New Workstation | Buy Zen 5 EPYC Now or Wait for Zen 5 Threadripper?

Want to get the forum’s opinion on this. My workstation is getting old and it’s time to upgrade. My workflow is mostly video editing and graphics, but I do some light gaming from time to time as well. I am considering the 9175F, but I’m wondering if I should hold off until Threadripper’s upcoming 9000 release.

BTW, I’m not going with Ryzen because I need lanes for PCIe cards and storage so telling me to use Ryzen will not be helpful.

Thanks!
Mitch

Ive been getting some good advi e on my question tangentially related to your question. I asked about the 3,5, 7, series and useful life going with older versus new etc. Almost talked in to using a 9050x instead tbh.

If you absolutely need the lanes, I would not wait for Threadripper at this point. We are talking at least six months before announcements are made and at most you will see a 5% increase or so.

However, both TR and EPYC come at both a performance cost with lower boost clocks, and of course price with at least $2k extra in platform costs alone, which is why I usually tell people to stay clear unless they absolutely need either the cores, or the lanes.

Since sales of workstation TR / EPYC are getting marginalized, support is often lacking, too, which further increase my meditation to recommend these products.

Given that you would save $2k ish on going AM5, it is worth asking yourself whether you can do your computing differently. Sound, for instance, used to be all internal capture cards and mixers on PCI(e) - these days they are hooked up via bluetooth or USB interfaces.

The world is changing, and some old ways to do things are no longer the best way to do it. If you still feel you have need of EPYC go right ahead, at least now you double checked the build :slightly_smiling_face:

Depends how urgent it is, what your budget is, etc.

IMO for your use single core speeds will still be pretty relevant. Depends maybe also how well parallelized the specific applications are, but generally for these kinds of programs single-core can still be quite relevant.

Epycs have pretty low single-core boost frequencies in the low 4GHz range, whereas threadsrippers go up to 5.5ish. There are Epyc “F” SKUs which get higher boost frequencies up to 5Ghz but they are pretty expensive.

If it’s urgent and you can afford an F SKU that would work great. Epyc 9005 board availability is pretty low though, I don’t see any here in Europe. So if it’s urgent maybe threadripper 7000 is your best bet. Threadripper non-pro would probably suffice and also save quite a bit of money.

If you have some patience I’d wait for threadripper 9000, either PRO or non-pro depending on how many lanes/cores/memory you need.

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I won’t say that budget is not a concern because that would not be true. However, I do not often replace my workstation, so it will always eventually pay for itself. Like any professional tool, you try to find the balance between performance and cost. More performance means less time waiting on projects to transcode. But, at the same point, it’s not like I’m working 24 hours a day so arguments could be made either way.

Basically, I’m going to be investing a significant amount of money into this tool so I would rather put a bit more money into it to be able to work as efficiently as possible. So, that being said, let’s remove costs from the discussion.

Now, I do need PCIe lanes with my current workflow. The AM5 platform will basically only allow me to have a GPU and Optane drives. Beyond that, I have several cards that soak up the lanes…

I am still using a Rocket-X card, REDCODE makes up about 70% of the video I ingest and this card makes transcoding REDCODE into DNx, ProRes, and proxies much faster.

I use a DeckLink 4K 12G, for I/O from my decks and out to my reference/production display. I’ve been doing this a long time and I do have some equipment that wouldn’t necessarily be in someone’s workflow that is starting from scratch but they come in handy enough that I’m not ready to remove them just yet.

And, I have a few cards that are dedicated to audio processing and I/O. I have a lot of money invested into these and have no desire to spend more money to go with an external solution. If I were starting from scratch I may do things differently, but this is what I’m working with.

So, there’s just no way I can make that work on a consumer platform and my Threadripper 1950X is really starting to show its age. lol

With all of that being said, would you guys agree that I should just go ahead and pull the trigger on EPYC? I am looking specifically at the 9175F and the 9275F. I don’t think that I need to go crazy with the cores, because at that point I’m not so sure the expense is justified. I have to consider diminishing returns.

Any thoughts?

I do feel compelled to note that no professional workflow should include Bluetooth for audio. It’s unreliable, compressed, and super high latency. Please don’t take this as me throwing you under the bus or anything like that. I thank you for your input and I’m grateful for your opinions. I just couldn’t leave that out there without saying something. And, I appreciate the fact that this says more about me than you. But, we’re all passionate about whatever it is that we’re passionate about. lol

Also, Merry Christmas Everyone! lol

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No hard feelings mate, Bluetooth is actually better these days, my current BT headphones sound amazing and have close to wired latencies but like you say that is in the consumer realm where requirements are pretty low. It is only a matter of time before that breaks through to pro although maybe it will be wifi based or a BT successor.

Still, it is worth considering how $2k can improve your setup around the computer too, e.g. buy a new USB driven sound mixer or something :slightly_smiling_face: Not saying you must do that, just that it is an option that could be a better move - depending on your setup and needs.

I do agree with you that in your use case, there seems to be very few openings for doing stuff like that.

Could you have a server/NAS with the r3d card and your storage, separate but connected via high speed ethernet to a workstation with your IO etc?

It’s hard to give advice on products that are in the future, that we don’t know the details of. Do you have to buy it now, or can you wait?

I’d try to use workstation components as a workstation, to avoid any compatibility issues with server gear that isn’t intended or tested to use as a ‘normal’ computer, although it may totally work, but there can be weird issues.

My current Threadripper is still fine. I don’t have to upgrade now, I just started thinking about it a few weeks ago and now I want Zen 5. I got bit by the upgrade bug, so to speak. lol

I’ve used server hardware for workstations for years. The only time it really caused problems for me is back in the day when we were still migrating Windows to “New Technology.” So, having to run Windows 2000 or XP 64-bit to be compatible with my hardware choices. But since that is no longer a problem, it’s been relatively smooth sailing.

I’m also not a novice at all this so minor issues don’t really bother me as long as my system is stable and doesn’t interrupt my work.

On another note, I am starting a new storage server build that I’m excited about. But, I don’t want to ingest on a separate machine. I really just have no desire or motivation to make the sacrifices necessary to be able to use AM5.

tr coming in hot!

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Nice!

I’ll definitely wait, then.

Any idea when the Zen5 variant of TR and TRPro will arrive to the plebs?>

I’m sure he cant say. But, it wouldnt surprise me if they’re announced at CES in early January. We can hope, anyway.

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From this post, I count 3 PCIe cards (GPU, DeckLink, Audio-interface), this would rule out desktop-platforms by default. Even before adding a pair of NVMe-drives.

The other plus of TRX50 is the 1TB RAM capacity.


Wait or build, either you need a PC-upgrade now or you don’t :stuck_out_tongue:


My old audio-interface card (ESI Maya 44ex) had insane roundtrip-delay swings when running through chipset PCIe lanes.

My interface is an Avid HDX which has pretty much the lowest latency in the business.
But, I’m also using a UA UAD-2 Octo DSP card for plugin processing.

That’s why I was saying, “I need the lanes!” lol

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This paralyzed me from moving forward with a build. My guess is that a 9970X would be exactly what I would want.

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Given how poorly recent consumer generations of Threadripper have been supported, I’d only consider Threadripper Pro.

For my own purposes, I’d consider the 9175F because I can use the vcache, but it would be a poor choice for gaming because each core is on its CCD! That will make for higher inter-core latency and reduced gaming performance.

The 9275F would be better, but still only has 3 cores per CCD, which isn’t good for gaming. For long life gaming, you’d be better off with 8 cores on a single CCD.

The 9135 (16 core, 4.3 GHz) or 9335 (32 core, 4.4 GHz) would be better suited for gaming, as both have 8 cores per CCD.

If you wanted to get silly, the 9575F is a 5.0 GHz max clock 64 core CPU with 8 core CCDs.

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Yeah, I don’t actually game all that often, unfortunately.

My gamer friends call me a filthy casual. lol

I’m one of those people who love the idea of gaming more than the actual execution of it. I really enjoy gaming with others, but I don’t really have a community for that, so I just don’t actually play all that often.

I was pretty bummed they didn’t announce Threadripper 9000 yesterday, though. But, it is what it is. We’ll get it eventually.

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Interesting topic!

My current ‘workstation’ is a EPYC 7443P - 24c@ 4GHz Zen3 box, and at some point I’d like to upgrade it to Zen 5.

I guess the downside with going for an Zen 5 EPYC now is that you probably will end up with a server motherboard, and so lack ‘workstation’ features like onboard sound an more than a couple of USB-3 A ports.

CPU wise, I don’t really know what to expect from a Zen 5 Threadripper beyond perhaps a bigger max TDP than the equivalent EPYC and overclockable memory.

If you’re not going for a huge number of cores, will a higher TDP help much? You’d seem to get 20W/core on the 9175F and all-core speed of 4.55 GHz.

Personally I’d want more and faster cores for my next upgrade, but I’m a bit sceptical that >64 cores leaves you much DRAM bandwidth or power budget per core - I might be better off with a 2-socket EPYC. Not a cheap option, but ‘F’ Zen 5 EPYCs seem to be priced at >$100/core as it is - I’d expect the TR(pro)'s would be more expensive still on a per-core basis…

Looking forward to Wendell’s review - can’t be far off if they’re being spotted in transit :wink:

https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-ryzen-threadripper-9000-shimada-peak-spotted-with-32-and-64-zen5-cores

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