Ripper Redux! AMD Tips 'Zen 3'-Based Threadripper Pro Workstation CPUs

From PC Mag: After a two-year wait, AMD is once again on the verge of releasing a new EPYC processor. By that, we don’t mean the upcoming Zen 5-based Ryzen 7000 CPUs tipped at CES 2022 (though we do imagine those could be quite epic, as well). Instead, we are referring to the launch of AMD’s first new Threadripper Pro processors since 2020, based on the company's EPYC server line.

The new Ryzen Threadripper Pro 5000 WX-series chips, unveiled today, are set to launch first in Lenovo workstations March 21. These big, bold CPUs are designed for very high-powered desktop platforms for pro-grade content creation, engineering, and advanced software applications. With the top model packing 64 cores clocked a full 1GHz above AMD’s current best server chips, they look poised to make quite the impact.

When it debuted in 2020, Threadripper Pro enabled two key bump-ups over the ordinary non-Pro Threadripper: a doubling of available PCI Express lanes, and a doubling in the available memory bandwidth. Threadripper Pro offered 128 PCI Express 4.0 lanes, plus support for up to a whopping 2TB of memory. Also a part of the Pro scheme: official support for ECC memory, for professional applications that demand it.

The star of AMD’s new Threadripper Pro 5000 series is the Ryzen Threadripper Pro 5995WX, which looks like simply a monstrously powerful chip on paper. Like its direct predecessor, the Ryzen Threadripper Pro 3995WX, it contains 64 cores, with SMT technology that enables the processor to manage 128 threads. These cores are set with a base clock of 2.7GHz, which climbs up to 4.5GHz when the boost feature is activated. AMD will also offer four other chips in the line, with fewer cores.

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