AMD’s Threadripper CPU platform snuck up on everyone last year and revealed itself to be an incredible platform for high-end computing with chips going from 8 cores to 16 cores. Just one year later, they’re taking that platform all the way up to a mind-bending 32 CPU cores. It fits nicely between their mainstream Ryzen CPUs and their Epyc CPUs to take a prominent place for workstations used by professionals.

The new chips come in 12, 16, 24, and 32 core varieties, each with AMD’s take on hyperthreading that effectively doubles the thread count. And these chips are priced at $649, $899, $1299, and $1799 respectively. This puts each chip at roughly $54-$57 per core. Intel, by comparison, can’t come close to hitting those prices. Intel’s workstation CPU flagship, the 18-core i9-7980XE, costs $1879 while having 14 fewer cores. At every rung of the ladder, Skylake X costs significantly more per core. On the server side, it’s even worse. Xeons often cost several thousand dollars.

AMD is singlehandedly responsible for revitalizing the desktop CPU market, leaving Intel scrambling, and I’m really excited about the future. I’m strongly considering stepping up to the 2920X and its 12 cores and 64 PCIe lanes, and finally building Hackintosh support into my machine.

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