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AMD Threadripper Pro 3995WX Desktop PC Application Benchmarks - The TLDR:
Here we can see that the Threadripper Pro 3995WX continues to deliver the class-leading threaded horsepower we expect of these core-heavy chips in our geometric mean of multi-threaded workloads. Still, the 3995WX's increased memory throughput and capacity doesn't yield tremendous gains in most of these desktop PC-centric applications.
Instead, the Threadripper 3990X is the right chip for that job, largely due to its higher clock rates. There are exceptions sprinkled throughout our testing below, but it's important to remember that the Threadripper 3990X and 3995WX are specialized chips targeted at certain applications - and there the chips deliver. As we can see, even from the cumulative measurements above, the Threadripper chips devastate Intel's competing chips in threaded workloads.
Flipping through to the geometric mean of the most lightly-threaded tests in our suite, we can see that the Threadripper 3995WX largely delivers the same amount of performance as its forebearer, the 3990X. Surprisingly, the Threadripper processors outstrip the W-3175X in these tasks, but the Core i9-10980XE continues to hold the single-threaded crown among the workstation-class chips. As expected, consumer-focused chips still dominate our single-threaded rankings.
Note: We see some inversions in the workloads below, with the 32GB 3995WX configuration outperforming the 128GB setup. We theorize that this is due to the lower memory latency we recorded when only one dual-channel memory controller is active.
Rendering Benchmarks on AMD Threadripper Pro 3995WX
The rendering benchmarks land right in Threadripper Pro's target market. Cinebench has long been AMD's favorite benchmark for a simple reason; the Zen microarchitecture has always performed extremely well in the threaded benchmark. This benchmark obviously doesn't improve due to the increased memory throughput of the octo-channel 3995WX, and the 3990X takes the top of the chart on the strength of its higher clock rates. Meanwhile, Intel's chips lag woefully behind due to their comparatively-woeful core counts.
Flipping over to the single-threaded Cinebench workload shows that AMD has stepped forward in per-core performance with the Threadripper 3000 processors. The 3995WX and 3990X take a slim lead over the Core i9-10980XE while thoroughly outstripping the W-3175X. The consumer chips dominate the chart, though.
We recently integrated the Intel Open Image Denoise Benchmark into our suite. This ray-tracing test uses Intel's oneAPI rendering toolkit. Hence, it provides an interesting take on performance that's more of an academic exercise than an indication of real-world performance – at least for now. OneAPI is still in the early days of development, not to mention adoption, but it is an interesting display of Intel's latest approach - but in a decidedly Intel-friendly test. This test does scale well with additional memory bandwidth, as we can see with the scaling between the 32, 64, and 128GB 3995WX configurations. Ultimately, that leads to the 3995WX taking the lead over the Intel Xeon W-3175X.
The POV-Ray multi-thread benchmark puts the full heft of Threadripper's threads on full display as the 3995WX offers nearly twice the performance of the W-3175X, but again, the 3990X takes the lead. That's largely because the increased memory throughput doesn't impact this benchmark. The Threadripper chips trail the consumer chips in the single-core POV-Ray benchmark but slide past Intel's competing workstation-class chips again.
Intel does pull off a few isolated wins in the PCMark 10 subtests, but most of these tests skew towards Threadripper. Flipping through the remainder of the tests, including v-ray, Blender, and C-Ray, show that most of these workloads aren't impacted by the 3995WX's extra available memory throughput/capacity. In either case, the chip delivers roughly the same resounding leads over Intel's competing chips as the Threadripper 3990X.
Encoding Benchmarks on AMD Threadripper Pro 3995WX
Our encoding tests include benchmarks that respond best to single-threaded performance, like the quintessential examples LAME and FLAC, but the SVT-AV1 and SVT-HEVC tests represent a newer class of threaded encoders.
It's no surprise to find the Core i9-10980XE, along with the consumer chips, faring better than the Threadripper CPUs in LAME, but the chips are surprisingly strong in the FLAC audio encoding benchmark.
The SVT-AV1 and SVT-HEVC benchmarks show that these threaded encoders respond well to increased core counts, granting Threadripper Pro impressive results, but the software doesn't appear to be entirely optimized for the 64-core Threadripper's unique architecture - the 32-core Threadripper 3970X leads in these tests.
Flipping over to HandBrake, we can see that the x264 and x265 tests benefit slightly from the increased memory throughput of the 128GB configuration, but it's important to note that these tests are of relatively short duration. AMD tells us that longer-duration threaded tests can expose larger performance deltas. In either case, the Threadripper chips beat the Intel comparables.
Web Browsing on AMD Threadripper Pro 3995WX
We test all of these benchmarks in a version-locked Chrome browser, with the notable exception of the Edge test. Intel has really taken quite the performance haircut in web browsers over the last two years, largely due to mitigations for its nagging security concerns. Regardless, most of these benchmarks are almost exclusively lightly-threaded, so Intel has long held the top of the charts despite the mitigations.
AMD's Zen 3 architecture in the Ryzen 5000 series processors have changed that paradigm entirely, but we see many of the same trends with the 3995WX as we see with the 3990X - the Threadripper chips take the lead in the threaded Edge and WebXPRT 3 test suites, but trails the 10980XE in ARES-6, Jetstream 2, and Speedometer 2.
Office and Productivity on AMD Threadripper Pro 3995WX
If you're looking to build a screaming-fast workstation, you're probably not doing it to run office applications like Word at breakneck speeds. However, these types of applications are ubiquitous the world over, so snappy performance is important for daily tasks.
The Threadripper chips perform well in the Office suite, with high marks in the Excel, Application Start-Up, and PowerPoint subtests helping to lift the overall score.
The Intel Core i9-10980XE leads the lightly-threaded GIMP image processing benchmarks, but the W-3175X trails the rest of the test pool by a large margin in a few of the subtests, possibly indicating a conflict with its mesh interconnect. Conversely, the Threadripper processors take an easy lead in the PCMark 10 photo editing subtest, reminding us that much of the performance in individual applications boils down to how well the software can take advantage of extra cores and threads.
Compilation, Compression, AVX Performance on AMD Threadripper Pro 3995WX
Our 7zip results are interesting, but this benchmark runs directly out of memory. The 3995WX has a sizeable capacity advantage over the 3990X that we tested with 32GB of memory and tighter timings. Keep that in mind as you analyze the results. Those same factors also impact the y-cruncher benchmarks, where Intel maintains a lead in the single-threaded test but trails in the multi-threaded rendition. Also, bear in mind that Geekbench test results are particularly sensitive to memory bandwidth and capacity.
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