The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3960X and 3970X Review: 24 and 32 Cores on 7nm
by Dr. Ian Cutress, Andrei Frumusanu & Gavin Bonshor on November 25, 2019 9:05 AM ESTTest Bed and Setup
As per our processor testing policy, we take a premium category motherboard suitable for the socket, and equip the system with a suitable amount of memory running at the manufacturer's maximum supported frequency. This is also typically run at JEDEC subtimings where possible. It is noted that some users are not keen on this policy, stating that sometimes the maximum supported frequency is quite low, or faster memory is available at a similar price, or that the JEDEC speeds can be prohibitive for performance. While these comments make sense, ultimately very few users apply memory profiles (either XMP or other) as they require interaction with the BIOS, and most users will fall back on JEDEC supported speeds - this includes home users as well as industry who might want to shave off a cent or two from the cost or stay within the margins set by the manufacturer. Where possible, we will extend out testing to include faster memory modules either at the same time as the review or a later date.
| Test Setup | |
| AMD TR3 | Threadripper 3970X Threadripper 3960X |
| Motherboard | ASUS ROG Zenith II Extreme (BIOS 0601) |
| CPU Cooler | Thermaltake Riing 360 CLC |
| DRAM | Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB 8x8 GB DDR4-3200 |
| GPU | MSI GTX 1080 Gaming 8G |
| PSU | Corsair AX860i |
| SSD | Crucial MX500 2TB |
| OS | Windows 10 1909 |
For our motherboards, we are using the latest firmware. It should be noted that our Intel tests do not have the latest Intel security updates for JCC and others, as the motherboard vendors for the models we used have not implemented them yet.
The latest AMD TR3 benchmarks were run by Gavin Bonshor, while I attended Supercomputing in Denver last week. Unfortunately both Intel and AMD decided to sample processors before the annual trade show conference, with launches only a couple of days after the show finished. As a result, our testing has been split between Gavin and myself, and we have endeavored to ensure parity through my automated testing suite.
Also, our compile test seems to have broken itself when we used Windows 10 1909, and due to travel we have not had time to debug why it is no longer working. We hope to get this test up and running in the new year, along with an updated test suite.
We must thank the following companies for kindly providing hardware for our multiple test beds. Some of this hardware is not in this test bed specifically, but is used in other testing.
| Hardware Providers | |||
| Sapphire RX 460 Nitro | MSI GTX 1080 Gaming X OC | Crucial MX200 + MX500 SSDs |
Corsair AX860i + AX1200i PSUs |
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| G.Skill RipjawsV, SniperX, FlareX |
Crucial Ballistix DDR4 |
Silverstone Coolers |
Silverstone Fans |
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csutcliff - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link
RIP IntelNikosD - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link
It's a bloodpath.Threadrippers destroy even the Xeon W-3175X of 3000$.
Intel is having hard times, no doubt about it.
They look so incompetent nowadays.
melgross - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link
You guys are really funny. Intel had its best year yet, and will have an even better one next year.While you can hope that AMD will take the industry over, it’s never going to happen. We’ve seen that predicted in the past, and it isn’t any truer now.
Xyler94 - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link
The difference though, I don't think Intel can weasel their way through this storm as they did with the Athlon days.They didn't stay in the lead because people didn't want to buy AMD, they stayed because DELL and them were bribbed not to sell AMD, so your average consumer knew nothing about how much better the AMD platforms were.
Intel still holds the performance crown for laptops, which is arguably the bigger segment of the consumer market, but if they don't do something soon, AMD has the performance crown in HEDT and Servers now, both high margin areas, which Intel is super worried about.
Santoval - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link
Next year we will see Comet & Ice Lake based laptops compete with Zen 2 (+ Navi?) based laptops. Zen 2 based laptops will certainly surpass both in CPU performance, so the question is only if they'll be able to surpass the performance of the (Gen11) iGPU of Ice Lake. By that I mean only the parts with the 64 EUs of course, the Gen11 iGPUs with 24 and 48 EUs stand on chance.In any case, it appears that Comet Lake-U/Y will power the largest bulk of Intel's machines, machines with Ice Lake-U/Y will be released in low volume, and Ice Lake-U machines with 64 EU iGPUs will almost certainly be rarer than francium and more expensive than their weight in gold.
Santoval - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link
edit : "stand *no* chance".jabber - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - link
Guys, some of you may not remember but we've been in this situation before.There was a time that Intel was king and could do no wrong. then about 16 years ago they could not do a thing right and everyone was AMD/SKT939 till the day they died. Ho ho ho!
Then AMD screwed up, Intel got it's act together and AMD was 'so over' etc. etc.
No doubt AMD will screw up again in a couple of years and Intel will get it together again...
Rinse and repeat. Just enjoy the ride.
xrror - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - link
What really sucked was seeing AMD management at the time just sit there like a sitting duck. People playing with overclocking Pentium M on desktop boards demonstrated nearly a year before Conroe launched that if Intel developed their mobile design into a desktop chip that it would be a monster chip against A64.And Intel did just that.
That said, this time around... Sunny Cove had better start to scale clock wise, else it won't matter that it's 20% faster per clock if it can't actually reach 4Ghz.
It's going to be interesting.
DaBones - Wednesday, November 27, 2019 - link
A quick difference between then and now is that both companies are doing good things. Neither is releasing a dumpster fire of a product, this time around. That's just really cool, and whoever gets shiny, metal hats, I still have some pretty good hardware options!.arcamdomain - Tuesday, December 17, 2019 - link
AMD have never been this ruthless, zen has been a massive turning for all of the market, bringing the prices down and increasing performance from both sides, unfortunately for intel, AMD have the bigger arms in this arms race, TSMC and AMD are already talking about 5nm and 3nm respectively, at which point does this become a ant vs boot scenario.