AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X review

kakiharaFRS

2020-02-07 15:15

the 3970x seems the better deal overall... edit : do you have any explanation about the 3970x result in handbrake ? it's way above the 3960x and 3990x

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boom12a1

2020-02-07 15:20

Favorite quote of the article: "I mean if you spend 3990 USD on a 64-core processor to play games, then you're pretty much an idiot." Guess I won't be buying this, but man quite the beast. Nice review Hilbert.

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Hilbert Hagedoorn

Administrator

2020-02-07 15:26

kakiharaFRS:

do you have any explanation about the 3970x result in handbrake ? it's way above the 3960x and 3990x

No afraid not, I have been looking at that and can not isolate what is happening there, we post what we measure though. We might phase out handbrake, they will not update their software for more cores so there's a point right now it is slowly becoming a less significant benchmark.

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Hilbert Hagedoorn

Administrator

2020-02-07 15:28

kakiharaFRS:

the 3970x seems the better deal overall

That really depends on your requirements and workloads tbh. I mean as I mentioned in the conclusion, load up proxmox and you can create 16 virtualized quad-core servers on just one proc, that's golden. Same for hard-core content renderers that support this many threads.

#5758332

Strange Times

2020-02-07 15:32

awesome game perf for 128t

#5758338

tunejunky

2020-02-07 15:56

thank you HH for another detailed, amazing in depth review.

#5758339

Undying

2020-02-07 16:00

Nice review, pretty much what we expected from this beast. Well Intel now is your turn.

#5758340

Texter

2020-02-07 16:16

Subtle piece of hardware:p

#5758344

Denial

2020-02-07 16:22

Was Windows 10 Pro used for this review? The performance difference in some benchmarks between Pro/Pro (with SMT off) and Enterprise is pretty significant with this processor. I don't expect reviewers to test under three different conditions but I am curious to compare certain benchmarks with Enterprise ones if possible.

#5758347

BrainDedd

2020-02-07 16:32

Any chance of running the new 7zip 20.00 alpha or WinRAR beta with more core support? Would love to see how much difference they make.

#5758348

schmidtbag

2020-02-07 16:32

Undying:

Well Intel now is your turn.

But... they haven't even come up with a reasonable response to the 3970X yet.

#5758352

schmidtbag

2020-02-07 16:38

Slappy the Clown:

For a $4000 CPU, it blows. It lost in things that it should’ve won at! It can’t game either. For the price, it’s a rip off. It is what it is.

What did it lose to where it should have won? Also, compare this to dual-socket Xeons and this CPU is a total bargain.

#5758354

eddieobscurant

2020-02-07 16:43

Hilbert Hagedoorn:

No afraid not, I have been looking at that and can not isolate what is happening there, we post what we measure though. We might phase out handbrake, they will not update their software for more cores so there's a point right now it is slowly becoming a less significant benchmark.

You have to use a slower encoding preset in the video tab in order to see a difference. Using 4k hevc (h.265) instead of h.264 would also make the differences more visible with more cores but the main thing is to use the slower encoding preset or for the 3990x even the very slow preset in the video tab. The other option is of course running concurrently more instances of handbrake with the same setting your are using now.

#5758358

Carfax

2020-02-07 16:55

kakiharaFRS:

edit : do you have any explanation about the 3970x result in handbrake ? it's way above the 3960x and 3990x

Might have to do with Windows 10 Pro being used. Anandtech ran into some issues with Windows 10 Pro, because the OS has problems with CPUs with more than 64 threads. Windows 10 Enterprise/Workstation removes that limitation.

#5758363

Loophole35

2020-02-07 17:03

841W at 3.8Ghz on 64cores and 128threads really isn't that bad to be honest. Great review. Halo product doing halo product things. Your move "big blue".

#5758370

kanenas

2020-02-07 17:15

Nice review as always ty HH. Also the new bios update brings performance improvements 🙂 JESUS.

#5758371

Caesar

2020-02-07 17:16

That core count is just for future proofing?!!! and I agree that's a "coffin" for Intel....;) ......BTW....honestly (technically) the need to support full application is far behind..... Correct me if I've erred ( i don't think so). [SPOILER="How?"] It is also important to note that if you have N cores, that DOES NOT mean that you will get a speedup of N. That is the theoretical limit to the speedup. In fact, maybe with two cores it is twice as fast, but with four cores it might be about three times as fast, and then with eight cores it is about three and a half times as fast, etc. How well your program is actually able to take advantage of these cores is called the parallel scalability. Often communication and synchronization overhead prevent a linear speedup, although, in the ideal, if you can avoid communication and synchronization as much as possible, you can hopefully get close to linear. Source (the best way to explain): stackoverflow.com [/SPOILER]

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