8 PCWorld DECEMBER 2019NEWS AMD UNVEILS 32-CORE THREADRIPPER 3970X
in the wake of much undue hand-wringing
that AMD would only go to 24 cores.
Both CPUs will go into AMD’s new
TRX40 platform using the new sTRX
socket. The use of a new socket essentially
means the original X399 chipset, along
with the Threadripper 2000-series, will
be stranded.INSANE AMOUNTS OF PCIE
LANES
The consolation may come with an insane
amount of PCIe bandwidth. AMD said up to
72 lanes of PCIe are available in the new
platform. The block map the company
showed off indicates 48 PCIe 4.0 lanes can
be dispersed for general use. Another pairof x4 PCIe 4.0 can be used for NVMe, or
broken up as two quad-clusters of SATA
ports. With the chipset connection at a
beefy 8 lanes of PCIe 4.0, you get up to 64
from the CPU.
Much of that sounds the same as the previous
X399, which also featured 64 PCIe lanes off the
CPU. The key difference here is PCIe 4.0, which
doubles bandwidth over PCIe 3.0.
The other difference is additional PCIe 4.
lanes in the chipset. AMD’s block map shows
8 lanes of PCIe 4.0 off the TRX40 chipset for
general use, and 8 more lanes of PCIe 4.0 that
can be split off. That’s basically 72 total—AMD
touts “88 lanes” of PCIe, but that’s only if
you count the reserved lanes for chipset
communication.AMD will flex its core count muscles with Threadripper 3000.