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Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by ckastner on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @06:31AM (#23078452)
Those are great options, but the 12-core Ryzen 9 3900X sells for less than $450 now.

Sure, it has half as many cores as the 3960X Threadripper listed, but 12C/24T is still a lot.

Also, it's much easier to cool -- 105W TDP vs 280W on the Threadrippers.

Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by jcadam on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @08:24AM (#23079220)
Just built myself a home dev server based around a R9 3900X. Paired it with 64G of RAM, a 1TB NVMe and an RTX 2060, running CentOS 8. Whole build cost me a little under $1400. It sits, headless, in the corner of my office crunching away.

I ssh in from my XPS 13 running Fedora and use X forwarding to do work on it. It's so much faster than trying to do everything on an ultrabook. Not to mention quite a bit cheaper than a high-end laptop.

Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by benologist on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @08:28AM (#23079251)
Visual Studio Code has a seamless SSH extension for working like this too -

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/ssh

Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by mixmastamyk on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @12:07PM (#23081558)
Any editor can use sshfs.
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by jedimastert on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @12:12PM (#23081604)
It's a little more tightly coupled than just a file system; it's essentially a fully headless mode.
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by mixmastamyk on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @01:04PM (#23082215)
Tightly coupled is often not desirable.
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by pkaye on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @01:36PM (#23082573)
the VSCode SSH extension runs the editing process remotely so it doesn't need to transfer the entire file.
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by ubercow13 on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @01:59PM (#23082813)
It's not really clear that that would be faster... sshfs would load the file once (maybe slow, but it's usually a tiny text file) and then do all editing locally in memory. If the editing process is remote, every edit you make is going to involve round trips over the network? That sounds awful?
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by streb-lo on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @03:57PM (#23084216)
If you're doing C++ in VSCode the C++ extension will use ripgrep to index your project. When using sshfs, rg runs on the local machine, causing sshfs to load your entire project which if it's large can really slow you down.

The VSCode remote extension installs extensions onto a VSCode remote client installed on the remote machine. So the C++ extensions spawns rg processes on the remote which is a lot faster.

Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by mixmastamyk on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @02:11PM (#23082952)
Maybe but folks have been using vim/ssh since the days of vi/telnet. It’s not a problem under normal conditions.
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by pkaye on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @02:27PM (#23083114)
Its closer to vi over ssh.
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by mixmastamyk on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @01:40PM (#23082623)
That could be helpful, text files are often tiny though.
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by wegs on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @05:38PM (#23085389)
sshfs (and samba for that matter, even more so) can cause odd kernel behavior and crashes, unfortunately. They're great when network is 100% perfect, if you never suspend laptops, etc. If any of those assumptions go away, you've got a mess.
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by NullPrefix on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @06:42PM (#23085988)
>odd kernel behavior and crashes

I was under the impression that sshfs is based on FUSE, which works in userspace.

Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by wegs on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @08:14PM (#23086599)
It is. That doesn't prevent bugs in FUSE itself.
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by whalesalad on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @01:38PM (#23082595)
Please write a blog post detailing this full setup! I have been trying to do some form of this between macos and a linux host for some time now (to try and move as much compute off my MBP as possible) but it has never really worked well.
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by trhway on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @04:02PM (#23084287)
over years i started to use vnc instead of X as it works better over WAN. Super simple setup. On linux host one just runs an in-memory Xvnc server. The session and running applications are all stay there no matter whether client connects or not. The client runs on any platform.
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by jcadam on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @06:56PM (#23086097)
Xpra is kinda cool, gives you a more "persistent" experience with X forwarding.
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by lliamander on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @02:09PM (#23082924)
That's pretty much my dream setup (except for the 2060, I have no need for anything more than a low-end GPU).

I think some may discount Ryzen 9 because it's technically not "HEDT", but the market boundaries have changed over time.

HEDT used to include all CPUs more $400 dollars, all of which shared the same socket (for a given generation). Mainstream was on a separate socket and all below $400.

However, Broadwell-E and Skylake-X moved the top end of the HEDT from $1K to $2K, which meant that HEDT spanned a huge segment.

What AMD did with Ryzen 9 and X570 was to take the middle segment of that HEDT market and make it it's own segment.

Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by greggyb on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @03:24PM (#23083801)
> What AMD did with Ryzen 9 and X570 was to take the middle segment of that HEDT market and make it it's own segment.

It did carve out a pricing segment there, but the really cool thing is that it's so compatible, backward and forward with other CPUs in the Ryzen family. There is huge upgrade potential.

It would be entirely reasonable to build a system around an R7, with the expectation that its workload will grow, and throw in a discounted 3950X in a year when Zen3 hits.

Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by backslashr on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @11:32AM (#23081113)
I've been using VS Code's SSH Extension for the code that is deployed on a laptop running Ubuntu that's older than my 2017 macbook air but sufficiently powerful. Thanks for mentioning the X forwarding.
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by matthewaveryusa on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @11:18AM (#23080922)
you may want to try parsec for remoting if you have good connectivity. It's meant for gaming but I've been using it on my LAN as a replacement for VNC and it's fanastic
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by jcadam on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @12:55PM (#23082099)
Yea, X Forwarding works fine for home LAN usage, but when I'm away from the house I probably ought to find something better (more performant). Was thinking of setting up VNC, but will have to check out parsec (hadn't heard of it) as well.
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by 2OEH8eoCRo0 on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @02:02PM (#23082844)
I love your setup. This was my setup at my first software job. I would never actually use the keyboard and mouse of the machine but I would remote into it and forward X to my Windows PC.
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by asdff on Wednesday May 06, 2020 @03:06PM (#23095003)
This is the way to go. Get something comfortable and with good battery life, these should be your only must haves. Then dump the rest into the server or some monthly bill for some compute nodes for all your heavy lifting. Use the right tools for the job, not a swiss army knife full of compromises.
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by eximius on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @01:40PM (#23082622)
An XPS 13 isn't a high end laptop? What are you doing that requires that kind of power?

It sounds like an amazing build, but definitely not needed for most tasks. The XPS 13 seems a little wasteful in the setup. You could practically do it with a chromebook.

Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by greggyb on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @03:29PM (#23083871)
Any XPS 13 will be running a -U series low-power CPU. I would not consider any laptop high-end with regard to compute, unless it is using a -H series part, at least.

-U series (somehow, magically the same designation between AMD and Intel) will typically run ~15W, though this is configurable by the OEM (sometimes in BIOS?).

-H series (also, magically the same designation) will typically run ~45W, and this is also configurable by the OEM.

The increased power envelope of -H series typically allows higher base clocks. Turbo can sometimes be close between a 15W and a 45W chip, but a -H series will be able to maintain higher frequencies for longer, thanks to a superior thermal solution.

Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by texasbigdata on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @02:40PM (#23083281)
The 3gb of ram that the overnight chrome tabs are gobbling up.
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by veets on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @11:23AM (#23080983)
How do you find the battery life on you XPS 13 with Fedora? I have a pretty old ThinkPad X1 running Ubuntu and while it works reasonably well I still find the battery life lacking (I am sure the age of the battery is a contributing factor here).
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by jcadam on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @12:54PM (#23082080)
The XPS 13 I've found is pretty easy on the battery. However, I did opt for the 1080p screen. My understanding is that the 4k screen (which would be unreadable to my 40 year old eyes in any case) uses significantly more power.
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by auggierose on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @02:09PM (#23082926)
You know that higher resolution just means that the text is sharper, not that the font is smaller, right? :-D
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by frant-hartm on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @02:57PM (#23083479)
This is still unfortunately not true on Linux.
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by loeg on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @03:18PM (#23083732)
Single-screen 2x scaling (about the easiest possible HiDPI option) seems to work okay, but then you're basically running 1080p, so why bother.
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by moonbas3 on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @07:21AM (#23078780)
They are looking at HEDT parts, they have more pcie lanes, more memory support etc. This isn't about your average joe's `gaming-workstation`.
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by lliamander on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @11:46AM (#23081284)
Technically Ryzen 9 CPUs aren't HEDT, but between their high core counts, the amount of PCIE bandwidth on X570 (with PCIE 4), and the ability to (unofficially) use ECC RAM, the boundary between mainstream and HEDT is awfully blurry.
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by TheGoddessInari on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @08:54PM (#23086852)
Currently the super sharp line has to do with PCIe lanes and support for 8 DIMMs.

If you've gotten locked into needing that, you have no other options aside from not using hardware that you can currently slot.

AMD entirely eliminated the lower end HEDT parts and raised prices for TR3.

Intel has a nasty shortage, too.

Compare that to x99, which had an entry level msrp of just $350, but often went for exact same price as 7700k, significantly under $300.

HEDT is in a bad value proposition right now, but if you're stuck needing it for various reasons, your options are limited, hence price increases.

Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by lliamander on Wednesday May 06, 2020 @03:16AM (#23088608)
> Currently the super sharp line has to do with PCIe lanes and support for 8 DIMMs.

That's exactly the area where I argue there is some fuzziness.

For PCIE lanes, it's true that AMD only has 24 lanes (4 of which dedicated for the chipset) but it has the equivalent of 48 PCIE gen3 lanes in terms of raw bandwidth. Now, it's still not as flexible as having that many actual PCIE gen3 lanes, but high-end x570 motherboards do support some level of bifurcation. You also need compatible devices, but we already compatible storage. There are a couple GPUs out now, but given the upcoming launches of RDNA2 and Ampere GPUs, I expect there will be plenty more compatible GPUs. X570 is somewhat limited now, but as more gen4 devices are released that chipset will only become more versatile.

For RAM, there you have another fuzzy spot. I mean sure, HEDT usually has 4 channels, but what does that mean in terms of memory capacity and bandwidth? Only within the last year or so have 32GB UDIMMs been available (iirc) so HEDT was limited to 128GB until very recently. And if you really need more, you can use an Optane storage device as a swap partition (It's been done before, it's fine). As for bandwidth, 2 channels is a bit of a limitation, but Ryzen does support faster memory, which can help bridge the gap a little bit to quad channel Intel parts running at lower RAM speeds.

I'm not saying that Ryzen + X570 is HEDT, but it's so darn close that I can understand why AMD chose not to produce low-end TR 3000 parts. Between Ryzen 9, TR 2000, Epyc 7002P, and limited use of TSMCs fabs, I think the move they made was smart.

> HEDT is in a bad value proposition right now, but if you're stuck needing it for various reasons, your options are limited, hence price increases.

I don't think it's a bad value prop overall. We have a $4000 CPU that's beating out two $10,000 CPUs (dual Xeon Platinums), which is a phenomenal improvement in value. I think we are in this weird space where, when trying to buy the system capabilities you need (in terms of cores, clock speeds, memory capacity, and expansion slots) you sometimes have to pay a bit extra for capabilities that you don't need. That's unfortunate and I hope next gen fixes that. However, it doesn't seem like AMD or Intel will have new HEDT parts for at least a year.

Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by kaspar030 on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @06:58AM (#23078631)
Also, the Ryzen 9 3950X. It has a bit more punch than the 3900X, for ~200$ more.

I built one, a Noctua NH-D15 can cool it at 16*4ghz at 700RPM, so basically almost inaudible even at full load.

No ECC, though.

Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by Borealid on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @07:27AM (#23078834)
I have a Ryzen 9 3900X. Officially it doesn't support ECC memory. In practice unregistered ECC DIMMs work fine, and ECC functions properly (single-bit correction, dual-bit detection).

I assume the 3950X is the same way. The hardware is there, the official blessing is not.

Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by sirn on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @08:13AM (#23079150)
AFAIK, Ryzen 9 3900X do support ECC memory, but it's up to motherboard whether to officially support it or not. There are X570 boards out there with official ECC support, e.g. ASUS Pro WS X570-ACE[1].

[1]: https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Pro-WS-X570-ACE/

Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by andy_ppp on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @07:37AM (#23078910)
They seem to cast doubt on if the bios and software all work together and are really performing the ECC checks even in cases where support might be possible they say things can stop it from working and fixing memory bits. I've no reason to doubt them and this is probably the reason for the lack of official support. Anyone know of a way to validate if it's working correctly?
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by loeg on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @03:17PM (#23083719)
You can overclock your RAM until you start getting single-bit errors detected.
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by CarVac on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @07:38AM (#23078916)
How do you verify that ECC is actually functioning without just trusting what the hardware tells you though?
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by LargoLasskhyfv on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @10:33AM (#23080410)
By opening the case and holding your smartphone near and nearer into it, while having it search for networks. Until it crashes, and then checking the logs, if any :)

edit: I mean near the DIMMs. Don't try this if you are afraid, or need your hardware. This is a test i'm doing with every build, or any system i have to fix. And it crashes every system, though not at the same places and in the same ways. So far it didn't damage anything permanently, but no guaranties it won't.

Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by swinglock on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @11:47AM (#23081294)
Are you serious? How very interesting. Really would like to hear from someone with experience in inducing errors that can say what the risks for permanent damage would be, save for data loss in case of flushing corrupted data to disk for course.
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by LargoLasskhyfv on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @12:03PM (#23081503)
I am. This worked for me since the GSM-era. Imagine slowly pointing it like a wand, sweeping up and down, left, right, going nearer...into, searching. Until it ZAPS. Doesn't need touching. Or less than an inch distance. About 3 to 2 inches it usually is, but i also had crashs/freezes at maybe 10 to 5 inches, just outside the case when it was open.

edit: By searching for networks i mean for the telcos, not wifi. Then it uses all bands it is capable of.

Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by NullPrefix on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @06:48PM (#23086027)
What exactly do you mean when you say it ZAPS ?
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by LargoLasskhyfv on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @11:34PM (#23087674)
I meant this as a figure of speech, not literally. There are no sparks flying, or something like that. "Zapping/tazing" it by applying some EMF, nothing more :)
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by HansHamster on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @12:38PM (#23081894)
Another option is to overclock the ram. Mine is rated for 2400 MHz and works fine up to 2666. It still 'runs' at 2800, but I get maybe 2-3 correctable ECC errors in an hour.

But I'm of course not suggesting to run it in this state whil doing anything important.

Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by LargoLasskhyfv on Wednesday May 06, 2020 @01:31AM (#23088139)
Interesting. I guess the DIMMs came blank, without heat sink/spreader on the chips, since ECC and therefore "non-gaming"? In that case i'd try some thin aftermarket clip-on. Nothing hilarious like "HyperRacerMegaBlingMarkVII" would come with. To see if the ECC-errors occur because of running out of specification frequency wise in general, or if they just occur because of running at too high temperature because running at a too high frequency (and maybe voltage) without cooling. Because vendor didn't plan/produce/verify for that use-case. So I'd verify that, and enjoy in case of the latter.
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by littlestymaar on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @07:14AM (#23078744)
> No ECC, though.

Is ECC useful for a workstation? I thought it was useful for shared servers (VM hosts) to protect against rowhammer & co, but does is have other uses?

Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by lazyjones on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @07:29AM (#23078848)
http://cr.yp.to/hardware/ecc.html

Without ECC, modern systems (>= a few GB RAM) will have bits flipping pretty much daily.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1109401

Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by agapon on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @11:22AM (#23080964)
This does not seem to be true in practice. I use ECC on my systems and they are configured to log any ECC error. And I see ECC erros almost never. Mostly ECC errors start appearing on very old systems when something in hardware becomes bad because of the age (even if just oxidized contacts). I am not sure if I've ever seen a truly random ECC error.
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by jeffbee on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @02:50PM (#23083390)
What do you mean by "very old"? This study, which is the only comprehensive public data of which I am aware, says that onset of DRAM errors occurs after 10-18 months.

https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication-...

Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by LargoLasskhyfv on Wednesday May 06, 2020 @01:51AM (#23088234)
I've read such studies with great interest, and i prefer ECC whenever possible, but i think these don't necessarily apply to desktops, at least partially.

I think the environment in racks for nodes in whichever formfactor in racks is toxic. Be it EMF interference, power distribution issues, vibrations, and/or temperature. You don't have that in a single system at home, when it is built in a good way, and has stable power. Or at least to a lesser degree.

Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by agapon on Wednesday May 06, 2020 @05:33AM (#23089253)
Very old -- like 10+ years old.
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by jleahy on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @10:45AM (#23080538)
It's not quite fair to just extrapolate numbers for 256MB of RAM up to a modern system. If this was true you'd be seeing OS crashes daily (if you run hundreds of servers with no ECC you will see mysterious crashes every day, but for one server it might be once a year).

Ultimately these flips are caused by charged particles hitting the memory module (a so called 'single event upset' or SEU), and the number of charged particles hitting the modules has not increased with density (although the modules are more sensitive to SEU, it's a smaller effect).

Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by vbezhenar on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @11:23AM (#23080975)
To encounter a crash, bit flip has to happen on a very small subset of available memory. It's much more likely to just corrupt file cache.
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by jleahy on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @03:29PM (#23083869)
Well it depends what you're doing, if your memory is full of hash tables and linked lists then you'll likely get a crash (say a web backend). If you're a fileserver and it's all cache then you won't.
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by tpetry on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @07:34AM (#23078891)
It‘s usefull for everyone but bit errors happen far far seldom than people do expect. But you should have it just in case. You dont want e.g. a corrupt database file just because the low probability of a bitceroor happened and you have been in bad lick it was on a very critical operation.
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by vardump on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @07:40AM (#23078938)
> ...bit errors happen far far seldom than people do expect.

Until they happen more often that expected. It's something that varies based on building, temperature, etc. environmental factors. And of course on your luck with memory module lottery.

Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by vardump on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @07:22AM (#23078790)
Yeah, ECC makes the system much more reliable. It drives those weird unexplained glitches away.
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by jeffbee on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @02:47PM (#23083352)
According to this paper, 8% of DIMMs and 32% of machines suffered from at least one correctable error per year. Without ECC, that's an undetected and uncorrected error. The average machine in the study had over 22,000 corrected errors per year. The paper observes that "memory errors are not rare events". If you're running without ECC, you are quite likely to have some undetected corruption, which could range from a single erroneous bit over the lifetime of the machine all the way up to constant unexplained crashes and file or filesystem corruption. There are plenty of use cases where it doesn't matter but for workstation use you presumably care about the results.

https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication-...

Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by 83457 on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @07:30AM (#23078856)
It prevents corruption from bit flips caused by cosmic rays and other sources. More important for scientific/business purposes and at higher altitudes where there is less atmosphere to block cosmic rays.
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by jcelerier on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @12:26PM (#23081768)
> for ~200$ more.

huh, where ? from what I see here the 3900X is listed at 450€ and the 3950X at 900€ on average in the mainstream websites...

Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by wolfhumble on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @07:31AM (#23078866)
Apart from price, was there a reason you did not go for ECC? Thx!
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by paulmd on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @10:30AM (#23080364)
One other reason is that ECC is not binned for super high clocks like gaming RAM (even though there is nothing technically preventing it from doing so - it is one extra chip per stick, that's basically it). The fastest you can get is like 2666, where you can readily get gaming RAM in the 3600 range and premium bins go to 4400+.

Ryzen has always been very "sensitive" to low-clocked RAM and shows some pretty good scaling as you increase frequency and tighten timings and the ECC UDIMMs on the market are just not binned to do that.

Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by vbezhenar on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @11:26AM (#23081022)
2666 is not the fastest ECC memory. Here's 3200 for example: https://www.newegg.com/crucial-32gb-288-pin-ddr4-sdram/p/N82...
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by zrm on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @11:57AM (#23081433)
That's registered memory, not supported by Ryzen/Threadripper. Find unregistered ECC DDR4 3200.

Or convince AMD to stop artificially not supporting registered memory on Ryzen/Threadripper -- the early Athlons supported both.

Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by paulmd on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @12:14PM (#23081629)
I still am impressed though, didn't know about that one. Kinda trash CAS latency but I guess that might be because it's registered (I've never seen registered that fast so I guess I don't really have a good perspective on what "good CAS latency" would be for a registered memory).

I wonder if those would run on my Haswell-E xeons. They support RDIMMs, and they are unlocked so nominally they should support higher RAM clocks too (although I've never tried it with RDIMMs, only UDIMMs).

More recently, the W-3175X (Threadripper's real competitor) supports RDIMM as well. So Threadripper actually offers less features than the competition here.

I really would like to see the Threadripper series merged with the 7002P series though. Right now there is no option that gives you both Threadripper-level clocks and large quantities of RAM, the frequency-optimized parts are still a large compromise in performance and aren't widely supported. There is no part that gets you to 4 GHZ on 64 cores with 512+ GB of RAM, despite all of these capabilities existing in their respective segments.

When you are shipping a 64C HEDT processor there is really no longer any meaningful distinction between that and a server processor. And 256GB simply is not enough RAM for a 64C processor. AMD could still upcharge on the multi-socket models, but they are drawing lines between product segments that no longer make sense now that they have pushed core counts so high.

Basically, give us a modern successor to the Intel X5670 series. It's the top of the line, you're paying $4000 for a workstation processor, you should get the whole processor and not have a bunch of disabled features.

The really funny thing is, it's not even a money thing, Epyc isn't even priced significantly higher. 7702P is $4150 at Provantage (HPE p/n P16660-B21) vs $3990 for the 3990X. The 7402P (HPE p/n P16664-B21) is actually $250 cheaper than the 3960X. AMD is no longer using the "traditional" model where workstation is cheaper than server. Workstation is now just as expensive as server. So it's not like giving you Epyc capabilities would mean AMD foregoing any money.

AMD is just drawing arbitrary lines between these product segments because they can.

Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by zrm on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @12:30PM (#23081802)
> I really would like to see the Threadripper series merged with the 7002P series though.

They should've done that when they changed the socket for the latest generation. Just admit that the existence of Socket TR4 was a mistake and release the new Threadrippers on Socket SP3.

I suspect there are even some people interested in dual socket workstations with 2TB of memory that nonetheless have a 4.5GHz boost clock, because workstations often have mixed workloads. And there is no point in doing market segmentation when all the prices are the same anyway, it's just incompatibility for no reason.

Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by greggyb on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @03:38PM (#23083974)
Epycs should be readily overclockable. It's the same silicon as Threadripper. AMD does not, to my knowledge, restrict overclocking in server parts.

Cooling would become a big issue, though. Air cooling a 280W 3970X in a big tower with sufficient airflow to maintain ambient temperature internally is difficult. I cannot maintain max turbo on all cores.

Putting this in 1 or 2 Us in a server would likely be impossible without water cooling (requiring piping to external liquid coolers (whether radiators or chillers)). There's only so much that increasing air velocity can do in cooling.

I don't know if this is the primary thing holding back Epyc specs, but I know it will be an issue.

Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by heelix on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @11:36AM (#23081169)
I'm in a similar boat. I planned to swap out my 1950x with the 39xxx series threadrippers and got bit by the socket change. The older i7 3930k was swapped out with a 3900x while we sorted the new hardware... and I'll be damned, but that AM4 CPU, paired with 4x16G sticks of RAM and an M2 drive has been a wonderful Linux workstation for development.
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by loeg on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @03:16PM (#23083706)
More significantly, half the memory controllers.
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by AnthonBerg on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @12:14PM (#23081623)
The motherboard is also MUCH cheaper.
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by vonmoltke on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @12:18PM (#23081667)
Eh, depends on what you want out of a motherboard. I just bought a Threadripper platform yesterday (though this discussion is making me regret it), and the board I bought is the same price as the board I would have bought for the 3900X build I was considering ($500).
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by distances on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @02:10PM (#23082940)
Just curious, why would you pay $500 for AM4 board? Some specific hardware not found in cheaper models?
Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by vonmoltke on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @04:19PM (#23084514)
If I was going to go the AM4 route, I wanted a board that supported the full 128GB of RAM the processor does and has an X570 chipset. I also wanted a board that has at least 5 PCIe slots (of any type) and 6 SATA ports. While there are a number of boards in the $200 - $300 range that satisfy these requirements, I can't find anywhere that actually has them[1]. If my home workstation hadn't just died I would just wait until the pandemic-related supply issues abate.

[1] Well, has them for a reasonable price. Newegg as third-party sellers offering a few of them for 60%+ markups, but I feel better paying $500 for a $500 board than I do paying $275 for a $160 board.

Re:Best CPUs for Workstations by AnthonBerg on Wednesday May 06, 2020 @03:55AM (#23088793)
Yes!, a higher-end motherboard can certainly be worth paying for. Conversely, I paid $150 an Asus X470-F that checks mostly the same boxes except it only takes 64GB RAM and doesn't have PCIe 4.0. I put a 3900x in it. It's pretty great. - But it was bought before the pandemic so idk if it's still available.

If only 12-16 cores with 64GB of RAM are enough to be useful, then the Ryzen 9 gets A LOT of work done for an unprecedented low price. But if the work being done can make use of 128GB quad-channel RAM and 24-32-64 cores, then the $350 extra for a Threadripper motherboard is nothing. Doesn't take many billable hours to pay for it :)