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

Peter Donnell / 6 years ago

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.