Many of the best things about Threadripper chips aren't changing with the 2950X. 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. So we then shifted all of our testing to 1080p. AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX & 2950X Review: The good news is the more affordable Threadripper 2950X becomes the ultimate high-end desktop CPU.We feel many like us … And at 4K resolution, it doesn't matter; the video card's the issue, not the CPU. On our sample, going much beyond either locked the system up, or didn't produce better scores than at our 3,950MHz setting. 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. In addition to better thermal management, Threadripper CPUs now officially support DDR4 memory clock speeds of 2,933MHz, up from 2,667MHz in the first generation. But where's the fun in that? Game mode disables a number of cores (the amount depends on the chip; in the 2950X's case, it disables eight of the 16) and tweaks the RAM to the Local memory (aka "NUMA") mode to favor gaming. The connection between the processor and memory modules is also important in determining how well your Threadripper-powered PC will handle memory-intensive tasks. You can use Ryzen Master to tweak clocks and voltages from within Windows, versus the usual BIOS-level approach. In addition, the motherboard must support Thunderbolt 3, and there are no current X399 motherboards on the market that do. Pulled from working rig. The first is dedicated to the … 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. AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2950X is a good example of beating the competitor’s product. 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. 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. 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. If not, you'll want to pair our guide with the instructions from your cooler manufacturer. It all goes into a Mean:It tempered-glass 5PM case, and a Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 1200 power supply powers everything. 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. 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. Follow him on Twitter @branttom. This test taxes only a single CPU core, as much legacy software still does. Series: Ryzen Threadripper 2nd Gen L3 Cache: 32MB L2 Cache: 8MB Cooling Device: Cooling device not included - Processor Only Model #: YD295XA8AFWOF Return Policy: View Return Policy $1,399.99 – (More on that below, too. The 1950X is the flagship of the Zen based Threadripper series which also … The first is dedicated to the desktop sector, It has 64 cores, 128 threads, a maximum frequency of 4.5GHz. The results here were all quite close, but the Threadripper 2950X held its own against a slew of pricier Intel silicon. PCMag, PCMag.com and PC Magazine are among the federally registered trademarks of Ziff Davis, LLC and may not be used by third parties without explicit permission. Will be shipped with no original packaging. The difference here between the 2950X and the Intels is around 20 percent. Cinebench shot up to a score of 3,333, an improvement of just shy of 5 percent. And so, onward to our charts. (You'd be right.) If that's you, this is the best chip of its kind that you can buy. A great example of this is the debate between the new Ryzen 3950X or their older Threadripper 2950X. 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. The absence of adequate liquid cooling solutions is one of the few reasons why you might not have wanted to buy a Threadripper 1950X. That's a lot of extra moolah to pay for a few extra cores. That's within a few frames of what we saw in the past with the various Intel Core X solutions. 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 … Our review of the 2950X … Open shopping cart. Find over 30,000 products at your local Micro Center, including the Ryzen Threadripper 2950X 3.5GHz Colfax 16-Core TR4 Boxed Processor Easy-to-use Ryzen Master software utility. If you have this processor please use our CPUID tool to submit CPUID information. (We'll get into our experience overclocking the Threadripper 2950X below. 5 Best Motherboards for the Ryzen 5 5600X, Best Motherboards for Ryzen 7 3700X & 3800X Builds (B450, X470, X570). 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 (That didn't happen among eight titles we launched, to see what would happen.). What's actually happening under the hood is complicated. Overclocking AMD's Ryzen processors is a fairly straightforward process. © 1996-2020 Ziff Davis, LLC. 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…. The difference isn't immense, but it has gotten smaller and varies significantly depending on the game you're playing. Condition is "Used". Get Yours. This is the direct replacement for the 1950X. 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. (Again, memory was set to 2,933MHz, the newly supported JEDEC profile ceiling for the Threadripper platform.). A lifetime New Yorker, John is a graduate of New York University and a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Like every Ryzen CPU, the Threadripper 2950X is overclockable, and AMD's Ryzen Master software utility makes it easy to adjust clock speeds directly from Windows instead of using the BIOS. 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. Likewise, Tom Clancy's: The Division, at 99fps (2950X) versus 108fps (7700K) was just an 8 percent deficit. The Threadripper 2950X shows a decided uptick from the 1950X and 1920X, with the Intel chips still in the lead. Aside from the satisfaction of assembling your own PC, there's a certain aura to a build with a Threadripper inside of it. Get it now! This length is the same as Intel offers for its X-series processors. 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. Keep an eye on your inbox! An updated version available on the 2950X, called Precision Boost 2, is far more granular. Along with the usual test that makes use of all available cores, we've mapped in the single-core results here, to get a sense of how AMD's new chip fares with single-threaded workloads. (More on that below, too.). Get it now! He served as Computer Shopper’s editor in chief from 2008 to 2017. There are now more than 30 coolers that are officially compatible with Threadripper chips, a few of which are air cooling solutions designed specifically with Threadripper in mind. If you're planning to buy an older X399 board such as the Asus model we used, it may require a BIOS update to be compatible with the Threadripper 2950X. The newer Intel parts are appreciably faster, but most relevant software that a Threadripper buyer might consider should be able to make good use of multiple cores. We found the best balance at all cores set to 3,950MHz; at that setting, the system ran stably, and we shaved 11 seconds off our Handbrake render time, for a gain of about 4.5 percent. Infinity Fabric results an extraordinarily innovative and scalable CPU design, but it also introduces latency as it passes requests back and forth within the chip. (Or folks who have the cash for PC bragging rights, but can't see spending twice as much money for incremental gains.) 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. The result, according to AMD, is that clock speed will decrease at a slower rate as the CPU heats up under a heavy workload. 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. (A $649 12-core complement, the Threadripper 2920X, will follow in October, along with the 24-core chip.). In our manual trials, we knocked the voltage to 1.3V and tweaked up in 25MHz increments from the base clock of 3,500MHz. $1500 RTX 3070 Build for 1440p High FPS Gaming, $2100 Ryzen 7 5800X + 6800 XT Gaming Build. AMD cautions that overclocking on your part, whether manually or using tools in Ryzen Master, still voids the warranty. Precision Boost Overclock works wonders to further increase its performance while always being stable. (As we mentioned earlier, this 12-core chip will be supplanted by a second-generation 12-core Threadripper, the 2920X, in October.). Because audio transcoding with this version of the application taxes only a single core, we suspected as much. We compare the AMD Ryzen 9 3900X with the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2950X with a wide selection of benchmark tools and data to help you choose the right processor, for your computing needs. But let's dig into why Threadipper remains a whopper of a bargain for extreme power seekers. Even better, it retails for $899, $100 less than the debut prices of the 1950X and its closest Intel alternative, the Core i9-7900X. Here, we first opted for letting Ryzen Master do the work, engaging Precision Boost Overdrive to see if the more granular controls over power management and other similar settings would make a difference. We don't have CPU ID information for the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2950X CPU in our database. The former is the default and used under most circumstances, while Game mode is a special state that disables half the cores and changes the memory state to accelerate performance in certain games. You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time. The display of third-party trademarks and trade names on this site does not necessarily indicate any affiliation or the endorsement of PCMag. Only the 18-core Core i9-7980XE could catch the new Threadripper or its parent, and that not by a whole lot. We open a standard test file (it's of a flying squirrel) and time how long the test processor takes to finish the render. 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. John is PCMag's executive editor for hardware. If you click an affiliate link and buy a product or service, we may be paid a fee by that merchant. He previously covered the consumer tech beat as a news reporter for PCMag in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, where he rode in several self-driving cars and witnessed the rise and fall of many startups. 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. 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. It continuously adjusts the clock speed in increments as small as 25MHz to allow the CPU to run at the highest possible frequency based on the capabilities of the power supply and cooler. That's good, as the Core i7-7700K (as well as its 8700K successor) tends to outperform both the Threadripper chips and the Intel Core X line for gaming at 1080p. AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-Core, 16 … AMD’s 16 core, 32 thread Ryzen Threadripper 1950X is finally here to seize the throne for high end desktop processors. In almost every segment, the processors of AMD perform much better than the Intel equivalents. The memory configuration in the 2950X is more symmetrical and has a UMA (uniform memory access) mode. PCMag.com is a leading authority on technology, delivering Labs-based, independent reviews of the latest products and services. 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. Our expert industry analysis and practical solutions help you make better buying decisions and get more from technology. 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. Sign up for What's New Now to get our top stories delivered to your inbox every morning. 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. Given the mostly under-10-percent difference between the two modes, though, unless you're a frame-rate stickler, you may want to just leave Creator mode enabled, especially since you need to reboot when switching between the two modes. In fact, we tested it with the same Asus ROG X399 Zenith Extreme motherboard and Thermaltake Floe Riing RGB 360 liquid cooler that we used to test its predecessor. But AMD says across the 75 or so games it tested with this generation of the chip, Game mode offered a roughly 5 to 10 percent improvement in some titles, with the effect and variability ranging from game to game. 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 For serious Enthusiasts, Prosumers and Creators, AMD designed the new 2nd Gen Ryzen™ Threadripper™ 2920X. 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. You will probably never use all 64 lanes, but if you plan to install two GPUs and two PCIe SSDs, you'll occupy 40 lanes and have plenty of leftovers for future add-ins. Selling with no cooler. We then switched over to our venerable iTunes Conversion Test, using version 10.6 of iTunes. During submission, … 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. ), As with the 1950X, the Ryzen Master software also lets you toggle between Creator and Game modes. Now that the Threadripper ecosystem has had a year to mature, you can also select among dozens of motherboards, coolers, power supplies, and other components to suit your tastes and budget. 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 AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper 1950X processor is designed to provide indisputable multi-processing supremacy on the X399 ultimate platform for desktop. Some games prefer more cores; others benefit more from less latency. Here's what we saw, with all figures in frames per second... What does that tell us? The Threadripper 2950X turned in an average frame rate of 121 frames per second (fps) in Creator mode. 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. 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. This arrangement would be tighter, or in some cases impossible, on an Intel Core X-series chip and the current X299 platform. Any chip at this price range, AMD or Intel, is suited to a rather small subset of potential PC builders: people who need as much multi-thread, multi-core compute power as possible for the money. 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. Installing a Threadripper CPU is a unique process because of its large size (remember, it's essentially two regular Ryzen chips fused together). For example, the Core i9-7900X ($999.99 at Newegg) supports 44 lanes, while the Core i7-7820X ($913.92 at Amazon) supports 28. A graduate of Middlebury College, Tom also has a master's degree in journalism and French Studies from New York University. Boasting 12 high-performance cores capable of harnessing 24 parallel threads, the Ryzen™ Threadripper… 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. Best X399 Motherboards for Threadripper 2 (2990WX/2950X). The lack of Thunderbolt 3 support isn't entirely AMD's fault, since Intel developed the technology and charges royalties to use it (though the royalties may end this year). 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. That said, we still can't recommend overly aggressive overclocking of the 2950X. AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2950X - Benchmark, Geekbench 5, Cinebench R20, Cinebench R23, Cinebench R15 and FP32 iGPU (GFLOPS) benchmark results 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." He has also worked in the science-book field and as an editor of computer-tech books for Paramount Publishing. The lane count can vary with these chips depending on which one you install. 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. 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. 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. Find over 30,000 products at your local Micro Center, including the Ryzen Threadripper 2950X 3.5GHz Colfax 16-Core TR4 Boxed Processor That said, the Core i9-7980XE has a suggested price of $1,999, more than twice that of the top Threadripper chip, and it hasn't budged much from that rarified price spot since its debut in 2017. The 2950X's $899 retail price still classes it as a luxe-level CPU, but it's still $100 less than both its Threadripper predecessor and its nearest competitor, Intel's Core i9-7900X. Overclocking, per AMD and a message right in Ryzen Master, does void your warranty. This is thanks to an update to AMD's Precision Boost feature. (Maybe.) 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. 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). You could also laugh off the name as marketing hyperbole dreamed up in a Madison Avenue board room. (The software allows for 25MHz up-steps.) Newegg shopping upgraded ™ 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. 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. This … Like the 1950X before it, it earns our Editors' Choice award. This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links. 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 … Precision Boost Overclock works wonders to further increase its performance while always being stable. Creator mode is enabled by default, and it offers the best performance for tackling tasks that like lots of threads. 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. First up in our testing regimen: Maxon's CPU-crunching Cinebench R15 test. Get yours. Your subscription has been confirmed. AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2950X A 32-bit operating system can only support up to 4GB of RAM. 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 …