding factor.
Indeed, the only reason I buy HEDT is because of the extremely low number of PCIe lanes on mainstream CPUs. If they came with 28+ lanes I'd never have bought HEDT, which might have saved me 10's of thousands of Adollars.

How many people have actual need for those extra PCIe lanes though? The motherboard chipset makes 16 additional lanes available as well, albeit with the connection to the CPU limited to x4. So a standard Ryzen 3000 or 5000 desktop processor on an x570 motherboard will provide 20 lanes direct from the CPU, plus another 4 lanes that get split into 16 by the chipset to provide flexible connectivity options. But these are 4.0 lanes, so each provides double the bandwidth of a 3.0 lane, and can be split accordingly. I don't see that many use-cases today where the number of lanes would be a significant restriction. If someone were in fact spending "tens of thousands of dollars" for access to more lanes, I would hope they would have enough of a professional need for that extra connectivity that it would pay for itself over time.

Really, I think the market for HEDT processors in general has become a lot more niche in recent years, as the more mainstream desktop platforms have shifted to cover most of that territory. When a standard, relatively low-cost motherboard offers support for 16-core, 32-thread processors with a reasonable amount of fast lanes for connectivity, few are likely to need anything more unless they have some specific professional need for it.

I get that it’s a small market, but between the scalper pricing and then AMD staying they’ll only be making the Pro versions going forward, and only provifing them to OEMs leaves a really bad taste in my mouth and makes me unlikely to consider AMD in the future. Not an Intel fanboy by any means, but at least they’re actually interested in selling me their products.

Are they though? Has Intel been providing a competing product with comparable specs and pricing? If not, then they are apparently even less interested in selling you their product. : P

I don't believe AMD ever officially stated that they will only be making pro versions going forward either, or that the Pro versions will only ever be made available to OEMs. The 5000-series Threadripper Pros just launched a couple months back, so it's too early to say for sure. It could simply be that they are waiting for Zen4-based Threadrippers with DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 to be ready first, as DDR4 and PCIe 4.0 isn't exactly marketable for an "extreme enthusiast" platform now that faster options are becoming available on more mainstream platforms.

 

[XaveT]

It is already available "as an option" if you count Z/X chipset PCIe lanes: Alder Lake has 20 on-CPU PCIe lane (+8 for the chipset link) and the Z690 chipset adds up to 28 for a maximum possible total of 48.

Personally, if it's constrained to the CPU by an 8x link, I count it as an 8x link. So the 28 are pretty wasted from the chipset if you need CPU access for those 28 lanes. I would still get the 1900x is they would make a similar one for the newest parts.

 

[hotaru.hino]

Personally, if it's constrained to the CPU by an 8x link, I count it as an 8x link. So the 28 are pretty wasted from the chipset if you need CPU access for those 28 lanes. I would still get the 1900x is they would make a similar one for the newest parts.

While fair, that only really matters if every device is trying to hammer RAM or one of the other CPU connected devices with data.

Do you have a use case where, I dunno, a dozen USB drives, a handful of SATA drives, and maybe 2-3 NVMe drives are all trying to hammer the system at once?

 

[InvalidError]

Personally, if it's constrained to the CPU by an 8x link, I count it as an 8x link. So the 28 are pretty wasted from the chipset if you need CPU access for those 28 lanes. I would still get the 1900x is they would make a similar one for the newest parts.

The 4.0x8 chipset link to the CPU is of no material consequence since you need to simultaneously slam multiple devices for 14+GB/s aggregate in either direction for it to become an issue which hardly ever happens in desktop scenarios.

Do you have a use case where, I dunno, a dozen USB drives, a handful of SATA drives, and maybe 2-3 NVMe drives are all trying to hammer the system at once?

The only use-case I can think of is an NVMe NAS with 50+Gbps LAN trunk.

 

[fsc123456]

Aren't the next gen of HEDT platforms supposed to be released Q3 2022 by Intel and AMD?