HEAD TO HEAD

Battle of the big chips.

Threadripper 3970X vs. Core i9-10980XE vs. Ryzen 9 3950X

Last month we looked at affordable APUs; this time, we’re going in the opposite direction, and pitting the biggest and baddest CPUs around against each other. These are the high-end desktop parts, the big boys, the costly but high-powered processors that many of us will never even hold in our hands. These CPUs have more cores, higher clock speeds, and monstrous power draws compared to your average desktop processor, making short work of CPU-heavy tasks and benchmarks. But which one is best? Let’s take a look.

1 Value

Which of these HEDT processors is the best value? Well, it’s not the new Threadripper. Yes, the 3970X has some entertainingly over-the-top specs and tends to top most benchmarking tables, but if you thought the second-gen Threadrippers were pricey, the 3980X commands a healthy $3,199. The other two processors are pretty close in price, with the Ryzen 9 3950X costing $1,219, and the Core i9-10980XE coming in at $1,799.

In terms of value for money, they’re pretty close, too. The 10980XE is 16 percent more expensive, but it does have 12 percent more cores (that’s 18 cores compared to the Ryzen’s 16). The 3950X’s cores are tad faster, though, with a core clock of 3.5GHz as opposed to the 10980XE’s 3.0GHz. It’s a close call, and none of these CPUs comes with an included cooler to tip the balance of value; the assumption is that if you can afford one of these chips, you can afford a powerful third-party cooling solution.

Ultimately, we’ll give it to the 3950X, because it’s the cheapest of the three, yet can still outperform the Intel chip in some areas. The Ryzen CPU still comes with a free game and three months’ worth of Xbox Game Pass for PC at the time of writing, too.

2 Efficiency

Again, the Threadripper stumbles out of the gate and has to be put down. Tragic. Yes, that monstrous 280W thermal power design means that the 3970X is out of the running, as it guzzles power to ensure that top-tier performance. The Threadripper series has always demanded serious cooling, too, requiring a specific TR4compatible cooling block.

The Ryzen 9 3950X has a relatively conservative TDP of 105W; still pretty high for a conventional desktop CPU, but sensible for an HEDT part. There’s nothing particularly notable efficiency-wise here, but none of these CPUs is very efficient, all demanding a lot of power and producing a lot of heat, particularly if overclocked. The i9-10980XE draws 165W, and uses the more esoteric LGA 2066 socket in terms of cooling, unlike the 3950X, which uses the common AM4 socket.

In short, the Ryzen is the winner again here. The 3950X isn’t amazingly efficient by any means, but it’s certainly the best in this limited field, almost purely by virtue of its comparatively low power draw. It’s relatively overclockable, but doing so brings its thermals up into the range of the other two CPUs, so this is a close one, but we’ll give it to the Ryzen.

3 Features

The Intel CPU isn’t looking good in this section. There’s a handful of features unique to each of these processors, but both AMD chips have something that the 10980XE lacks: PCIe 4.0 support. Intel has yet to break into the fourth generation of PCIe devices, which brings support for super-speedy NVMe Gen 4 M.2 SSDs, and improved bandwidth for expansion components, such as GPUs. Specialist systems, such as home RAID setups, benefit significantly from the improved read/write headroom PCIe 4.0 offers, and anyone who deals with large file transfers on the regular should see an improvement, too. Both AMD chips utilise PCIe 4.0 for core interfacing, improving internal speeds.

PCIe 4.0 is the big draw, but there are other features of note. Intel’s Turbo Boost tech means that the 10980XE is theoretically capable of some seriously impressive automatic overclocking figures on a per-core basis – useful, as manual overclocking isn’t something you’d want to do with these CPUs. The 10980XE and 3970X have quad-channel memory support, while the Ryzen 9 CPU only has dual-channel support. That leads us to look to the Threadripper for our winner this round, with PCIe 4.0 and quad-channel memory making it the most feature-packed chip on the list.

The best CPU in this selection is the Threadripper 3970X. There’s no doubt about that; this 32-core beast wins in almost every area of testing, and has the raw processing power to outmatch the other two. The 3970X is awesome in every sense of the word, but it’s fair to say that it isn’t a realistic prospect for most consumers. Pricing a single component at $3,200 isn’t really going to entice anyone outside the prosumer space, and while the other two processors aren’t exactly affordable, there’s more potential for enthusiasts there.

Unless you’re carrying out very specific tasks (such as disk encryption, in the vein of the VeraCrypt benchmark), we would find it difficult to recommend the Intel Core i9-10980XE. Yes, it’s the best in most game benchmarks when coupled with a 2080 Ti, but only by a few frames per second, and we really can’t stress enough that you should not be looking at any of these components to build a pure gaming system. HEDT parts are best put to use in computers that will be carrying out CPUintensive tasks, and we’d recommend close runner-up the Ryzen 9 3950X for any enthusiasts reading this. $1,200 is a lot for a CPU, but the 3950X is a high-quality component that will provide top-notch processor performance.