AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X Review

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Civilization VI, Battlefield 1 & Dawn of War III

Civilization VI AI Test

Quad-core processors tend to provide the best results in Civilization VI's AI test, which measures available computational horsepower during a turn-based strategy gaming session.

The Core i9-7900X puts on an impressive show, though, as it vies for supremacy with Intel's -7700K. The overclocked 1950X in Game Mode provides solid performance, though it drops to the bottom of our chart in its stock configuration. Interestingly, the 1950X using Local/SMT settings yields the best results in an out-of-the-box arrangement, though it drops down the chart after overclocking. This is the only game in which we see this repeatable trend.

Civilization VI Graphics Test

Skylake-X has a tendency to perform poorly in this test, which is likely due to some of the regressions we encountered with Intel’s new mesh architecture. The stock Threadripper processors outperform Intel’s finest. Notably, the overclocked 1950X with Local/SMT settings also beats the Core i9. You can clearly see a few of the -7900X’s hiccups in our frame time chart. All the while, a tuned Core i7-7700K dominates.

Battlefield 1 (DX11)

The stock Threadripper processors stumble during the first seconds of our test sequence, resulting in much of the frame time variance you see in our chart. The tuned 1950X in Game Mode avoids this early choppiness and provides the best overall performance from AMD. It’s notable that the delta between most of the processors is smaller than we see in other titles, though the overclocked Core i9-7900X provides a bit of extra horsepower to distance itself slightly.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III

The eight-core i7-7820X struggles during our benchmark run, though it does beat AMD's stock 1950X in Local/SMT mode. We realize a large improvement from Threadripper simply by toggling into Game Mode. Meanwhile, a decent 3.9 GHz overclock doesn’t provide much extra performance. That stands in contrast to the large overclocking gains extracted from Core i7-7700K and i9-7900X, implying this game might benefit from optimization. 


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Paul Alcorn
Managing Editor: News and Emerging Tech

Paul Alcorn is the Managing Editor: News and Emerging Tech for Tom's Hardware US. He also writes news and reviews on CPUs, storage, and enterprise hardware.

  • I just looked at gaming benchmark and stopped reading there because as i thought Intel CPUs are killing Thread Ripper in gaming. As far as content creation, naturally having 16/32 setup will be faster than Intel 10/20 but again do you really need more than 10/20 cores. I don't and i heavily use PC for gaming, programming, web design, video/audio encoding. Overall Intel 7900x is better value and all around CPU. But if you are just in gaming 7700k is just enough.

    Thanks for review, and hello x299 platform.

    Gaming vs. Content Creation mode through Software is just another big NO NO to me knowing how crappy AMD software is. I assume the most people will keep it in Game Mode and leave it as it is.

    I appreciate that AMD brought this CPU for $999 with so many cores, helps competition but again there is nothing to drool over here in my book. AMD didn't bring any significant performance bump core vs. core basis. In fact AMD single core performance still sucks which means when Intel releases 10+ core CPU it is going to fun to watch.

    Two things i am interested the most is Coffee Lake product and IPC improvement there and possible price adjustment with Core i9.

    Reply
  • Quaddro
    Hold up breath..
    Reply
  • Quaddro
    Hold up breath more...
    Reply
  • Kai Dowin
    I'm truly impressed to see 16 Zen cores consuming as much power as only 10 Skylake-X ones. Bravo, AMD!
    Reply
  • 20045233 said:
    I'm truly impressed to see 16 Zen cores consuming as much power as only 10 Skylake-X ones. Bravo, AMD!

    I am not knowing that Intel is running higher frequency.

    Reply
  • JamesSneed
    20045197 said:
    I just looked at gaming benchmark and stopped reading there because as i thought Intel CPUs are killing Thread Ripper in gaming. As far as content creation, naturally having 16/32 setup will be faster than Intel 10/20 but again do you really need more than 10/20 cores. I don't and i heavily use PC for gaming, programming, web design, video/audio encoding. Overall Intel 7900x is better value and all around CPU. But if you are just in gaming 7700k is just enough.

    Thanks for review, and hello x299 platform.

    Gaming vs. Content Creation mode through Software is just another big NO NO to me knowing how crappy AMD software is.

    I love Intel even more...all you have to do pop CPU in and shit works and it works well.

    I guess if gaming is why you were reading the Threadripper review then you are right it isn't as good as Intel's offerings but did you honestly expect any other result? I don't know why reviewers even do gaming tests on any CPU over 8 cores as it is mostly pointless. If you are doing scientific, encoding, professional tasks in just about every use case that is multi threaded it is blowing away every Intel offering. Of course that may change once there are 12-18 core Intel parts. However spending $1000 for a CPU is a bargain for those than can use it and never in history could you get a 16 core consumer part with this type of multi-threaded performance.
    Reply
  • Lyden
    Thank you for this review. I was seriously considering Threadripper. Looks like the 7700k is still the sensible choice for the price when gaming.
    Reply
  • Kai Dowin
    @FREAK777POWER And delivering higher multi-threaded performance with these lower clocked cores. Do you know what that's called? Efficiency.
    Reply
  • redgarl
    This chip is designed for heavy calculation multithreading, it is not made for gaming, however it is working well with 1440p and 2160p.

    By the way, who in their mind will buy a 16 core CPU and play at 1080p with a 1080 TI... seriously, these 1080p bench are a joke and don't represent reality...

    "A standard or point of reference against which things may be compared." Oxford

    1080p with 1080 TI with a 16 core processor is not a point of reference at all.
    Reply
  • Pompompaihn
    Who are you people that come here and <ModEdit> about gaming performance on these chips??

    Threadripper is the F250 of CPUs. It's not the fastest, but it's plenty fast for 99% of your tasks, and if you need to haul a 12,000 pound trailer it'll do that, too. This is for people who do a lot of WORK on their machine but also game on the side.

    <Moderator Warning: Watch your language in these forums>
    Reply