AMD Threadripper 2950X Processor Review

Peter Donnell / 6 years ago

Overclocking

Settings

Overclocking is very easy on Ryzen and Threadripper, as the Master Utility can pretty much handle it all for you. Using XFR and SenseMI, the CPU will always try to clock as high as it can to give you the best performance. This is, of course, assuming you have the thermal headroom to do so at that time. With a big cooler installed, our Threadripper had nothing to worry about though. I was able to comfortably hit 4.15GHs with just 1.3v in the Ryzen Master Utility. Considering this is an easy overclock to hit via software, it’s something any consumer should be able to do if they desired. The performance gains were immediate but at the cost of efficiency. For most people, leaving the default values are likely the best course of action though, depending on your requirements and cooling setup.

Performance

3DMark: 22654 – 23146
WPrime: 2.871/49.348 – 2.82/47.275
CineBench R15: 177/3181 – 172/3561
Rise of the Tomb Raider: 130.64 – 165.99

The performance jump is certainly impressive for such a simple overclock. We only changed the clock speed to 4.15 (all cores) and voltage, nothing else. This saw our 3DMark score climb to a more respectable 23146. It also cut down the already impressive WPrime score to just 47.275 seconds. What’s most impressive though are the CineBench and Tomb Raider results. Cinebench climbed to a whopping 3561, while Tomb Raider saw a stagging 35 FPS increase in performance.

The power usage is high on this CPU, but then again, there’s a lot of CPU to power. It’s not like it’s wasting that power either, as the performance figures are impressive. When overclocked, it’s actually more efficient than the Intel offerings too, while also maintaining some truly staggering temperatures thanks to that massive air cooler.