My quotes from Der8aur: Threadripper and Epyc Packages :
“The PCB between the two are definitely different. Why would they have such similar packages if they were going to redesign the PCB anyway? Why would they need two different sockets for a different pin out? None of this is making sense… Its like needing a whole new platform for a CPU refresh. Epyc and TR could have been on the same socket and had anywhere from 1-32 cores.”
"So TR released in 2017 July-August. Winter 2018 is ending and there is stll no 32 core TR in sight. Meanwhile Epyc is undercutting every intel counter part and offering the full 32. So why does TR exist? Its sort of market scalping, they are doing the nvidia strat. I am sure AMD could release a 32 TR back in summer 2017 but they knew they had intel beat everywhere on the consumer market, so instead of selling the best they got, they will sell 16 TR until intel catches up, only to drop prices and sell a 32 TR, just like nvidia did with the 1070 - 1070 Ti. At the same time they couldn’t give up the server segment by only selling 16 cores so they had to seperate the markets by making another platform and thus Epyc was unleashed.
There is also the naming scheme for TR 1900, 1920, 1950… what about a 1970 and a 1990?
This is the best explanation I have for the existance of TR alongside Epyc.
I was I bit concered thinking that maybe a 32 TR was impossible, but now I am sure it will happen. When? Well that will depend entirely on intel."
From now on this shall be called the “nvidia strat”
Thank you Der8uaer, I had my suspicions when TR launched, and now I know for certain.
It’s most likely for people who can’t afford EPYC but need more features or performance than available with Ryzen.
I’m pretty happy that the 1900X exists. It costs less than 100€ more than the 1800X but has plenty of PCIe lanes for passthrough, Infiniband and NVMe. As soon as the fixes for the PCIe reset bug are mainline, I will upgrade my system to Threadripper.
AMD: Oh, there are only two dies. Der8auer: I delidded it, there are four dies. AMD: Well… the other two are dummy dies. Der8auer: I scraped away at them, all four are real dies. AMD: Well… the two are real dies, but not connected. Der8auer: I took X-rays, all four chips are connected.
What would be interesting is if they launched a Threadripper refresh motherboard supporting 8 channel memory with 1 DIMM per channel. Perhaps a EATX config that allows both 8 channels and quad channel CPUs.