High-End Desktop CPUs Disappearing from the Market

[Deleted member 24505]

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/hedt-cpus-disappearing-from-the-market-says-puget
What about this, look at the graph on the link, did HEDT sales really drop so much?
Is AMD making a zen4 HEDT?

 

[dragontamer5788]

With a 16-core 5950x available on the market, it seems unlikely that anyone needs HEDT anymore. AMD made a CPU-build so big, that it killed HEDT.

Now sure, I/O is still a thing. But that seems to be EPYC / Xeon categories now. I'm not sure how many people need dual, triple, or quadruple GPUs, or 16-way RAID0 NVMe drives.

 

[Yttersta]

Just sampling from myself at home, with my close friends, and my purchases made in the university there have been 2 Threadripper Pros, 3 Ryzen 9s, 4 Ryzen 7s, 1 Ryzen 3, 5 Core i7 (8th gen laptops) and 6 Core i5 (7th gen) systems in total in the past 5 years.

That's 2 out of 21 systems as HEDT and those are there solely because we had budget in the university to go 8 channel ECC RDIMMs for some very memory intensive workloads. If we hadn't a couple of 5950x CPUs would not have set us too far aback.

Given the phase out of DDR4 slowly beginning, TRX chipset aging somewhat, and a new big architectural refresh coming with the mainstream I can understand AMD pulling back stock to maintain what has already been sold (RMAs require a stock for a couple of years). There are also rumours that Intel might try to get back into the segment (not that I'd want any at their current state as HEDT chips are already difficult to cool quietly, but it's still a factor).

 

[MarsM4N]

Bet they stopped production & getting their production lines "Zen4 Ready". From the timing it could well be.

 

[Calenhad]

You still need a HEDT platform if you need many PCIe lanes and more memory channels/capacity/proper ECC. Plenty of HEDT processors with more than 16c32t as well.

My guesstimate is there are new platforms from Intel and AMD in development.

 

[ARF]

With a 16-core 5950x available on the market, it seems unlikely that anyone needs HEDT anymore. AMD made a CPU-build so big, that it killed HEDT.

The 64-core/128-thread AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X is in a class of its own, and no miserable 16-core 5950X can come even close to it.

The problem here is that AMD doesn't supply the market for whatever idiotic reasons...

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Well 10980xe price dropped a lot last I saw was just under 700.us a couple years ago and they evaporated

Now days it's either amd or 12 series which is 24 cores and beats the snot out of any 10980xe
Only bad thing is it only has 20 pci-e lanes.

There is another hedt in the making but no telling when it will drop.

 

[qubit]

I remember seeing a Linus Tech Tips video on this a while back. The gist of it if I remember correctly was that the technology is getting so much better that it's in HEDT territory now anyway and the market for this type of ultra enthusiast CPU is shrinking.

 

[dragontamer5788]

The 64-core/128-thread AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X is in a class of its own, and no miserable 16-core 5950X can come even close to it.

The problem here is that AMD doesn't supply the market for whatever idiotic reasons...

When I do video-editing, its rare for my video editor to go above 10 cores (20 threads). Only Blender3d really benefits from such huge core-counts, and even then, GPU-rendering is one of the fastest (and cheapest) ways to improve that experience. The number of desktop applications that even benefit from 16 cores, let alone 32 or 64, is miniscule.

Adobe Premier? No. Blender? Only for the Cycles renderer and none of the plugins actually speed up mind you (single-threaded Python warning). Large scale compiles for programming? A little bit, but not to 32 or 64 level. CMake/Ninja really helps with parallelization, but so does partial builds in practice. Deep Learning? GPU-based these days.

64-core workstations seem like they're for the exact subset of Walt Disney 3d modelers. (100GB+ scenes that can't fit on GPUs and must be CPU-rendered). Sure, a niche but an ever shrinking one.

 

[ARF]

When I do video-editing, its rare for my video editor to go above 10 cores (20 threads). Only Blender3d really benefits from such huge core-counts, and even then, GPU-rendering is one of the fastest (and cheapest) ways to improve that experience. The number of desktop applications that even benefit from 16 cores, let alone 32 or 64, is miniscule.

Adobe Premier? No. Blender? Only for the Cycles renderer and none of the plugins actually speed up mind you (single-threaded Python warning). Large scale compiles for programming? A little bit, but not to 32 or 64 level. CMake/Ninja really helps with parallelization, but so does partial builds in practice. Deep Learning? GPU-based these days.

64-core workstations seem like they're for the exact subset of Walt Disney 3d modelers. (100GB+ scenes that can't fit on GPUs and must be CPU-rendered). Sure, a niche but an ever shrinking one.

One application? But what about several running simultaneously on that 64-core CPU? You can split the workload / virtual machines on that workstation.

I guess it is a general degradation in our society. People do not care anymore about top performance and don't care about things getting done in the shortest possible time.

Look at Windows 11 and newest Windows 10 - Microsoft keeps disabling features and features, which had been available for years...

Look at the Intel Arrow Lake coming in 2024:

Intel Achieves 14th Gen Meteor Lake CPU 'Power-On' With Launch Scheduled For 2023 (wccftech.com)

How will the software developers improve their products to make use of those 48 threads?

or we will live in the myth that a quad core is still good enough?

 

[Yttersta]

The 64-core/128-thread AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X is in a class of its own, and no miserable 16-core 5950X can come even close to it.

I know but our workload was memory capacity, and by extension memory speed bound. If I was CPU bound then I'd still consider breaking the workload to parts and run it on 6-7 5950x machines in parallel. Because once I'm done with that, then I could use those 6-7 very high performing computers for the lab staff and have them work far faster than they would with the aging 8th gen laptops. With a 3995wx I'd have to leave that computer to dedicated compute tasks with one workload at a time, meaning a lot of unnecessary down time.

There are only a few very specific tasks we cannot run in parallel (computer vision, video rendering are two examples). Even with those I'm actually curious; would it be faster to have a cluster of 6 5950x CPUs than a 3995wx? I should look this up I think.

 

[eidairaman1]

Threadripper is considered HEDT

 

[ARF]

I know but our workload was memory capacity, and by extension memory speed bound. If I was CPU bound then I'd still consider breaking the workload to parts and run it on 6-7 5950x machines in parallel. Because once I'm done with that, then I could use those 6-7 very high performing computers for the lab staff and have them work far faster than they would with the aging 8th gen laptops. With a 3995wx I'd have to leave that computer to dedicated compute tasks with one workload at a time, meaning a lot of unnecessary down time.

There are only a few very specific tasks we cannot run in parallel (computer vision, video rendering are two examples). Even with those I'm actually curious; would it be faster to have a cluster of 6 5950x CPUs than a 3995wx? I should look this up I think.

Yeah, you should analyse it.
6 machines with Ryzen 9 5950X - these are separate machines because there are no AM4 boards for more than 1P configuration - all of them limited to dual-channel memory.
1 machine with Ryzen Threadripper 3995WX has octo-channel memory support but the core count of only 4 5950Xs.

Also, you have to compare the costs of the options.

 

[kapone32]

I was someone that went from AM4 to HEDT. I was super hyped to get TRX40 but there is no way I could justify buying any of those CPUs. While 1st and 2nd gen even today can be found for good prices, 3000 series is an exponential jump in price.

 

[R-T-B]

The 64-core/128-thread AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X is in a class of its own, and no miserable 16-core 5950X can come even close to it.

*If you have a 64/128 thread workload to feed it. Most don't. That's why there isn't a large market, and why it is drying up.

 

[dragontamer5788]

*If you have a 64/128 thread workload to feed it. Most don't. That's why there isn't a large market, and why it is drying up.

I wouldn't necessarily say that its drying up.

Its that if you have a 128-thread workload, you probably can write that program as a GPU-program with 16384 SIMD-lanes / shader support instead (Vega64 needs at LEAST 16384 shaders before its fully utilized, and supports up to 10x that concurrently in a hyperthread-like setup)

The biggest Compute-application recently are these deep-learning programs, Tensorflow and whatnot, that would work very well on 128-threads... but its even faster on GPUs.

CPUs are still king of single-thread by leaps and bounds.

 

[Yttersta]

Yeah, you should analyse it.
6 machines with Ryzen 9 5950X - these are separate machines because there are no AM4 boards for more than 1P configuration - all of them limited to dual-channel memory.
1 machine with Ryzen Threadripper 3995WX has octo-channel memory support but the core count of only 4 5950Xs.

Also, you have to compare the costs of the options.

I was thinking of a virtualization cluster. I don't have any experience with this but how bad would be the overhead penalty for combining 6 cpus for a single parallel workload in, say, a proxmox cluster?

Otherwise yes the 1P limit is pretty damning on this front, if a cluster like the one I described wouldn't be efficient enough.

 

[gffermari]

I think the term HEDT (for High End Desktop) is somewhat misleading and we should use something like Pro Desktop Tier.
Anything above 5950X and 3090 (24GB VRAM) is actually for pros, not just high end users.

Intel's HEDT was the real HEDT. Not that good for work, too many useless features for gamers.
Threadripper is above that.

 

[Assimilator]

HEDT didn't exist until AMD choked and Intel had no competition, back in the Bulldozer/Sandy Bridge days. Intel created the category as a step between "standard" desktop and server-grade parts, by segmenting higher core counts and IO capabilities in desktop chips into separate "HEDT" SKUs, and charging more for them and the ecosystem around them. When AMD introduced Zen they returned those high core counts and IO capabilities back to standard desktop level, thus killing HEDT.

Today, if you want HEDT, what you mean is that you want server. HEDT is dead and that's good for consumers and the industry as a whole.

 

[eidairaman1]

HEDT didn't exist until AMD choked and Intel had no competition, back in the Bulldozer/Sandy Bridge days. Intel created the category as a step between "standard" desktop and server-grade parts, by segmenting higher core counts and IO capabilities in desktop chips into separate "HEDT" SKUs, and charging more for them and the ecosystem around them. When AMD introduced Zen they returned those high core counts and IO capabilities back to standard desktop level, thus killing HEDT.

Today, if you want HEDT, what you mean is that you want server. HEDT is dead and that's good for consumers and the industry as a whole.

Before they were known as HEDT they were called Workstations.

 

[Yttersta]

I think the term HEDT (for High End Desktop) is somewhat misleading and we should use something like Pro Desktop Tier.
Anything above 5950X and 3090 (24GB VRAM) is actually for pros, not just high end users.

Intel's HEDT was the real HEDT. Not that good for work, too many useless features for gamers.
Threadripper is for above that.

Eh, I'm not so sure. Intel HEDT was most available (Sandy Bridge-E to Skylake-X) up until the third gen Threadripper, then they just disappeared. And during that time I used SB-e, IB-e, Skylake-X processors and frankly, there were no alternatives to them. From 2012 Q1 until 2017 AMD was nowhere to begin with and the best Intel offered outside of the HEDT range was a measly 4c/8t 2 channel memory configuration and it was simply not enough considering how much better the 6c/12t 4ch memory the HEDT platform were for how little more you had to pay for them.

Even with the first gen Ryzen. Right at the time of the 1700x-1800x release I was in for a refresh from the 4930k I had and nothing AMD offered at the time beat the 7900x with some overclock. Even the first gen Threadrippers were not that good of a deal yet.

Now, after all these AMD dominated enthusiast years, looking back is easy to say Intel HEDT sucked but they really were the best at the time because Intel kept back so very much. 3rd gen Ryzen/Threadripper changed all that obviously and Intel HEDT simply disappeared after these got released.