CPU Shack: The History of the HEDT x86 PC - Part 1

[CPUShack]

This is a fun one, written by max1024 (minor edits by me, and image comments lol)

Part 1 covers Intel High End desktop efforts

will follow with AMDs side
https://www.cpushack.com/2022/07/11/the-history-of-the-hedt-x86-pc-part-1/

It was neat to see, as an aside, the change in board design, from pretty basic green/brown, to very colorful, with sculpted heatsinks, and shrouds/covers over everything

[Wasmachineman_NL]

Too bad X299 has died on 7/7/2019 :^)

[frag_]

[Wasmachineman_NL]

edit

[crazybubba64]

HEDT died out with the advent of high core count mainstream processors. All of the modern HEDT platforms are using one or two generation old tech at really steep prices. More memory channels are hardly enough of an excuse to pay the extra premiums for most applications. PCIe lanes could make a good excuse, but you may as well go full server hardware at that point.

Nowadays there's little reason to consider an X-series versus a Xeon or a Threadripper versus an EPYC... Prices are pretty close and the cost of jumping to a server platform from HEDT are often negligible.

Yeah you lose overclocking... but there really isn't as much wiggleroom when you have 32+ cores to cool and power (unless you want a chilled loop like when intel announced the i9-9990XE).

If anything, the death of HEDT may open up more upgrade options down the line on mainstream platforms. AM4 has already shaped up super nicely for zen1 users to upgrade, especially with the rumored zen4 am4 parts slated for release this/next year.

The only thing keeping X299 (or whatever the server-equivalent chipset is) alive is system integrators like Dell and HP refusing to ship Ryzen-based Precision/Z workstations.
Lenovo seems to be the only major OEM shipping workstations with Ryzen and Threadripper chips. (I'm not the biggest fan of lenovo though, mostly personal preference and their heavy use of proprietary parts that get super expensive to replace)

AMD is absolutely thrashing Intel in most cases, although it seems there were some pretty hefty price cuts to Cascade Lake-W xeons.

IMO the best thing to happen would be for HEDT to go away and just leave the divide at mainstream and server. The extra market segments only make the whole scene messier and more confusing to those who aren't keeping up with everything.

[rjluna2]

Nice article, CPUShack

[max1024]