AMD 2920X 12-Core 24-Thread Processor Review

Threadripper 2920X Picking the right CPU can be a demanding task, as you try to strike that balance between the performance you require and the budget you have available to you. Threadripper CPUs have already proven to be superb value for money for those needing a savage number-crunching CPU that laughs in the face of the much more expensive Intel Xeon/X299 chips. The current second generation AMD Threadripper CPUs we have reviewed clocked in at just £50 per core. However, their 24 and 32 core variants still make them pretty expensive chips for a lot of consumers. For those on a budget, I guess a Ryzen 8-Core CPU would be great though. So what about something in between? The 2920X offers up 12 high-performance Threadripper cores, and 24 Threads. A far cry from the 32-Core flagship, but at under £600, it's also a lot cheap, and around £48 per core; that's a freaking bargain all day long. Of course, the performance is what really matters. With a 3.5 GHz clock speed, and an impressive 4.3 GHz turbo, it's certainly appealing. Fewer cores mean less power and heat, but also allows those higher core speeds compared to the more cores/slower core speeds of the higher up models. Features 12 "Zen+" cores with 180 Watt Thermal Design Power (TDP) 24 Threads thanks to Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT) Very high single- and multi-threaded performance Base Clock of 3.5 GHz & 4.3 GHz Turbo with Precision Boost With XFR’s automatic overclocking function Unlocked multiplier for manual overclocking (unlocked CPU) Large Unified Memory Cache: combines 38 MB L2- and L3 Cache Highly-efficient, non-planar 12-Nanometer FinFET transistors AVX2 Instruction Set Extensions for complex vector calculations Two AES units for fast, reliable data encryption Modern TR4 platform with extensive feature set Supports energy-efficient DDR4-RAM (Quad-Channel) Specifications For in-depth specifications, please visit the official AMD product page here. What AMD Had to Say "For serious Enthusiasts, Prosumers and Creators, AMD designed the new 2nd Gen Ryzen™ Threadripper™ 2920X. Boasting 12 high-performance cores capable of harnessing 24 parallel threads, the Ryzen™ Threadripper™ 2920X is the processor of choice when you need to game, stream and create at the same time." Product Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnzQqytuI20 How We Test Testing Procedure Here at eTeknix, we endeavour to disclose vital information regarding the benchmarking process so that readers can quantify the results and attempt to replicate them using their hardware. When it comes to our benchmarks in our reviews, the benchmarks are pretty self-explanatory although there are a few exceptions. Remember that your choice of motherboard, the silicon lottery, and other factors can yield different numbers, and there's always a margin for error when using any software. Therefore, your experience may vary. Testing Your Own System Links are provided below, as well as the settings we use. We encourage you to not just look at how one product compares to any other, but how it compares to your own. If you're looking to build a new system, you should benchmark your current PC using our benchmarks and settings where possible. You should then look at the percentage improvement from your current hardware to the hardware we tested to give you a ballpark figure of how much an upgrade this will provide you with. Intel Testbenches Z390 Motherboard - Gigabyte AORUS Master RAM - Crucial DDR4 3000MHz Quad-Channel 32GB + Optane CPU Cooler - Noctua D15S with dual fans Graphics Card - Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Power Supply - BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive - Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis - Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System - Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit Z370 Motherboard - Gigabyte AORUS Ultra Gaming RAM - Crucial DDR4 3000MHz Quad-Channel 32GB + Optane CPU Cooler - Noctua D15S with dual fans Graphics Card - Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Power Supply - BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive - Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis - Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System - Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit X299 Motherboard - Gigabyte AORUS Gaming 9 RAM - Crucial DDR4 3000MHz Quad-Channel 32GB CPU Cooler - Noctua D15S with dual fans Graphics Card - Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Power Supply - BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive - Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis - Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System - Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit AMD Testbenches X399 (2nd Generation Threadripper) Motherboard – MSI X399 Creation MEG RAM – Crucial 64GB (8x8GB ) 3000 MHz CPU Cooler – Deep Cool Fryzen Graphics Card – Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Power Supply – BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive – Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis – Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System – Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit X399 (Threadripper) Motherboard – MSI X399 Gaming Pro Carbon AC RAM – Crucial Ballistix 32GB (4x8GB) 2400MHz CPU Cooler – CM Master Liquid 120mm (will be retested with Noctua D15S with dual fans in coming weeks) Graphics Card – Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Power Supply – BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive – Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis – Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System – Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit AM4 X470 (Pinnacle Ridge) Motherboard - Gigabyte X470 Gaming 7 RAM - GeIL DDR4 3200MHz Dual Channel 16GB CPU Cooler - Noctua D15S with dual fans Graphics Card - Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Power Supply - BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive - Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis - Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System - Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit AM4 X370 (Raven Ridge) Motherboard - MSI XPower Titanium X370 RAM - GeIL DDR4 3200MHz Dual Channel 16GB CPU Cooler - Noctua D15S with dual fans Graphics Card - Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Power Supply - BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive - Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis - Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System - Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit Games and Settings Used All games are tested on a 60 Hz display with V-Sync off for all tests. Rise of the Tomb Raider (Steam) DX12 Medium Preset Pure Hair Off Deus Ex (Steam) DX12 Medium Preset Ghost Recon: Wildlands (Uplay) Medium Preset Turf Effects Off Far Cry Primal (Uplay) Normal Preset Software Used 3DMark Fire Strike (download) FireStrike (1080p) Benchmark Unigine Superposition (download) 1080p Extreme Benchmark PCMark 10 Professional (download) Express Benchmark WPrime (download) 32M and 1024M Power usage recorded at 1024M 50% complete, thermals recorded at 75% complete CineBench R15 (download) CPU Multi CPU Single Handbrake (download) Custom MP4 to MKV 4K conversion (details below) AIDA64 Engineer (download) CPU-Z (download) HWMonitor (download) Handbrake To stress processors to their absolute limit and accurately judge their performance in video editing workloads, we transcode a 7.7GB compilation of gaming footage; this particular file is freely available from here. The captured footage is 22 minutes and 12 seconds long, it has a bit rate of 50.1 Mbps, and it uses the Advanced Video Codec. Additionally, the video runs at a constant 30 frames-per-second and opts for a 3820 x 2140 (4K) resolution. Once loaded into Handbrake, we then transcode the 4K MP4 to an MKV file using the "normal" profile. Other Notes A rest period of 2-5 minutes is observed between each piece of software allowing the system to return to its idle power usage and temperatures. Background services like Windows Update are checked to not be running during the testing period by setting WiFi to Metered Connection. Updates All games, graphics card drivers, BIOS, Windows and everything else is always kept up to date with the latest available. Older benchmarks may not be retested until stated otherwise. However, all hardware will be tested with the best and latest firmware and software available to that hardware at the time of review. As of 1st of May 2018, all hardware was retested on their latest drivers. Anything after this date will again be using their most recent versions available to them. Thanks Thank you to Noctua, Crucial, ASUS, Gigabyte, Lian-Li, be quiet!, OCZ, for providing the hardware that helps makes these tests possible! Synthetic Benchmarks 3DMark: 21554 Unigine: 5300 PCMark 10 (Express): 5100 WPrime: 4.2/64.221 CineBench R15: 175/2666 Handbrake: 92 New Record! Threadripper CPUs have a few traits in common, and it's clear their single core performance just isn't on par with the Intel CPUs, which often have a higher clock speed overall. This puts AMD at a disadvantage in tests that favour the GPU, such as 3DMark, Unigine, and even PCMark 10, where more traditional quad-core solutions often come out best. Despite this, the 3DMark score was pretty impressive, keeping pace with the i7-8700K. It's also a million miles ahead of the 32-core 2990 WX which only scored 17068. Number Crunching Threadripper lives up to its name in tasks that can use all 12-cores and 24-threads though. In tests like WPrime, it scored a mighty fast time of 64.221 seconds, which was enough to thrash the i9-9909K's time of 83.564 seconds. It then went for the i9's throat in CineBench too, scoring 2666 points, vs the i9's 2071 points. However, the i9 still holds one on to the highest single core performance scores ever. Remarkably the 2920 set a new record for Handbrake though, seems 12 Cores and these clockspeeds are the perfect combination for faster 4K video rendering times, and you won't hear me complaining about that performance! 3DMark Firestrike Unigine Superposition PCMark 10 Express WPrime Cinebench R15 Handbrake MP4 to MKV Conversion 4K Gaming Performance Rise of the Tomb Raider: 168 Deus Ex Mankind Divided: 91.2 Ghost Recon Wildlands: 130.4 Far Cry Primal: 98 Threadrippers gaming performance is often, well, it's often pretty crap actually. However, the drop in core count on this CPU did mean it has a higher clock speed and much higher boost speed. The benefits of this are clear for all to see, which some of the best Threadripper gaming performance we've seen to date. The FPS is actually very competitive with the Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 series here and very much playable for anyone. Of course, you've still got another 4-cores over say, the Ryzen 7 series. For rendering video, streaming games, and content creation for gamers in general, that's a welcome advantage. Rise of the Tomb Raider Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Ghost Recon: Wildlands Far Cry Primal Overclocking Using AMD’s Ryzen Master Utility software, I enabled PBO (Precision Boost Overdrive) and DLM (Dynamic Local Mode). Using these two features allows the CPU to dynamically overclock the CPU so long as there is thermal overhead on the CPU cooler, and ensure that applications get the cores and memory resources they require. For me, it seems to work much better than trying to manually overclock Threadripper CPUs. Of course, the results speak for themselves. The 3DMark score increased a few hundred points, and we even shaved another 2 seconds off of the WPrime score too. There was almost no improvement to single core performance in Cinebench, but the multi-core score was getting near 3000 points after a few tweaks! The most drastic improvement, however, was Tomb Raider, which saw another 13 FPS added to its performance. Performance 3DMark: 21554 > 21890 WPrime: 64.221 > 62.11 CineBench R15: 175/2666 > 176/2971 Rise of the Tomb Raider: 168/181 3DMark Firestrike WPrime Cinebench R15 Rise of the Tomb Raider Power Consumption Stock Overclocked Temperatures Stock Overclocked Final Thoughts How Much Does it Cost? The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX 32-Core 64-Thread processor is still priced around £1599.99, or about £50 per core if you want to work it out that way. However, the Threadripper 2920X is priced at just £599 on Amazon and some retailers like Scan have it lower than that at just £583.49. This is without a doubt a bit of a bargain for the level of performance on offer. It's about £90 more than the i9-9900K, but if you're not gaming, and you're simply rendering, and doing content creation, the 2920X had the i9 beaten in all the right places. Overview AMD has been building up its war chest with exceptional pace these last few years. Their range of Ryzen CPUs reinvigorated the affordable and mid-range PC market. Even the enthusiasts (myself included) jumped on their Ryzen 7 series for gaming. Now they're chipping away at Intel, with extremely competitive performance, huge core counts, and a price per core ratio that giving consumers some impressive choices for their money. Intel still holds the crown for some things, such as gaming, and their extreme CPUs are faster in many areas. However, Intel's CPUs are often much more expensive. Gaming Threadripper isn't a gaming CPU by nature, but the 12-core model is the one that comes closest. Its gaming performance was much better than previous TR4 CPUs. Of course, the fewer cores on offer means that each core can have a higher clock speed due to the lower overall TDP. This means the 2920X is closer to the Ryzen 7 configurations than it is the 2990WX. That's a good thing though because it means we saw higher frame rates in all our games. Should I Buy One? It seems 12 cores is a really nice sweet spot for Threadripper. The budget TR4 this may be, but it's got plenty of get-up-and-go for the money. It smashed out a new record of 92 FPS in Handbrake while transcoding 4K video and it still scored amazingly in CineBench and WPrime. Furthermore, it gave us good gaming performance, it overclocked nicely, it doesn't run too hot. It's got a lot going for it. If you're looking to build a competent workstation for game development, video editing, game streaming and more, you could do a lot worse, and at this price, what's not to love?