AMD, which was somewhat overshadowed by the Nvidia RTX announcement, launched its new Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX processors which have 32 cores and 64 threads and are claimed to be the most powerful desktop processors. The The processors are compatible with most I/O and existing AMD X399 chipset motherboards through a simple BIOS update. The 2nd gen AMD Ryzen Threadripper processors are built using 12nm “Zen+” x86 processor architecture and are claimed to boost performance by around 50%.
Alex Herrera, analyst and author of Jon Peddie Research’s Workstation Report, said
“With the 2nd Gen processor family we took that challenge to a whole new level – delivering the biggest, most powerful desktop processor the world has ever seen. AMD reinvigorated the PC market with the launch of Ryzen processors, bringing compelling new choices to buyers of performance PCs. Now, with the 2nd Generation AMD Ryzen Threadripper, AMD is doing the same for professionals, delivering potent new CPU options to serve the hefty performance demands of the workstation market.”
AMD has highlighted heterogenous computing and the importance of balance between CPUs and GPUs and we heard that AMD can use this to produce good performance in de-noising algorithms.
The company also had a new graphics board, the WX8200 which is available for pre-order and staff on the booth told us that it highlighted the good value of AMD’s solution at ‘less than $1,000’, which was a comparison with Nvidia RTX prices up to $10,000. Jon Peddie has commented on the new workstation board in an article in his GFXSpeak publication, where he shows a detailed specification and comments on the work that AMD has done to improve the quality and stability of its professional drivers. He also points out that AMD has added a simple way of switching between DirectX and OpenGL drivers.
AMD has also made updates to its Radeon ProRender Plug-ins.
AMD told us that its next big GPU announcement would be in 2020.
AMD highlighted its heterogenous architecture. Image:Meko
