Ryzen Threadripper 2 (2990WX and 2950X) Review: AMD Unleashes 32 Cores
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Page 1:Introduction
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Page 2:Architecture, NUMA & Game Mode
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Page 3:Ryzen Master, Motherboards & Test Setup
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Page 4:VRMark, 3DMark & AotS: Escalation
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Page 5:Civilization VI Graphics & AI, Dawn of War III
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Page 6:Far Cry 5, GTA: V & Hitman
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Page 7:Shadow Of War & Project CARS 2
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Page 8:Office & Productivity
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Page 9:Rendering, Encoding & Compression
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Page 10:Workstation - Graphics
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Page 11:Workstation - Compute
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Page 12:Cooling, Clock Rates & Power Limits
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Page 13:Power Consumption
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Page 14:Final Analysis
Far Cry 5, GTA: V & Hitman
Far Cry 5
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Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX dragged along the bottom of our chart at its stock settings. Enabling PBO helped quite a bit, though.
Threadripper 2950X was just a bit faster. That's particularly good news for gamers, given a much lower price tag.
Grand Theft Auto V
Grand Theft Auto V favors Intel architectures and, more generally, multi-core designs with high clock rates.
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Threadripper 2950X beat the Core i9-7900X after we enabled Precision Boost Overdrive. Then again, Intel's Core i7-8700K and AMD's Ryzen 7 2700X reminded us why we don't recommend installing high-end desktop CPUs in most gaming PCs.
Hitman
Our Hitman benchmark was rendered almost useless by a patch that imposed a 90 FPS performance cap. A subsequent update restored our Hitman test to its prior glory.
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Hitman responds to core count and clock rate, so it wasn't a surprise to see Intel's overclocked Core i9-7960X perform best in our benchmark. Otherwise, the results landed where we expected them to.
MORE: Best CPUs
MORE: Intel & AMD Processor Hierarchy
MORE: All CPUs Content
- Introduction
- Architecture, NUMA & Game Mode
- Ryzen Master, Motherboards & Test Setup
- VRMark, 3DMark & AotS: Escalation
- Civilization VI Graphics & AI, Dawn of War III
- Far Cry 5, GTA: V & Hitman
- Shadow Of War & Project CARS 2
- Office & Productivity
- Rendering, Encoding & Compression
- Workstation - Graphics
- Workstation - Compute
- Cooling, Clock Rates & Power Limits
- Power Consumption
- Final Analysis
Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX
Ryzen Threadripper 2950X
Socket
TR4
TR4
Cores / Threads
16 / 32
16 / 32
*And nothing else.
Despite all the fan-fare, it seems the 7980xe actually remains the best processor when overclocked overall.
Lastly for gaming, it's still 8700K or 8086 as best, with the 2700x from AMD being the best when you factor gaming and some multi-threaded stuff, while being very competitive price wise.
The 2990wx on the other hand is a slight let down. Too bad they could not get the scaling down between the dies like they did with Threadripper 1. But I have read that was going to be an issue. Maybe AMD did not want the 2990wx to cannibalize their Epyc market.
With that being said, the 2990wx is still a modern marvel of technology, even more so when you consider the price. Only couple of years ago a CPU with less than a third of the cores cost just as much.
Competition sure is grand!
MOD EDIT: watch your profanity
Seem to me that you are mistaking best of both work with jack of all trade. No one who takes rendering seriously would want to sacrifice the performance for gaming. For that price, they may as well grab a 1950X. Sure you lose in gaming, but gain a huge jump in rendering. Also, I don't know about Microcenterbut it's still 1k on Amazon while 1950X is $850. 7900X is like a really really bad choice lol.
dont just look 2990wx,, the TR 2950X is best of all around CPU, if you want compare price to performance, in gaming 2950x is more or less equal 8700k in minimum FPS and only lose 3 to 10 FPS Average FPS,, in Multithreaded work 2950x blow anything in that price range including 7900x,, read again the article
One thing for sure is the next generation TR on 7nm will really help the 32 cores setup since it will probably use only a single Infinity Fabric Link and direct memory access, but I understand how much more expensive that CPU would have been and not really for that much more performances after all in what the intended field of work is.
In most cases, PBO will have less than 1% difference in performance than overclocking the CPU to 4.15. They provided Intel overclock information because they already had those OCs from previous reviews. Just like they showed the OCs from 1st gen Threadripper parts.
It takes a long time to conduct a thorough review, let alone 2 products and it is not like they have had this chip for a month. It probably came in last week when the unboxing videos were released. Then there was also the part where they said that they would have a more in depth article about overclocking performance.
For POV-Ray lower scores (times) are better. That means that a 100% core increase should theoretically reduce (improve) time by 50%. If we look at the actual time reduction of 35%, we get 0.35/0.5 = 70% of max theoretical scaling. In Cinebench, where higher scores are better, we would expect a 100% improvement in score but only get 66%, meaning we only get 66% of max theoretical scaling. The scaling in POV-Ray is actually slightly better than in Cinebench.
<Mod Edit- Watch the Language>
So where's this 2950x review that is supposed to compare the different modes it runs in?
Probably because manual overclocking on Zen+ based Ryzen CPUs is pointless unless all your important applications are heavily threaded.
Since a manual overclock and voltages are decided on a fully threaded workload, it results in comparatively bad performance - lower than stock - in lightly threaded applications (on Zen+ with its advanced boosting). The Threadripper processors have such a high number of cores that the performance deficit is exacerbated.
Instead of overclocking manually, on Zen+ you should instead enable PBO, then lower the CPU voltage using offset. This lowers temperatures and power use, allowing the CPU to boost even higher.