AMD 64-Core EPYC 'Milan-X' Listed For More Than $10,000

AMD
(Image credit: AMD)

AMD is expected to release its EPYC 7003-series processors with 3D V-Cache later this year, but a major retailer listed one of the CPUs on its website and even published its pricing on Thursday. Of course, like all server processors, the flagship 64-core EPYC 7773X is not meant to be cheap, but, naturally, additional cache comes at a price. 

This week, Zones, a major B2B retailer, listed AMD's upcoming 64-core EPYC 7773X processor with the 100-000000504 OPN code. Unfortunately, the company didn't disclose when the CPU will be available. Instead, you have to call for availability, but the unit's price is listed at $10,746.99. 

To put the number into context, the same company sells AMD's current flagship 64-core EPYC 7763 processor for $9,424.99, as noted by @momomo_us. While we do not know the exact frequency and other specifications of the EPYC 7773X, it is evident that the additional 3D V-Cache has its price, and it looks like that price is fairly high. Of course, keep in mind that it is hard to say how accurate the pricing of a product several months away is, so take it with a grain of salt.

(Image credit: Zones.com)

AMD's EPYC 'Milan-X' and some upcoming Ryzen processors use a hybrid bonding technique (that relies on TSMC's SoIC process) to fuse an additional 7nm SRAM cache chiplet atop the compute die with direct copper-to-copper dielectric bonding of the TSVs that connect the two dies. In the case of Ryzen, AMD places 64MB SRAM chiplets atop of each processor die to significantly increase the CPU's L3 cache capacity and performance in memory bandwidth-sensitive workloads. 

We have no idea about AMD's exact 3D V-Cache plans for EPYC, but even 64MB of additional L3 cache improves the performance of AMD's Ryzen 9 5900X in games by about 15%, which is a tangible performance boost comparable to increases brought by microarchitectural innovations. Many server workloads are bandwidth-sensitive, so there will be customers willing to pay extra for additional L3 cache.

AMD's EPYC 'Milan-X' family is projected to feature at least four models: the flagship 64-core EPYC 7773X, the 32-core EPYC 7573X, the 24-core EPYC 7473X, and the 16-core EPYC 7373X.

Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

  • artk2219
    The difference between the two cpu's is relative peanuts when it comes to the total build price, ram and storage have a tendency to cause pricing to creep up much more than that 15% price delta between the CPU's. Also if it increases the speed that you can complete jobs then that small price difference may more than pay for itself in very short order.
    Reply
  • escksu
    artk2219 said:
    The difference between the two cpu's is relative peanuts when it comes to the total build price, ram and storage have a tendency to cause pricing to creep up much more than that 15% price delta between the CPU's. Also if it increases the speed that you can complete jobs then that small price difference may more than pay for itself in very short order.

    Just to point out that the entire server price is also peanuts compared to software. The real killer is software license and maintenace package, not the hardware. Hardware cost is usually just ~10-20% of the total system cost.
    Reply
  • artk2219
    escksu said:
    Just to point out that the entire server price is also peanuts compared to software. The real killer is software license and maintenace package, not the hardware. Hardware cost is usually just ~10-20% of the total system cost.
    I don't know what you're talking about, I've totally never seen a company pay over 180K in monthly Microsoft licensing before :)
    Reply
  • waltc3
    So you think that paying 12% more for a CPU that has at least 15% more performance is "too high"...? Seems kind of silly--especially when you look at the slow crap that Intel was selling for $10k prior to EPYC...;)
    Reply