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AMD Demos Prey 4K Gaming With Ryzen Threadripper 16-Core Monster Chip And Dual Radeon RX Vega GPUs

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AMD

At a Computex unveiling last night, AMD offered the first live demo of its forthcoming 16-core, 32-thread Ryzen Threadripper processor, along with its next generation Radeon RX Vega graphics cards. With ecosystem partners, Dell, HP, ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI and ASRock, AMD showcased systems built on the Threadripper X399 platform that will take on Intel’s recently announced Core X-series chips in the high-end desktop arena, along with its Vega GPUs that will take on NVIDIA’s latest Pascal graphics offering in the gaming, workstation graphics markets. Various AMD execs, including AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su, took to the stage with impressive demos in various content creation apps and benchmarks like Blender and Bethesda’s recently launched reboot of Prey.

It took the 16-core Threadripper CPU just a few seconds to render the Blender CPU benchmark workload the company has been showcasing since the introduction of its Ryzen processor. With 32 threads of processing power and 64-lanes of PCI Express connectivity, it will be interesting to see how AMD’s Threadripper CPU compares both price-wise and performance-wise versus Intel’s top-end Core i9-7980XE 18-core and Core i9-7960X 16-core chips when they arrive possibly as soon as next month.

AMD

Dr. Su then fired up Threadripper, along with four of the company’s Radeon Vega Frontier Edition GPUs Crossfire to showcase a heavy-duty graphics rendering workload in Blender that made use of both Threadripper and the quad-GPU setup in concert. No question, it was a powerful content creation demo to showcase, coupled with serious horsepower and IO connectivity; the four GPUS presumably enjoying X16 PCIe connections each from the Threadripper CPU’s 64-lane complement.  No official word from AMDon when Threadripper is expected to arrive in market beyond sometime “this summer.”

AMD

AMD also sneaked in peeks of next generation Ryzen Mobile notebooks, including a 2-in-1 convertible prototype notebook device in a 15 millimeter form factor, powered by a quad-core Ryzen mobile chip with integrated Vega graphics. And, as a final chest-thumping for the company’s forthcoming Radeon RX Vega consumer graphics cards, AMD’s Lisa Su then demonstrated a dual-GPU Vega setup in a Threadripper system, gaming in the fast-action first person shooter, Prey at 4K with Ultra image quality settings. Frame rates looked fast and fluid, though they were not specifically disclosed. AMD has previously showcased Radeon RX Vega performance at CES 2017 in January, but finally we're approaching their official launch this summer. Radeon RX Vega will launch at the end of July, timed with Siggraph 2017 in LA.

I expect to hear more from AMD as well on its forthcoming Naples Zen server platform in the weeks ahead, so stick around for details on that as well. As I’ve mentioned, it could give Intel’s Xeon line a serious run for its money in the data center. In the meantime, you can check out AMD’s Computex webcast, here.

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