I’m a game developer and I’m about to take a remote contract working in Unreal engine and I know from experience that my current work station just can’t handle it. I need to work in windows but I prefer to work in linux so I was very inspired by Wendel’s PCI passthrough with looking glass, and the idea of compiling the linux kernel in 23 seconds sounds fantastic.
But I’m wondering with all the rumors about IPC improvements and the fact that core counts of basic Ryzen parts are supposed to be encroaching on Threadripper’s lower end, is it worth even getting a TR2 right now if they’re going to release TR3 in a few months at double the core count? My alternative would just be to try and buy a few upgrades for my current workstation (5820K + 980 Gtx), namely I want to get 128GB of ram and a PCIe SSD. I don’t think buying a 32 core TR2 right now and trying to resell it would be worthwhile since it would almost instantly lose half its value when TR3 comes out.
I just bought the 2nd gen ripper, knowing that the 3rd gen will be out mid 2020… That’s how computer tech works unfortunately… ALWAYS something better just around the corner.
My self justification was TR2 prices have dropped like 50%. They’re not likely to drop any further, and TR3 will be at full price for at least 15 months after it’s released.
Even if they bump the desktop Ryzen core count, are they also bringing quad channel memory, what about the massive pcie lane count?
If PCI / VFIO stuff is important to you do exhaustive research on the motherboards. We’ve seen that the CPU can do some impressive things but I suspect there’s more details than what’s being revealed about how vfio works on what motherboard. Either that or the silicon lottery is full of bad tickets on the x399 platform.
Do you need the cores? Do you need the clock speed ?
How much ram do you have now? Honestly if you dont need multi gpu or tons of pcie lanes, would prob just get the 12 or 16 core AM4 CPU when it drops Zen2
Throw an Optane drive in if you need more then 64GB of ram (need dont want)
Just as a follow up, I ended up getting a first gen threadripper 1920X, (i.e. the cheapest TR you can get) It’s about twice as good as the current CPU I have and it should give me enough headroom to upgrade when TR3 comes out either this year or next.
IMHO for a “proper” development workstation even at the same core count, threadripper will be superior due to:
More PCIe
More RAM capacity
Obviously 16 core AM4 will alleviate some people’s core count needs but IMHO if you start needing up near or more than 12-16 cores you probably want 64 GB of RAM or more and more IO to suit those sorts of workloads.
