AMD Threadripper 2950X
A stunning high-end CPU for content creators, but make sure to pair it with fast memory for the best results
PRICE £681 (£817 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk
With 16 cores and 32 threads, the Threadripper 2950X goes head to head with Intel’s i9-7900X – and the price is the same too. Like the original 16-core Threadripper, its TDP remains slightly higher than Intel’s at 180W, but there’s no need for expensive watercooling as it will work with a wide range of air coolers.
The Threadripper 2950X is a chip that’s made for overclocking, and we managed to get ours up to 4.2GHz on all cores using a 1.425V vcore, which is our safe limit for an everyday overclock. That’s a big 400MHz higher than we managed with the equivalent first-generation CPU.
Indeed, we found that the old Threadripper 1950X often worked best at stock speed, as with default settings the CPU was capable of automatically boosting a couple of cores up to 4.2GHz. With the Threadripper 2950X, you can hit that speed across all cores, losing only a little in terms of lightly threaded performance, and gaining a huge amount of multithreaded speed – as can be seen from the graphs on this page and overleaf.
Even if you keep the 2950X at stock clocks, performance is excellent. It managed to better the Core i9-7980XE in the CPC RealBench image-editing test, adding almost 2,000 points to its predecessor’s score. It came a very respectable second in the video encoding test too, beating the similarly priced Core i9-7900X by a massive 40%. And predictably it made a mockery of Intel in the heavily threaded Blender, POV-Ray and Cinebench tests; here only the Threadripper 2990WX and Core i9-7980XE were quicker.
Games aren’t the 2950X’s strong point out of the box, but we found that using faster memory than our standard 3,000MHz kit yielded worthwhile boosts. Switching to Game Mode in Ryzen Master helped too. The minimum frame rate was otherwise 10fps adrift of the Core i9-7900X in Deus Ex Mankind Divided ( see overleaf) but not too far behind in Ashes of the Singularity and Fallout 4.
Overall, the 2950X doesn’t best Intel’s Core i9-7980XE, but that costs more than twice the price. Weigh it against the similarly priced 7900X and it’s a clear winner in all tests other than gaming – and, as we’ve noted, there are ways to narrow the gap here. Even in a standard, stock-speed setup, the 2950X is fantastic value for content creators or anyone investing in a high-end desktop system.
SPECIFICATIONS 3.5GHz base frequency 4.4GHz max boost frequency Zen+ 12nm architecture 16 cores (32 threads) SMT 32MB L3 cache, 16 x 512KB L2 cache quad-channel DDR4 memory up to 2,933MHz Socket TR4 180W TDP