AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X
Third-generation Threadripper is the new king of cores.
AMD has thrown down the gauntlet with the third round of Threadripper, delivering many of the fastest benchmark results I’ve ever seen.
Intel’s response is telling. It slashed prices on its 10th-gen Cascade Lake-X parts. It’s still not enough – at least, not if you’re after maximum multithreaded performance. AMD and Intel have now swapped positions in terms of pricing, with the Threadripper 3970X occupying Intel’s former threegrand slot. At least the platform and hardware justify the cost.
At times, the performance of the 3970X is mind-blowing. Anyone dabbling in 3D rendering will love how fast it is. Cinebench completes its baseline test in a matter of seconds – we remember waiting several minutes just a few years ago on some PCs. The same goes for other tools, such as Blender, Corona, and POV-ray. Other multithreaded tasks start to hit the limits of scaling, however. Video editing is faster than on a 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X, but nowhere near twice as fast. Software development with large projects should benefit, though, as should several other professional applications.
AMD’s new TRX40 platform makes some noteworthy changes to help with scaling and performance. Moving the memory controller into the IO chiplet means memory access speeds should be more uniform this round. AMD also links the CPU package and chipset with a PCIe x8 connection, and upgrades the interface to PCIe Gen4, giving it four times the bandwidth between the CPU and chipset compared to other CPUs. The only potential drawback is that this means third-generation Threadripper had to ditch backward compatibility – you can’t put a 3970X into an X399 motherboard.
Depending on the app and workload, 3970X is either thread and shoulders above the competition, or it occasionally stumbles. Gaming performance is mostly OK, but several games seem to get confused by the deluge of cores and threads. Far Cry 5, Metro Exodus, and Total War: Warhammer 2 all perform worse than a Ryzen 9 3950X (or even a 3900X), but seven other games we tested tied. General performance, measured by PCMark 10, is also worse than a Ryzen 9 3950X, and Handbrake H.265 1080p encoding is only 12 percent faster, despite having twice the cores to work with.
Much like Field of Dreams, we believe if you build it (Threadripper), they (apps) will come. Ten years ago, the fastest PCs had four-core CPUs. Ten years before that, the only PCs with more than a single CPU core were multisocket servers. What will PCs look like 10 years from now?
Not everyone needs a 32-core monster CPU, but if you do, AMD is pretty much the only game worth watching. AMD’s Zen 2 processors are fabricated on a superior 7nm process, allowing for more cores, less power, and higher clock speeds. Intel desperately needs to get 10nm desktop parts on to the market if it wants to compete, and by the time those arrive, maybe 7nm as well. JARRED WALTON
At times, the performance of the 3970X is mind-blowing. Anyone dabbling in 3D rendering will love how fast it is..