AMD Threadripper 2970WX 24-Core 48-Thread CPU Review

Threadripper 2970WX Picking the right CPU can be a daunting task for many, as it can dictate so much about how your PC performs. Picking a fast GPU is easy enough, picking fast ram, storage, and other components, not too hard either. For most consumers buying AMD, a Ryzen series CPU is more than enough for work and gaming. However, the Threadripper range is better suited to content creators. If you make games, render a lot of videos, do a lot of VFX rendering, transcoding, editing, and other computational workloads, they're perfect for the job. The new 2970WX features a whopping 24-cores and 48 threads. That's obviously not as many as the flagship 32-core 64-thread CPU they offer. However, it's still a boatload more than the 8-cores of a flagship Ryzen CPU, and the price obviously reflects the core count too. So just much performance do we get from this mid-high-end Threadripper? Let's find out! Features 24 "Zen+"-cores with 250 Watt Thermal Design Power (TDP) 48 Threads thanks to Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT) Very high single- and multi-threaded performance Base clock of 3.0 GHz & 4.2 GHz Turbo with Precision Boost With XFR’s automatic overclocking function Unlocked multiplier for manual overclocking (unlocked CPU) Large Unified Memory Cache: combines 76 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 an extensive feature set Supports energy-efficient DDR4-RAM (Quad-Channel) CPU Pictures Specifications For in-depth specifications, please visit the official AMD product page here. What AMD Had to Say "Designed for artists, editors, and engineers, the 2nd Generation AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper 2970WX processor unleashes the brute force of 24-cores and 48-threads of raw processing power so your creativity has no limits. Optimize system performance with true machine intelligence – AMD SenseMI learns and adapts to customize performance to you and your applications. Render, design, mix, edit, compose, model, and play through your most intimidating projects with the overwhelming power and unrestrained multi-tasking ability of the world’s first 24-core desktop processor." 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: 18019 Unigine: 5296 PCMark 10 (Express): 4440 WPrime: 40.578 CineBench R15: 172/4452 Handbrake: 89 It's immediately clear how far this CPU is from a standard consumer CPU here. In all of our graphics benchmarks, it's pretty darn slow. It gave a 3DMark score on-par with the more affordable Ryzen 5 1500X, and it gave us our slowest Unigine score to date too. This isn't a gaming CPU in its stock state, only by disabling most of the cores in the software will you get that performance up. Is it slow, no, but most things are faster none the less. Even PCMark 10 was rubbish, although it did outperform one CPU; the Threadripper 2990WX. Turn The Tables Putting the CPU into serious number crunching tasks, however, and that performance ratio really shows. It scored the second fastest WPrime score we've ever had, with only the 32-core Threadripper beating it. Then it scored the second highest Cinebench score to date, with only the 32-core Threadripper beating that. Finally, it scored a whopping 89 FPS in Handbrake, our second highest score to date, beating out the 2990WX, and just 3 FPS behind the 2920X. If you're less interested in 3DMark, and more interested in Premiere, Handbrake, and other transcoding software, it's an absolute monster. 3DMark Firestrike Unigine Superposition PCMark 10 Express WPrime Cinebench R15 Handbrake MP4 to MKV Conversion 4K Gaming Performance Rise of the Tomb Raider: 144.4 Deus Ex Mankind Divided: 53.1/69.9 Ghost Recon Wildlands: 90.6/105.1 Far Cry Primal: 77 Gaming performance on this CPU is, well, it's a bit lacklustre if I'm honest. Not that I'm bothered, as if you're buying this for a purely gaming PC build, then you're not really doing your research. The performance is still more than good enough to play games though, don't get me wrong. However, I'd see it more as suitable for games developers who need the extra cores for rendering a scene, but enough grunt to also test that software on the same system. It'll also work well enough for game streamers, as the extra cores will take the load off of capture, rendering and streaming software. Rise of the Tomb Raider Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Ghost Recon: Wildlands Far Cry Primal Overclocking Performance 3DMark: 18019 > 18888 WPrime: 40.578 > 36.87 CineBench R15: 172/4452 > 176/4856 Rise of the Tomb Raider: 144.4 > 148.2 This is an interesting one, as we often find negative results when overclocking manually. The Threadripper CPUs are already pretty highly strung and generate quite a bit of heat due to their core density. However, using AMD's software, we can enable PBO (Precision Boost Overdrive) and DLM (Dynamic Local Mode). The end result of these two is the software pushes the ensure maximum clocks when you need it, and better memory distribution to your applications. Of course, this also reflected in some nice performance improvements. The 3DMark score shop up by over 800 points and WPrime dropped by almost 4 seconds! For those rendering, you'll be happy to see a nice improvement in both single and multicore performance for Cinebench. Furthermore, even gaming came away with better performance, with a 4 FPS gain in Tomb Raider. 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 2970WX 24-Core 48-Thread processor is available now. You can pick one up from most major retailers, and Amazon has it listed at just £1199.99. That's a lot of money, obviously, but it's also a more affordable solution to the £1599.99 32-core 64-thread model. Either way, both models work out at around £50 per core, and it's great to see AMD offer up more logical steps in their CPU range. Both still a far cry from the £2000+ of the Intel i9 Extreme range. Overview To the gamers reading this, the Threadripper CPU range may seem like a complete waste of money, and you would be half right. Sure, you can game on this, but to get better single core performance and lower temperatures to do that, you need to disable most of the cores on the CPU. Doing this requires a reboot of the system to. It's a pain in the arse, but at least it'll do it. For those people, a Ryzen 7 chip would be ideal. However, not everyone plays games on every system they build. If I was building a new Plex server, with Handbrake transcoding, multiple streams, and overlay processing and more. Well, the 2970WX would be an absolute monster of a workhorse for me. I could render multiple 4K streams in real-time without any concern. Content creators and render their VFX and video stabilisation in seconds, not minutes, not hours. Time is money after all! Performance is King Personally, I would buy this one over the more expensive 32-core model. For one it's £400 cheaper, but it also has better single core performance, it's a little easier to overclock, it's easier to cool. However, most importantly, the performance may be "second best" but it's still a freaking league and a half ahead of most anything else when it comes to number-crunching. It's like having the second faster Ferrari; it's still bloody fast. Should I Buy One? If you're building a workstation and are tired of waiting for that rendering progress bar to get a move on, this is the CPU for you. For extreme loads and massive projects like making movies, the 32-core is better suited. However, for mid-size projects such as YouTubers, streamers etc, this is more than enough.