Yesterday Intel made waves in the hardware enthusiast community by announcing a brand new, 28-core CPU that made even its $2,000 Core i7-7980XE look weak in multithreaded tests. However, as the first-generation of AMD Threadripper CPUs put pressure on Intel's top-tier CPUs, Threadripper 2 looks set to do much the same, with AMD debuting a 32-core CPU at this year's Computex show.
Threadripper 2 is slated to launch this August and like its predecessor range, will come in a few different flavors. The entry-level model will sport four cores, while the top end version will have 32. We'd expect to see a 28-core variant in the range too, though AMD has yet to discuss such a chip.
Regardless, all of them are more powerful in some tests than Intel's 7980XE, so should prove competitive, if not more powerful than Intel's newly announced 28-core chip. If AMD pricing is anything to go by too, the Threadripper 2 chips will be substantially cheaper than Intel's new offering, though it could be that Intel has learned from past mistakes and will attempt to make itself more competitive on that front.
One area where it won't be able to though is ease of upgrade. Since the i9 chips are technically part of its seventh-generation, and new chips will require the new eighth-generation socket. In comparison, Threadripper 2 will be built on the same TR4 socket, which means existing x399 motherboards will work just fine with it.
The AMD chip will have a larger power-draw than its predecessors, with a rated TDP of 250w, which is significantly more than the 180w of the first-generation Threadripper chips. However, it turns out that the second-generation Threadripper range runs quite cool. In tests, PCGamesN highlights how AMD hardware only required air cooling, where Intel comparisons used water cooling to stay competitive.
