AMD 32-Core Threadripper 2990WX And 16-Core 2950X Reviews: Most Powerful Ever Desktop Processors?

When AMD launched its high-end desktop Threadripper CPUs last year, it took the industry a bit by surprise. Yet it went on to claim the top performance crown with the Threadripper 1950X, beating Intel's flagship 10-core Core i7-6950X thanks to a six-core advantage. That lead didn't last long, though, as Intel responded with the mighty Core i9-7980XE, which had two more cores. However, Threadripper still represented excellent value for money, costing half what the Intel CPU did at some points in the last 12 months. Today, though, AMD is setting its sights on that crown again and with 32 cores under the hood, the 2nd Gen Threadripper 2990WX looks set to hold onto it for longer than it did last year too.

Today I'm finally allowed to reveal performance numbers not just for the 2990WX, but also for the 16-core 2950X, which is the direct descendant of the 1950X that was released last year. The Threadripper 2990WX is already available to pre-order for $1799 while the 2950X will go on sale on 31st August. They will both be followed by CPUs with fewer cores in each category; the 2970WX will have 24 cores and cost $1299 and the 2920X will have 12 cores and cost $649.

Which Threadripper is right for you?

This is a hugely important question this time around as AMD is, with its WX-series CPUs, creating a new workstation-focussed category with the 2990WX and 2970WX. Yes, they'll be competing against the Intel Core i9-7980XE, but what we're not looking at here are CPUs that you should be considering for a gaming or general content creation system.

As you'll see later, they're awesomely fast in some areas and offer more grunt there for your cash than Intel's flagship, but the 2990WX is actually slower than the Intel Core i9-7980XE and even the Threadripper 2950X in other areas, so your choice will be a tactical one depending on what your needs are.

What motherboard, memory and cooler do you need to use a 2nd Gen Threadripper CPU?

Thankfully, you can use any current X399 chipset motherboard with AMD's new Threadripper CPUs, but you may need to update the BIOS so it can work with the newer processors. As most if not all X399 boards can update their BIOS without a compatible CPU using a USB stick, this shouldn't be too much of a problem either.

As the X399 platform supports quad-channel memory, you'll need a quad-channel/four stick memory kit. I've used 3,000MHz modules with my testing but AMD has claimed up to 3,400MHz should work fine with Threadripper.

The 12 and 16-core parts have a range of cooling options, with air coolers such as those from Noctua or a range of all-in-one liquid coolers. However, with the higher power draw and heat produced by the 24 and 32-core models such as the 2990WX, you'll need a cooler capable of dealing with a TDP of 250W. Air-cooling wise, AMD's Wrath Ripper can cope, but you'd be well-advised to opt for some sort of liquid cooling. For testing, I used Enermax's Liqtech TR4 240 liquid cooler.

Under the hood

So what is actually under the hood, or rather the heatspreader of these beasts? Well, there are actually a number of differences between the new 32-core 2990WX and 16-core 2950X as you can see below. The latter has an identical layout to the previous 16-core model, with two disabled/dummy dies and the other two active dies sporting two core complexes (CCX) each, with each of those offering four cores. That's eight cores per die and 16 cores in total. Each die can communicate with the other as well as with the rest of the system - the memory channels and PCIe bus.

The 2990WX, though, is slightly different. While all dies can still communicate with each other, the two extra dies and 16 of the total 32 cores, cannot directly access the PCIe bus and memory. Instead, they do so using the other dies via Infinity Fabric. This is in contrast to both 16-core Threadripper CPUs and with Intel's complex and expensive monolithic design that's used in its CPUs such as the Core i9-7980XE.

This shouldn't matter too much for workloads that the CPU is designed for such as animation or 3D modeling, but quite what response other programs will have is another matter. It's important, though, to put the CPU through an entire battery of tests both workstation, gaming and high-end content creation for the simple reason a lot of people out there are drooling over this 32-core monster, perhaps for ripping through their Adobe Premier workloads and the like or they just want the most powerful CPU and use their PC for all manner of tasks including games.

Precision Boost 2, XFR2 and Precision Boost Overdrive

The impact that AMD's improved boosting algorithms have had on its mainstream CPUs has been significant and the same technologies are included with 2nd Gen Threadripper too, offering smoother drops in frequency as more cores are engaged. Extended Frequency Range 2 or XFR2 responds to your processors cooling, hiking clock speeds if you have a particularly potent setup and AMD claims it saw a 16% performance boost in Cinebench with the Threadripper 2990WX moving from a standard air cooler to a large liquid cooler in a cool room.

Next, there's Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO). This can be enabled in AMD's Ryzen Master software or in your motherboard's BIOS and does two things, which will be of interest to anyone thinking of overclocking their Threadripper CPU. Doing the latter might yield a higher all-core frequency, which will boost multi-threaded performance, but in doing so, you are disabling AMD's new boosting technologies, which can offer sizeable boosts to lightly threaded performance. PBO actually overclocks your CPU automatically depending on several factors that relate to your motherboard's cooling and power delivery, providing a performance boost, but unlike manual overclocking, your CPU will still achieve those high boosting speeds - you get the best of both worlds so to speak.

Performance and overclocking

My AMD test system comprised the following hardware:

MSI MEG X399 Creation Motherboard

32GB 3000MHz Corsair Vengeance RGB memory

500GB Samsung 960 Pro M.2 SSD

Corsair AX860i  power supply

Enermax Liqtech TR4 240 cooler

I managed to overclock the Threadripper 2990WX to 4.1GHz using a vcore of 1.4V. This was at the limits of my cooling but enough to withstand a 10-minute stress test. I could actually reach 4.2GHz with a higher voltage but the CPU would overheat after a few minutes. The Threadripper 2950X managed to reach 4.2GHz using a vcore of 1.425V.

Rendering/3D Modelling

So this is where the Threadripper 2990WX really shines as these are programs that your typical workstation user will be dealing with, whether it's in animation rendering. It's clear all those cores and threads are being utilized and it offers huge performance gains over Intel's Core i9-7980XE.  It was a third quicker in POV-Ray with a similar advantage once overclocked too - the Intel CPU doesn't even get close and that's particularly damning for Intel if you're focussing on these kinds of tasks given its Core i9-7980XE costs $200 more. The Cinebench and Blender results tell a similar story and even in the closest result in Blender with the two CPU's overclocked, the difference is still nearly 16%. The single-core Cinebench result is also interesting as it shows the impact of AMD's new boosting algorithms. Despite having twice the cores as the 1950X, the 2990WX is able to offer higher single core performance.

The Threadripper 2950X also performed well and if anything it makes the Core i9-7980XE look even worse given it's set to retail for less than $900 - half the price of the Intel CPU, yet it was within spitting distance in all the stock speed results and makes the Core i9-7900X look rather pointless given it costs about the same. It's also easy to see the performance increases over the 1950X in every test. The short story here is a very good one for AMD indeed.

Content creation

The image editing test responded well to AMD's new CPUs and there's no clearer evidence for that than between the 2950X and 1950X, which sit at opposite ends of the graph. The 2950X also beat the Core i9-7980XE, but while it came top, the Threadripper 2990WX was clearly not being fully utilized. From here on, this is where we venture out of the Threadripper 2990WX's territory as either the software or the CPU's inner workings (or both) really didn't work well in the benchmarks.

Core scaling in HandBrake seemed to continue albeit not amazingly well up to Intel's 18-core Core i9-7980XE, which offered a 30% improvement over the 10-core Core i9-7900X, but the Threadripper 2990WX was actually slower than the Threadripper 2950X, with the latter once again offering far better value than Intel's Core i9-7980XE and significant gains over its predecessor. Adobe Premiere was even worse for the 2990WX, with our 4K video project taking the longest on this CPU. Again, the 2950X performed excellently, but it's clear that with this test at least, the 2990WX was being hampered either by the software or its internal configuration.

Gaming

Another reason to maybe avoid the 2990WX, at least in its stock configuration is if you'll be gaming on your PC. It was the slowest CPU on test and often by a long way and even dropped frames in normally GPU-limited benchmarks such as Final Fantasy and World of Tanks. There are ways to improve the situation, though, which I'll talk about in a minute.

Power consumption

Finally, we get on to power consumption and it's fairly clear that at stock speed AMD is doing pretty well here, with the 32-core 2990WX drawing just 11W more under load than the 18-core Intel Core i9-7980XE. The Threadripper 2950X drew a little more than the 1950X, but that's likely due to higher clock speeds and better-boosting algorithms. Once overclocked, both the flagship CPUs drew a huge amount of power, although this was admittedly at the limits of my cooling and being an overclocking enthusiast I didn't hold back either. The 2990WX drew 735W while the 7980XE sat at 626W, so overclocking either of those systems will require a high-wattage power supply.

Fine-tuning Threadripper performance with Ryzen Master

As with first generation Threadripper CPUs, there are numerous tweaks you can apply in Ryzen Master to boost performance in certain applications. We're not talking about overclocking here, but altering the number of cores or whether Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT) is enabled. I've focussed on the 2990WX here primarily to see if some of its poor results in games and content creation can be improved.

So, above I've benchmarked the 2990WX with half its cores disabled and also with SMT turned off. As you can see this had a profound impact on some benchmarks, netting the best stock speed result in HandBrake, although only marginally better than the Core i9-7980Xe which has 14 fewer cores. Game performance was massively improved, though, with Deus Ex seeing it leapfrog the best AMD result achieved by the 2950X. If I'd overclocked the CPU and used faster memory it's likely it would have closed the gap on the Core i9-7980XE here too. Finally, with the 2990WX overclocked this time, I tried the same tweaks in Adobe Premier. There was an improvement to be sure, but nothing I tried got close even to the stock speed cores of the 1950X and 2950X.

Conclusions

The Threadripper 2950X:

It's been fascinating to see what AMD has achieved here with 2nd Generation Threadripper and in short, it's ability to disrupt the high-end desktop CPU market is more evident this time around. Starting with the 16-core Threadripper 2950X, not only did it overclock much further than its predecessor, but it was much quicker across the board at stock speed too. It's a far better option than Intel's Core i9-7900X in terms of performance and Core i9-7980XE in terms of value for content creation too and coupled with faster memory and some tweaking in Ryzen Master it's likely it would close the gap between it and the Intel CPU in games such as Deus Ex too - unfortunately I didn't have time to do that today.

The Threadripper 2990WX:

It's important to realize that this is a CPU aimed at conquering the desktop workstation market and certainly in applications, these type of customers would be using, the Threadripper 2990WX is an awesomely fast CPU. Blender, POV-Ray, Cinebench - they all paint the same picture, which is the 2990WX being much faster and cheaper than Intel's Core i9-7980XE. That's not the whole picture, though, as many other benchmarks show that performance dropping off in other areas of content creation and gaming.

This can be down to the CPUs inner workings, limitations of the software, Windows or a combination of all three. Fine-tuning using Ryzen Master might be fine for some, but having to restart your PC every time you switch from workstation tasks to gaming or content creation isn't ideal. You can consider using software that does work well with it, but if you've invested hundreds of hours learning the likes of Adobe Premier, then that might not be an option. Equally, if you're currently using free software such as HandBrake, the alternatives might mean you have to reach for your wallet. If you dabble in workstation tasks as well as games and content creation, then, there's a strong argument for opting for a better allrounder such as the Threadripper 2950X or Core i9-7980XE. The latter especially has the benefit of being one of the fastest CPUs on test in pretty much every benchmark, including games, so that's why its premium isn't as crazy as it might first appear.

To sum up, then, the only CPU that's a questionable buy in the five I've tested here is Intel's Core i9-7900X. It's much slower than AMD's cheaper Threadripper 2950X everywhere except games, and even here the gap can be narrowed using faster memory or switching to Game Mode in Ryzen Master. The 2990WX is a monstrous workstation CPU that's better than the Core i9-7980XE in practically every way, but it's maybe not the best option if you also intend to dabble in gaming and content creation.