An Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition video card handles display output for our CPU-specific tests, and a 500GB Samsung SSD 970 EVO is our boot drive. On this last test, the Threadripper chips dominated, with the Threadripper 2950X in particular pummeling almost all takers, with the exception being the much pricier Core i9-7980XE. 16 cores provide an astonishing 32 threads of simultaneous multi-processing power, while 40MB of combined cache and vast I/O from the enthusiast-grade AMD … Cinebench shot up to a score of 3,333, an improvement of just shy of 5 percent. Although the Ryzen Threadripper 2950X doesn’t get a core-count boost or feature four-core complexes, like the Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX and 2970WX, it’s still a beast of a chip. A great example of this is the debate between the new Ryzen 3950X or their older Threadripper 2950X. On the Intel side, Team Blue's 10-core Intel Core i9-7900X is going to be Threadripper's chief competition, though for our formal comparisons we also dropped in the eight-core Core i7-7820X ($913.92 at Amazon) (a Core X-Series chip, too) as the step down from the Core i9-7900X. This item AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2950X Processor (YD295XA8AFWOF) AMD Ryzen 9 3950X 16-Core, 32-Thread Unlocked Desktop Processor, Without Cooler. And the better performance usually comes with a lower price thanks to AMD. The chip itself is huge, essentially comprising two ordinary Ryzen chips fused together, which means that it is bigger than most of the liquid cooling heat sinks that were on the market last year. The connection between the processor and memory modules is also important in determining how well your Threadripper-powered PC will handle memory-intensive tasks. (More on that below, too.). A veteran of the popular tech site and magazine Computer Shopper from 1993 to 2017, he has covered just about every kind of computer gear—from the 386SX to 18-core processors—in his long tenure as an editor, a writer, and an advice columnist. Not only are there more and better Threadripper cooling solutions, but the chips themselves are better equipped to adapt their heat output to the maximum that the cooler can handle. This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links. Some games prefer more cores; others benefit more from less latency. The Ryzen Threadripper 2950X will cost $799, and the Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX will cost $1799. Many of you know aware of the fact that AMD is better than Intel in many ways, for years now. With incremental improvements to multi-threaded performance, thermal management, and overclocking, the Ryzen Threadripper 2950X makes AMD's flagship consumer CPU lineup even better than it was before. AMD 2nd Gen Ryzen Threadripper 2950X, 16-Core, 32-Thread, 4.4 GHz Max Boost (3.5 GHz Base), Socket sTR4 180W YD295XA8AFWOF Desktop Processor. Follow him on Twitter @branttom. And, of course, we dropped in the top-end Core i9-7980XE Extreme Edition ($1,500.00 at Amazon) (Intel's flagship 18-core part, still at $1,999 at this writing) for a look at the top end of the Intel line and, in fact, the entire HEDT market. Hitman (2016), on the High detail setting, showed a 3 to 4 percent delta between the Ryzen Threadripper 2950X and the Core i7-7700K, tested under both DirectX 11 and DirectX 12. Get it now! Each of the Threadripper 2950X's two dies is directly connected to two memory channels, and by default also has access to the memory channels connected to the other die thanks to Infinity Fabric, AMD's marketing name for the technology that allows different parts of the chip to talk with one another. One of these is the new Cooler Master Wraith Ripper, which can deal with the heat from any chip in the second generation, including the monster 32-core 2990WX. Get Yours. That's a lot of extra moolah to pay for a few extra cores. Even better, it retails for $899, $100 less than the debut prices of the 1950X and its closest Intel alternative, the Core i9-7900X. Condition is "Used". This arrangement would be tighter, or in some cases impossible, on an Intel Core X-series chip and the current X299 platform. The 1950X is the flagship of the Zen based Threadripper series which also … Comparison of the technical characteristics between the processors, with the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 5990X on one side and the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2950X on the other side. If not, you'll want to pair our guide with the instructions from your cooler manufacturer. AMD 2nd Gen Ryzen Threadripper 2950X, 16-Core, 32-Thread, 4.4 GHz Max Boost (3.5 GHz Base), Socket sTR4 180W YD295XA8AFWOF Desktop Processor - Newegg.com Item#: 9SIA8N29BD8262 AMD 2nd Gen Ryzen Threadripper 2950X, 16-Core, 32-Thread, 4.4 GHz Max Boost (3.5 GHz Base), Socket sTR4 180W YD295XA8AFWOF Desktop Processor (36) Write a Review He served as Computer Shopper’s editor in chief from 2008 to 2017. Aside from the satisfaction of assembling your own PC, there's a certain aura to a build with a Threadripper inside of it. Handbrake, a commonly used utility for converting videos from one format to another, benefits from having lots of cores and threads at your disposal. Finally, we're also looping in the two top-end chips in Intel's and AMD's "mainstream" lines. Best X399 Motherboards for Threadripper 2 (2990WX/2950X) April 14, 2019 by PremiumBuilds Leave a Comment The X399 chipset is featured on motherboards that support the socket TR4 from AMD which is their HEDT (high-end desktop) Ryzen part, also known as Threadripper. Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. The Threadripper 2950X turned in an average frame rate of 121 frames per second (fps) in Creator mode. The 1950X testbed used G.Skill TridentZ RGB memory, while the 2950X testbed uses G.Skill Flare X memory pegged at 2,933MHz using the XMP profile in the BIOS. The awesome name is certainly part of that aura, but so is the fact that you're getting workstation-level performance at a price that, until recently, wasn't possible in a consumer-grade chip. During submission, … At 4K (3,840 by 2,160), all of the late-model CPUs were within 2 or 3 frames per second of one another on the six test games we tried, signaling that the CPUs weren't the bottleneck; the limitations were around the video card's ability. First, we fired up Rise of the Tomb Raider in DirectX 11 mode at the game's Very High detail preset and ran the built-in benchmark. The Intel chips in this test set were better at the One CPU setting, but the Threadripper parts new and old pulled ahead of everything else, barring the mighty Core i9-7980XE, on the All CPUs test. The first is dedicated to the desktop sector, It has 16 cores, 32 threads, a maximum frequency of 4.9GHz. Looking back to the previous AMD generation, we're also charting in the Threadripper 1950X (the forebear to the 2950X) and the Threadripper 1920X, AMD's step-down 12-core model. We then shifted over to a few games that we had tested using the same GeForce GTX 1080 video card in our Core i7-7700K video-card testbed. It Depends on the App, Apple MacBook Pro 13-Inch (M1, Late 2020) Review. Ryzen Threadripper 2950X is AMD's new flagship 16-core processor. During submission, please specify family name, YD295XA8UGAAF part number, and, most importantly, make the … Testing solely at 1080p, we tried each at an elevated settings preset indicated below, in turn in Creator mode (that is, with all cores running and direct memory access mode engaged), Game mode (with half the cores disabled and local memory access mode engaged), and in Creator mode with the local memory access setting engaged (as an experiment, to see if any of the games benefit from this combo approach). Cinebench is a fully threaded test that's one of the best at-a-glance measures of a task making use of all available processor cores and threads. Here's what we saw, with all figures in frames per second... What does that tell us? The Threadripper 2950X is a slightly better gamer at 1080p than its predecessor; and at least in our handful of test games, Creator versus Game mode only mattered sometimes. This further narrows the gap with Intel's Core X-Series chips, and affords significantly more room for creative expression than you'd get from an off-the-shelf system like the Alienware Area-51 Threadripper Edition. Creator and Game modes. That's within a few frames of what we saw in the past with the various Intel Core X solutions. Last, we fired up the popular 7-Zip file-compression software and ran its built-in compression and decompression benchmark, which is another useful test of a CPU's multi-core abilities. Instead of just dropping the CPU into its slot and attaching the screws and heat sink, you first have to slide the Threadripper into a folding bracket, and then fasten down that bracket to the motherboard using a torque screwdriver that AMD provides in the Threadripper box. Just cpu. The Core i9-7900X was competitive, but it couldn't best the extra cores and threads that AMD offers at similar or lower price points. The memory configuration in the 2950X is more symmetrical and has a UMA (uniform memory access) mode. We're not arguing with the logic of that, but the fact is: 1080p is a popular gaming resolution, and also favored by competitive gamers with high-refresh-rate screens. Sign up for What's New Now to get our top stories delivered to your inbox every morning. In addition to the Threadripper 2950X, Asus X399 Zenith Extreme, and Thermaltake Floe Riing RGB 360, our testbed includes the following components: This is an identical testbed to the one we used for the 1950X, with the exception of faster memory. It's far from the only excellent choice in the high-end desktop (HEDT) market these days, though, since the first-gen Threadripper chips can now be had at significant discounts, and Intel will almost certainly release refreshed Core X-Series Core i7 and i9 CPUs in the next few months. The difference here between the 2950X and the Intels is around 20 percent. Before, with the 1950X, XFR would operate across only a subset of the cores. Our review of the 2950X presents four data sets: stock, manual OC, PBO enabled and PBO with Local Memory Access mode. While it might look like the newer Ryzen 9 3950X is the clear winner, there are … Thunderbolt 3 offers blazingly fast data transfer speeds of up to 40GBps, and it's quickly becoming the interface of choice for professional and prosumer external hard drives and RAID arrays. These two new CPUs are overkill for most PC-building enthusiasts both in terms of raw compute power and price, so we're focusing on the Threadripper 2950X for our initial second-generation Threadripper review. And if single-core tasks are primarily what you do, Threadripper and Core X are not what you ought to be looking at; check out a much cheaper Intel Core i7-8700K. Find over 30,000 products at your local Micro Center, including the Ryzen Threadripper 2950X 3.5GHz Colfax 16-Core TR4 Boxed Processor What's actually happening under the hood is complicated. Before that, he worked for PCMag's sister site, Computer Shopper, where he occasionally dunked waterproof hard drives in glasses of water. In addition, the motherboard must support Thunderbolt 3, and there are no current X399 motherboards on the market that do. Like the 1950X before it, it earns our Editors' Choice award. Intel Core i5 vs. i7, How Fast Is Apple's M1 Chip? In this test, we use a nice, big hunk of near-4K video to see how the chips perform with a sustained task of this kind, as the CPU has plenty of time during the render to heat up and, potentially, throttle. The platform, like any, has its downsides, of course. Get yours. Blender is an open-source 3D content-creation program that can be used to design and create visual effects, animation, and 3D models for use in video games or 3D printing. With 2017's Threadripper 1950X chip, AMD indeed stated in its reviewer's guide that "the AMD Ryzen Threadripper processor was not designed for or intended to run games at the 1,920x1,080 resolution." We're hoping that no one will be doing much conversion action on software this old on a CPU this cutting-edge, but it's an interesting exercise... You can see a reflection of the single-core Cinebench test here in the iTunes benchmark. If you have this processor please use our CPUID tool to submit CPUID information. Newegg shopping upgraded ™ The only issue with that approach is that you may run into the occasional game that won't launch without some cores disabled, which will require enabling Game mode. Comparison of the technical characteristics between the processors, with the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X on one side and the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2950X on the other side. Open shopping cart. AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-Core, 16 … That's an approximately 6 percent uptick from the Threadripper 1950X to the 2950X in the "All Cores" trial, with the 2950X encroaching ever closer to the 18-core/36-thread Intel Core i9-7980XE. It was about 15 percent last year, and now it's down to about 8 percent. Boasting 12 high-performance cores capable of harnessing 24 parallel threads, the Ryzen™ Threadripper… If you're a PC building enthusiast, you'll likely appreciate the novel steps, but if you just want to build as quickly as possible, don't count on it; you'll need to slow down and proceed carefully, as the bracket mechanism and the 4,000-plus in-socket pins are delicate. Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX Ryzen Threadripper 2950X Socket TR4 TR4 Cores / Threads 16 / 32 16 / 32 Reply. PCMag.com is a leading authority on technology, delivering Labs-based, independent reviews of the latest products and services. (Again, memory was set to 2,933MHz, the newly supported JEDEC profile ceiling for the Threadripper platform.). (The short-lived "Kaby Lake-X" chips that also work on this platform support only 16.). Most first-gen Threadripper 1950X CPUs tap out between 3.9 and 4.0 GHz. Opt for a chip with fewer cores and higher clocks, like the Core i7-8700K. These adjustments happen as frequently as 1,000 times per second. And at 4K resolution, it doesn't matter; the video card's the issue, not the CPU. Because it supports the same X399 chipset as the 1950X ($855.78 at Amazon) , it's compatible with any X399 motherboard, even those that were designed before it was introduced. Aside from support for basic technologies that every cutting-edge CPU should have, such as USB 3.1 Gen 2 and PCI Express NVMe for lightning-quick storage, the 2950X is capable of handling 64 PCI Express lanes. This is AMD’s first Ryzen 9 processor and it is a 12-core, 24-thread CPU based on their latest 7nm Zen 2 microarchitecture. We don't have CPU ID information for the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2950X CPU in our database. The flagship first-gen Ryzen Threadripper 1950X has 16 cores and 32 computing threads, while AMD is now selling a 32-core, 64-thread Threadripper 2990WX ($1,799), part of a new two-chip Threadripper WX line, with a 24-core version (the $1,299 2970WX) to follow in the fall. All rights reserved. How much more? We'd still like to see the Threadrippers do better here, but we think their showing is more than good enough given the likely usage profile of this chip. So we ran some anecdotal tests with our same GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition card in concert with the Threadripper 2950X to see what kind of improvements have been made. Second-generation Threadripper chips have an updated Extended Frequency Range (XFR) tool, dubbed XFR2, that auto-adjusts the speed of every processor core to extend the amount of time the CPU is overclocked before it gets too hot. For example, the Core i9-7900X ($999.99 at Newegg) supports 44 lanes, while the Core i7-7820X ($913.92 at Amazon) supports 28. Threadripper Technologies. And so, onward to our charts. (Far Cry Primal is an outlier, and we suspect there will be a few others.) The 10-core Core i9-7900X, however, should be in the same league as the Threadripper parts (for the most part) given its pricing, while we expect the 18-core Core i9-7980XE Extreme Edition to be the alpha dog in tasks that gobble up cores and threads. The 2990WX is NUMA-only due to the assymetric nature of the memory connections to the … The Core i7-8700K ($378.99 at Amazon) is the current head honcho for Team Blue on its mainstream socket (if you discount the limited-edition Core i7-8086K, which we're in the process of reviewing), and the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X ($293.20 at Amazon) (also being reviewed at the moment) is the top dog in the new second-generation Ryzen line. For serious Enthusiasts, Prosumers and Creators, AMD designed the new 2nd Gen Ryzen™ Threadripper™ 2920X. This is a time-consuming test of video-crunching capabilities. It seems Blender prefers a balance of cores and raw clock, rather than simply maximum cores and threads, as indicated by the competitive showings of the Ryzen 7 2700X and Core i7-8700K. The 2950X isn't any smaller, and it has the same 180-watt thermal design power (TDP, a measure of required heat dissipation), but new solutions like the Wraith Ripper should do a better job of covering a larger portion of the CPU's heat spreader. Share this page. If you are running applications for which memory latency has a large impact on performance, you can force each die to only use its directly connected memory by enabling the "Local" memory option in AMD's Ryzen Master software utility. In his spare time, he's written on topics as diverse as Borneo's rain forests, Middle Eastern airlines, and big data's role in presidential elections. Discounts and product refreshes are mainstays of consumer technology, of course, so if you wait around for the next one you could end up never buying a single component. As a result, if you're building a tricked-out video-editing workstation, or yearn for a gaming-and-streaming rig, the Threadripper 2950X is an excellent choice for a CPU if you can afford it and the supporting platform. (More on that below, too. That said, with the 2950X, the Intel lead has been halved. (The software allows for 25MHz up-steps.) On thread-hungry tests and tasks, the Ryzen 7 2700X and Core i7-8700K won't stand a chance against the 16-core/32-thread Threadripper 2950X; this was the case with the previous generations of each of these chips versus the Threadripper 1950X. The Ryzen Threadripper 2950X is slightly faster than its 1950X predecessor at the types of computing tasks that lap up all of the processor cores and threads that they can find. https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-threadripper-2950x. So we then shifted all of our testing to 1080p. Both the Threadripper and Core X chips deliver high enough frame rates to satisfy all but the most discerning high-fps game junkie, and the kind of buyers with the money and need for a Threadripper platform ought to have graduated to a 1440p or 4K panel by now. Testing from many outlets indicated that at 1080p, for example, the maximum frame rates in many games showed some suppression versus the same games, settings, and video card in use on recent high-end Intel silicon. The first is dedicated to the desktop sector, It has 64 cores, 128 threads, a maximum frequency of 4.5GHz. Just like their Ryzen desktop CPUs, AMD’s Threadripper has two different generations with the first featuring the 1900x, 1920x and 1950x with up to 16 cores on the Zen architecture and the second with the 2920x, 2950x, 2970WX and 2990WX featuring up to … The Threadripper 2950X's first showing is an impressive one, and about what we'd expect from a Threadripper generational step-up. That would be a shame in this case, because one of the Threadripper 2950X's most notable ancillary improvements is an expanded ecosystem of complementary components. Your subscription has been confirmed. Precision Boost Overclock works wonders to further increase its performance while always being stable. Precision Boost Overclock works wonders to further increase its performance while always being stable. Overclocking AMD's Ryzen processors is a fairly straightforward process. You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time. This length is the same as Intel offers for its X-series processors. We tasked the CPUs to convert a 12-minute-and-14-second .MOV file encoded in H.264 (the showcase short film Tears of Steel, at a resolution of 3,840 by 1,714) into a 1080p MPEG-4 video…. AMD Ryzen 9 3900X vs 3900XT: What are The Key Differences? An updated version available on the 2950X, called Precision Boost 2, is far more granular. It's got the same number of cores and threads, but a slightly increased base clock speed of 3.5GHz (with the ability to boost to up to 4.4GHz) and a lower cache latency, among other minor improvements. PCMag Digital Group. Buy CLX Set GAMING PC AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2950X 3.5GHz (16 Cores) 32GB DDR4 6TB HDD & 960GB SSD NVIDIA RTX 2080 8GB GDDR6 MS Windows 10 64-Bit with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. If you ponder the name "Threadripper" for a moment, you might get the inkling that AMD bestowed it on its flagship CPU to evoke massive thread counts and the ability to burn through pretty much any intensive computing task. Ryzen Threadripper 2950X is AMD's new flagship 16-core processor. If you have this processor please use our CPUID tool to submit CPUID information. Because audio transcoding with this version of the application taxes only a single core, we suspected as much. It also tops its closest-in-price Core X-Series competitor, the 10-core/20-thread Core i9-7900X, by a healthy 30 percent on the multithreaded trial. First up in our testing regimen: Maxon's CPU-crunching Cinebench R15 test. You can use Ryzen Master to tweak clocks and voltages from within Windows, versus the usual BIOS-level approach. The display of third-party trademarks and trade names on this site does not necessarily indicate any affiliation or the endorsement of PCMag. ), , took about 6.5 minutes to complete this test, and just a couple of years ago that was riding high as a $1,799 CPU whose price—like that of the Core i9-7980XE—didn't budge much for its active life on the market, How to Free Up Space on Your iPhone or iPad, How to Save Money on Your Cell Phone Bill, How to Find Free Tools to Optimize Your Small Business, How to Get Started With Project Management, How to Build a Maxed-Out Intel Coffee Lake Gaming Rig, Report: Apple Is Testing a Chip Design With 32 High-Performance Cores, First Tests: AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper Pro, New Muscle in Workstation CPUs, Despite 7nm Struggle, Intel to Keep Investing in 5nm, 3nm Chip Technologies, Which CPU Should You Buy? He has also worked in the science-book field and as an editor of computer-tech books for Paramount Publishing. (Maybe.) Luckily, all X399 boards support USB flashback, which means you can update the BIOS from a file installed on a USB stick, instead of having to boot up with a different CPU first. (A $649 12-core complement, the Threadripper 2920X, will follow in October, along with the 24-core chip.). One point of contention with the original Threadrippers was gaming performance at relatively "low" resolutions with high-end video cards, in other words, in situations where the CPU itself and memory latency comes into play. Let's see if it's worth it. But the fact remains that if you want to consistently milk out every last frame that your 144Hz high-refresh monitor and Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti will display, you're better off with an Intel chip. That said, we still can't recommend overly aggressive overclocking of the 2950X. Our expert industry analysis and practical solutions help you make better buying decisions and get more from technology. The structure on the left shows how the 2950X is … Many of the best things about Threadripper chips aren't changing with the 2950X. 64-bit allows more than 4GB, giving increased performance. Aside from minor inconveniences like the lack of Thunderbolt 3 support, the Threadripper 2950X is a smidge behind the Core i9-7900X and other Intel Core X and mainstream-CPU solutions when it comes to 1080p gaming performance, just like its predecessor. Our review of the 2950X … This test taxes only a single CPU core, as much legacy software still does. If that's you, this is the best chip of its kind that you can buy. This … Overclocking, per AMD and a message right in Ryzen Master, does void your warranty. We saw a mirror here, more or less, of what we saw with Cinebench. Based on 7,552 user benchmarks for the AMD Ryzen TR 2950X and the Intel Core i9-9960X, we rank them both on effective speed and value for money against the best 1,276 CPUs. The company argued at the time that if you're spending this much on a processor and platform, you should probably be pushing more pixels on a higher-resolution monitor. In practice, many applications, even pro applications, can't leverage all threads as well as Cinebench can, but this horsepower trial shows the top potential of the chip, using the CPU rather than the GPU to render a complex image. We had some modest successes in our Cinebench trials, but ultimately it didn't matter as much as the full manual mode, tweaking the voltage and core clock across all cores step by step. We also get your email address to automatically create an account for you in our website. After that, again to get a sense of how the chips handle single-core performance, we ran the same benchmark using the "One CPU" setting. Pulled from working rig. However, our 2950X … The absence of adequate liquid cooling solutions is one of the few reasons why you might not have wanted to buy a Threadripper 1950X. Only the 18-core Core i9-7980XE could catch the new Threadripper or its parent, and that not by a whole lot. Selling with no cooler. amd ryzen threadripper 2950x processor (16 cores 32 threads,with max boost clock of 4.4ghz,base clock of 3.5ghz and 40mb cache memory) Sidebar Amd Ryzen Threadripper 2950X We then switched over to our venerable iTunes Conversion Test, using version 10.6 of iTunes. Find over 30,000 products at your local Micro Center, including the Ryzen Threadripper 2950X 3.5GHz Colfax 16-Core TR4 Boxed Processor Although the Ryzen Threadripper 2950X doesn’t get a core-count boost or feature four-core complexes, like the Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX and 2970WX, it’s …