Threadripper 2970WX and 2920X CPUs from AMD Shipping October 29

[Guest_Jim_*]

It was in August when AMD launched its second generation Threadripper processors, starting with the 2990WX with 32-cores/64-threads and followed by the 2950X with 16-cores/32-threads. Now the other two entries in the Threadripper 2000 series have been given shipping dates of October 29. These two processors are the 2970WX with 24-cores/48-threads and the 2920X with 12-cores/24-threads. The 2970WX has a base clock of 3.0 GHz and a boost of 4.2 GHz, matching the 2990WX but at a price of only $1299, compared to $1799 of its big brother. The 2920X has a base clock of 3.5 GHz and a boost of 4.3 GHz, so slightly less than the 2950X, but will only be $649. All Threadripper CPUs, first and second generation, sport 64 PCIe lanes and can work in all X399 motherboard, though a BIOS update may be needed for the second generation processors.

Also announced today is Dynamic Local Mode, a piece of software that should prove useful for those with a 2990WX or will be getting the 2970WX. Both of these CPUs use four active Zeppelin dies, but only two of them are connected to the system memory. This means the other two, which have up to eight active cores on each, need to reach across to another die to get at the DRAM, and not all applications tolerate the associated latency penalty. To address this, Dynamic Local Mode will run in the background on Windows 10 and gives priorities to application threads, based on how demanding they are. The more demanding threads are placed on cores with direct memory access, while the lowest threads are put onto other cores. The result can be a significant improvement to performance for various applications, including games.

Dynamic Local Mode will be available starting October 29 as part of AMD Ryzen Master. It is only for the Threadripper 2990WX and 2970WX, due to their memory access design. It will run as a Windows service, and can be switched on and off as one too, not needing a restart to take effect.

Source: Phoronix and AMD

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