AMD has released its 8-core Ryzen Threadripper 1900X processor, offering people who were put off by high price of the flagship 16-core Threadripper 1950X a chance to build a PC with all of the advanced Threadripper features for almost half the cash.

While we knew the entry-level Ryzen Threadripper 1900X was coming, AMD has now disclosed further information with the launch.

As we expected, the Threadripper 1900X will come with eight cores clocked at 3.8GHz, with a turbo that reaches 4.0GHz (and an XFR boost to 4.2GHz), and will cost $549 (about £420, AU$690) – almost half the Threadripper 1950X’s $999 (around £780, AU$1,260) asking price, and a fair bit cheaper than the mid-range Threadripper 1920X, which costs $799 (around £600, AU$1,000).

In fact, the price is within touching distance of the AMD Ryzen 7 1800X, which comes with eight cores and 16 threads, and costs $499 (£500, around AU$650).

Image credit: AMD

Worth the upgrade?

So is the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1900X worth the $50 increase over the Ryzen 7 1800X? If you’re solely using your PC for gaming, then probably not, with AMD providing benchmark results that show the Ryzen 7 1800X and Threadripper 1900X are pretty evenly matched when it comes to frames per second performance in games – with the 1800X actually performing better in some cases.

Image credit: AMD

However, as AMD is at pains to reiterate, Threadripper CPUs aren’t really aimed at gamers only – and the 1900X has access to all the advanced features of the Threadripper platform that the more expensive CPUs have, and which the Ryzen 7 series lacks.

This includes four-channel DDR4 2667 memory support (compared to Ryzen 7’s two channels), and 64 PCIe lanes. That’s an increase of 128% compared to Intel’s comparable 8-core Core i7 7820X, which features 5% less cache and is 8% more expensive. The 1900X also supports 8 DIMMS of memory for a huge 2TB of total RAM.

So, for people who value multi-tasking performance – the 1900X supports seven simultaneous PCIe devices like other Threadripper CPUs – AMD has offered a compelling choice with this affordable route into the Threadripper family.

Hopefully we’ll be getting our hands on a Threadripper 1900X soon to run our own benchmark tests, and see just how well this entry-level CPU performs.

NVMe RAID support

AMD has also announced a free update to the X399 platform – which Threadripper CPUs run on – which brings NVMe RAID support, allowing for incredibly fast data transfer speeds. This update includes NVMe RAID drivers, and supports bootable RAID 0, 1 and 10 modes for up to 10 devices.

The free update will be made available on September 25.