After waiting a long time at last, AMD has deigned to tell us what the price of its Threadripper PRO 5000 is . Our impressions when seeing it? It has been a jug of cold water on us, since it confirms our fears that the workstation market is going to disappear in the short term. What is the reason?
HEDT stands for High End Desktop or high-end desktop . By this he means what we traditionally know as workstations . Historically, these computers were not thought of as home computers, but little by little there was a shift upwards in the lower ranges. It got to the point where PC processors were good enough to do the tasks assigned to workstations. Let’s not forget that one of the consumer trends is that once performance demands have been met on a metric, then people don’t pay more for those extra features or power.
AMD’s HEDT range no longer makes sense
The AMD Threadripper PRO 5000 is at least a curious case, since we have been saying for some time that this range of products could disappear, as well as this type of computer. After all, the platform uses the same IOD as its EPYC processors and the same CCDs as its Ryzen and server CPU family. Anytime since the late 2022 release of Zen 3 I could have released them, but interest from Lisa Su and her ilk has been nil.
And for some time now, suddenly and as we mentioned a few days ago, AMD decides that it is going to launch its Threadripper PRO 5000 for those who want to set up their own HEDT system. Of course, it does not accept the EPYC socket and neither does the Ryzen socket, but rather one of its own called TXR40 , which allows them to better control prices. The grace of all this? The PRO tag comes with the ability to use 8 memory channels . Which means more memory modules in the server, just the same as with the server processor.
Why not create single socket SP3 motherboards for workstations and servers to universalize both processors? Let’s not forget that the initial difference between Threadripper and EPYC was that the first had only 4 channels and the other 8. Now the figure is the same and, therefore, the number of memory sockets is the same.
The price problem in the Threadripper PRO 5000
We come to the elephant in the room, the price at which the processors will be sold . And it is that obviously these have to be more expensive than their desktop equivalents of the same generation. That we meet? You just have to see how much each of the Threadripper PRO 5000 will cost to see what the problem is.
| Processor | Cores/Threads | Base Speed | boost | Price (in dollars) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Threadripper PRO 5995WX | 64/128 | 2.7GHz | 4.5GHz | 6499 |
| Threadripper PRO 3995WX | 64/128 | 2.7GHz | 4.2GHz | 5489 |
| Threadripper 3990X | 64/128 | 2.9GHz | 4.3GHz | 3990 |
| Threadripper PRO 5975WX | 32/64 | 3.6GHz | 4.5GHz | 3299 |
| Threadripper PRO 3975 WX | 32/64 | 3.5GHz | 4.2GHz | 2749 |
| Threadripper 3970X | 32/64 | 3.7GHz | 4.5GHz | 1999 |
| Threadripper PRO 5965WX | 24/48 | 3.8GHz | 4.5GHz | 2399 |
| Threadripper 3960X | 24/48 | 3.8GHz | 4.5GHz | 1399 |
As you can see from the table, the PRO tagline was a significant price increase over the 3000 series. Where are the Threadrippers with no last name among the 5000 series? They simply don’t exist, AMD has killed that range and thereby extinguished any incentive to build a workstation for content creators at a price that is acceptable. In other words, those who owned a Threadripper 3000 have no incentive to upgrade at this price.
The key is not in the most expensive systems, but in the cheapest among the Threadripper, since its price compared to the Ryzen with more cores was low enough to consider a system of this type if you really needed it. What is not acceptable is that the cheapest AMD HEDT processor from one generation to the next has nearly doubled in price . And yes, we know that they are for professionals who end up paying for their work in the long term, but it seems that AMD itself is boycotting itself with the price of its Threadripper PRO 5000.