Threadripper 9000 CPUs will revive the HEDT market on July 31, starting at $1,499 for 24 cores — the flagship 64-core chip will set you back $4,999

jlake3 said:

What exactly IS the definition of "HEDT" anyway, if not a light version of the workstation platform?

HEDT was birthed as a higher performance alternative to desktop processors. Actual features were removed (like ECC, enterprise features and memory capacity) from workstation platforms and the prices were dropped significantly because of it (typically ~30% minimum).

jlake3 said:

I remember wanting an X99 system back in the day, but those carried off-putting premiums unless you really needed the memory bandwidth/capacity, additional PCIe lanes, or core counts. Motherboards were more expensive, the processors were more expensive (especially for the ones people actually wanted), and you needed quad-channel memory to get the most out of them. Single core boost they were on par with the mainstream chip, if I remember correctly, but their all-core clocks were generally much slower than the mainstream counterparts and they did sometimes lose in certain tasks to the top i7s.

Processors cost ~20% more at the entry level for 50% more cores (aside from those hilarious Skylake-X quad cores which I still don't quite understand).

The motherboards could certainly cost more, but at that time SLI was still a thing and they didn't require switches so that put it into a different position (50% more cost was certainly possible if you didn't care about SLI support comparing the two). By the time desktop core counts started to increase the HEDT motherboards didn't carry as much of a price premium because desktop boards started getting more expensive in general while HEDT didn't change.

Quad channel memory didn't necessarily cost more when comparing equal capacity so that doesn't particularly enter into the equation since it was a matter of buying 4x 4GB sticks instead of 2x 8GB (or 4x 8GB vs 2x 16GB of course). HEDT all core clocks were fine it was the boost clocks (TB 3.0 and whatnot) that were generally behind without overclocking.

jlake3 said:

PCIe lane counts increased

Lane counts on desktop haven't changed since SNB only chipset connectivity has.

jlake3 said:

the low end of HEDT was always a hard sell and poor value unless you had very particular requirements

Promise you anyone who bought a 6700K/7700K were having a lot more problems than anyone using a 6800K over time (even without overclocking). If you're replacing your system every generation or two I certainly agree with you here though.

jlake3 said:

The gap between mainstream and HEDT/workstation has gotten bigger as mainstream core counts

This right here is the reason I say HEDT doesn't exist anymore, because previously it filled a gap in the market. Until AMD released the 1700X you couldn't get more than 4 cores in a desktop platform. At the very least Skylake should have been 6 or 8 cores as that's when workloads getting more parallelized was really becoming common. Of course Intel was also playing HT games until 10th Gen which didn't particularly help things.

AMD's first Threadripper CPUs (Zen/Zen+ era) undercut Intel HEDT slightly and had more PCIe lanes, but didn't officially support ECC memory (I think it was like Ryzen and if the motherboard enabled it then it worked). Once they shifted to the 3000 series Threadripper became full workstation priced with no desktop core count overlap (Pro did overlap, but the price premium there is obviously massive as you're buying specifically for the memory and/or lane count).

Enticing indeed, but still too expensive.

thestryker said:

HEDT was birthed as a higher performance alternative to desktop processors. Actual features were removed (like ECC, enterprise features and memory capacity) from workstation platforms and the prices were dropped significantly because of it (typically ~30% minimum).

Processors cost ~20% more at the entry level for 50% more cores (aside from those hilarious Skylake-X quad cores which I still don't quite understand).

The motherboards could certainly cost more, but at that time SLI was still a thing and they didn't require switches so that put it into a different position (50% more cost was certainly possible if you didn't care about SLI support comparing the two). By the time desktop core counts started to increase the HEDT motherboards didn't carry as much of a price premium because desktop boards started getting more expensive in general while HEDT didn't change.

Quad channel memory didn't necessarily cost more when comparing equal capacity so that doesn't particularly enter into the equation since it was a matter of buying 4x 4GB sticks instead of 2x 8GB (or 4x 8GB vs 2x 16GB of course). HEDT all core clocks were fine it was the boost clocks (TB 3.0 and whatnot) that were generally behind without overclocking.

Lane counts on desktop haven't changed since SNB only chipset connectivity has.

Promise you anyone who bought a 6700K/7700K were having a lot more problems than anyone using a 6800K over time (even without overclocking). If you're replacing your system every generation or two I certainly agree with you here though.

This right here is the reason I say HEDT doesn't exist anymore, because previously it filled a gap in the market. Until AMD released the 1700X you couldn't get more than 4 cores in a desktop platform. At the very least Skylake should have been 6 or 8 cores as that's when workloads getting more parallelized was really becoming common. Of course Intel was also playing HT games until 10th Gen which didn't particularly help things.

AMD's first Threadripper CPUs (Zen/Zen+ era) undercut Intel HEDT slightly and had more PCIe lanes, but didn't officially support ECC memory (I think it was like Ryzen and if the motherboard enabled it then it worked). Once they shifted to the 3000 series Threadripper became full workstation priced with no desktop core count overlap (Pro did overlap, but the price premium there is obviously massive as you're buying specifically for the memory and/or lane count).

Sorry, but I have to disagree with all your premises in here.

AMD has supported ECC in all Zen models as long as the motherboard vendor includes support for the sticks. The PCIe lanes have been increasing, but at a painfully slow pace, limiting the usability of I/O and PCIe X16 options. AMD, in particular, has been really lazy on the chipset I/O design department.

And HEDT is just "high end desktop", which you can take/interpret it any way you want, really. Historically, just to keep it in perspective, consumer and server CPUs (and platforms) had very little differences, mostly due to technology maturing and prices still being rather high on both ends. Nowadays, the gap between Workstation/Server and Consumer is just artificial segmentation thanks to Intel and AMD following suit. I still remember consumer grade dual socket motherboards for Pentium 2 and 3. Not cheap, but it wasn't that much more than a linear increase in price.

Should Threadripper start at 1.5K? No, I don't think so. Is it HEDT? Absolutely.

The cost is stupid high now due to the niche it covers and how little competition is in the space. We're long overdue to make tri or quad channel belong in consumer. Same with ECC to be "standard". More lanes and all of that. The increases in bandwidth demand on consumer platforms has gone quite high, but how can you tell people "those 16 cores are starved" or "your disk performance would be better if you had more lanes" and so on. There's no comparison point for a consumer platform to grow outside of just CPU performance because it's hella hard to compare within the same price range (this goes back to the artificial segmentation part).

So, in short: Threadripper is indeed HEDT, as much as it is Workstation. It's just AMD squeezing money from the platform because niche and dominance.

Regards.

At some point in time (probably the point when hell freezes...) CPU's and motherboards will stop being two-tiered. There is really no real reason (logicly) for the lack of ECC or PCIe lanes on DT boards right now, except that there is more PROFIT MARGIN on the HEDT versions. Charge what the market will bear, is the saying, right? Or, greed is good....

IMO HEDT and Desktops are in a weird spot.

At the low end to mid range, you have MoDT that are perfectly capable while costing significantly less.
In the mid range, you have a nice 9800X3D for gaming, but memory bandwidth starved APU lineup.
With HEDT you get memory bandwidth and PCIe lanes but no APU to benefit from the memory bandwidth, and a platform that is far too costly.
And now we have Strix Halo which is a good attempt at the APU memory bandwidth problem, but it's still costly.

The way I see it, most of these problems can be solved if there was a cheap PCIe 5.0 to 4.0 switch.