Ryzen Threadripper 2 (2990WX and 2950X) Review: AMD Unleashes 32 Cores
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Far Cry 5, GTA: V & Hitman
Far Cry 5
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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Rdslw first table is broken 32/64 cores/threads :)Reply
Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX
Ryzen Threadripper 2950X
Socket
TR4
TR4
Cores / Threads
16 / 32
16 / 32 -
philipemaciel Wow, while the 2990WX is a bit of a letdown, the 2950X is a nice surprise. Plenty of bang for your buck!Reply -
alves.mvc Why does Tom's Hardware stopped using the HPC benchmark? It was the most interesting measurement for me that work daily with finite differences and finite elements. Can you return to that?Reply -
totaldarknessincar Seems to me the best of both worlds continue to be Intel's 7900x which sells for $699 at microcenter. You get great gaming performance, and great multithreaded performance, and it's not 12-1800 bucks as some of these mega-threaded cards are.Reply
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. -
feelinfroggy777 Very surprising performance from the 2950x. Almost enough to consider parting ways with my 1950x. Maybe when the pricing comes down some from the 2950x in a few months I will consider.Reply
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! -
basil.thomas Looks like Intel has an opportunity to bite AMD when they release their 28-core processor. I have a threadripper 2/x399 system but if I upgrade to the 2990wx, I will also upgrade the motherboard and the power supply as well. I think I may wait until the Intel 28 core comes out and see what kind of performance it delivers as I too notice running custom AI apps on the threadripper is barely faster than my old x99/6850 motherboard overclocked @ 4.3Ghz. I want max performance if I am going to pay over $1800 for the flagship which means core wars is just starting...Reply
MOD EDIT: watch your profanity -
ffleader1
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.21228046 said:Seems to me the best of both worlds continue to be Intel's 7900x which sells for $699 at microcenter. You get great gaming performance, and great multithreaded performance, and it's not 12-1800 bucks as some of these mega-threaded cards are.
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.