AMD Threadripper 2990WX
The most powerful desktop CPU ever, this is an exceptional choice for compute-heavy tasks
PRICE £1,367 (£1,640 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk
Cramming 32 cores into a desktop CPU is a stellar achievement for AMD – and it’s fast too, with a peak boost speed of 4.2GHz and all-core frequencies of at least 3GHz. Thanks to AMD’s Precision Boost Overdrive and other SenseMI technologies, frequencies can rise even higher if your cooling and power delivery systems are up to it.
Since the CPU is compatible with current X399-chipset motherboards, you don’t even need to invest in new hardware. Note the increased TDP, though: at 250W, its cooling needs are beyond most air coolers. If you’re hoping to overclock, you’ll need a decent all-in-one liquid cooler.
The 2990WX’s four Zeppelin dies each host eight Zen+ cores. Only 16 of these 32 cores can directly access the RAM and PCI-E bus, however; this means they can race through computational tasks at full speed, but memory-intensive, multithreaded applications are likely to be held back by latency.
With the right workload, it’s a stunner. In POV-Ray, the 2990WX wiped the floor with the Intel Core i9-7980XE, knocking a third off its benchmark times, both at stock speed and when overclocked to 4.1GHz across all cores. Nudging up to 4.2GHz resulted in an unstable system, but we did manage to get a Cinebench result at this speed – and it was the fastest we’ve ever seen, representing triple the stock-speed score of Intel’s Core i9-7900X. Even at default speeds, the 2990WX was 20% faster than the overclocked Intel Core i9-7980XE.
At the same time, disappointing scores elsewhere dragged the overall system score down to 226,926 in CPC RealBench, placing it second from last among our contenders. Even in the heavily multithreaded Handbrake test the 2990WX wasn’t as fast as we’d hoped, and gaming performance was disastrous. There’s no doubt that this is due to the latency of the second bank of cores: when we used Ryzen Master to cut the core count to 16 and disable SMT, scores instantly leapt up to match the Threadripper 2950X in Deus Ex, with the minimum frame rate rising from 39fps to 57fps. Ultimately, the Threadripper 2990WX is a niche CPU that’s lightning fast in specific circumstances but hobbled in others. For most workloads the 2950X is a smarter choice. For pure numbercrunching however, the 2990WX is the most monstrously powerful CPU we’ve seen, compellingly beating Intel’s flagship into second place.
SPECIFICATIONS 3GHz base frequency 4.2GHz max boost frequency Zen+ 12nm architecture 32 cores (64 threads) SMT 64MB L3 cache, 32 x 512KB L2 cache quad-channel DDR4 memory up to 2,933MHz Socket TR4 250W TDP