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Threadripper-Feature

For the past 5 months, AMD has steadily pushed its new Zen compages into the enthusiast, mainstream, and budget desktop markets. These new Ryzen CPUs and their server counterparts (sold nether the Epyc make name) take reinvigorated AMD'due south CPU sales and breathed new life into the company'southward long-term prospects. Today, AMD is launching the last slice of its refresh puzzle — a new, ultra-high-end platform, with up to 16 cores, 32 threads, and 64 lanes of PCI Express 3.0 connectivity.

Today'due south launch is, of course, the loftier-terminate desktop finale to the Ryzen refresh bicycle AMD kicked off in before this year. Only on a more than metaphorical level, it'south a refresh cycle AMD's fans have been hoping would go far for over a decade. To be a CPU enthusiast is, generally speaking, to be a fan of a CPU's performance, not its price. I doubt few aficionados of the original Athlon 64 FX-51 fondly recall its four-digit price tag, but in this case, we're etching out a bit of an exception. Information technology was AMD, not Intel, that launched the kickoff consumer CPU to sell for $ane,000, and it was AMD, not Intel, that never returned to the $1,000 CPU market after the launch of its Quad FX platform in 2006.

Today marks AMD'south triumphant re-entry into that marketplace with the biggest single CPU I've always frickin' seen. Threadripper is enormous by the standards of the consumer market place. It'due south practically the size of a pony. And it'due south packing amazing performance under the hood.

Competitive Positioning or Who Needs A 16-Core CPU?

Information technology'southward worth taking a moment to assess the lay of the competitive landscape. At $ane,000 per CPU, the Threadripper 1950X is going up against the Intel Core i9-7900X. When it comes to cadre counts, the situation is decidedly lopsided; Threadripper packs 16 cores and 32 threads compared with Intel's 10-cores and xx threads. This volition be partly offset by the 7900X'south college peak clock speed (up to 4.5GHz with Turbo Boost 3.0) and superior unmarried-thread operation in some applications. This is the first time nosotros've tested the 7900X, and we'll be watching to see where its new cache compages improves performance confronting Broadwell-Due east.

AMD is positioning Threadripper as a no-compromise CPU you can utilise to simultaneously render video while streaming, or even use for advanced 3D rendering tasks while gaming. This is partly a nod to the difficult nature of really stressing multi-core CPUs; it'south non like shooting fish in a barrel to observe tasks that scale well to that many threads. But it's besides an acknowledgment it's mutual, in some circles, to split tasks between multiple systems. Streamers frequently use capture cards and multiple PCs to stream, as do some professionals in video editing or 3D rendering. Threadripper is explicitly aimed at these buyers, or at anyone else who might want to, say, dedicate eight cores to Job A, four cores to Chore B, and keep four cores handy for browsing and email at the aforementioned time.

The reason AMD is targeting Threadripper at a fairly narrow audience of power users and professionals is simple: If you want maximum gaming operation per dollar, you don't purchase Threadripper. If you take workloads that are just lightly threaded with some gaming tossed in, CPUs like the Ryzen 5 1600X are going to give yous equivalent functioning at a much lower price. In this respect, Threadripper is quite unlike from the one-time FX-51, which may have hit $1,000 merely even so offered a performance increment relative to the Socket 754 Athlon 64's AMD launched at the same time.

The Platform and Motherboard

Threadripper's X399 platform is AMD'southward new tiptop-stop chipset, and it's a brute, even compared with what Intel has to offer. Here's the summary comparing of how AMD compares with its own Ryzen X370 chipset, which is what Ryzen three – Ryzen 7 are compatible with:

Threadripper-X399

And here's Threadripper's chipset diagram.

Threadripper-Platform2

See the bits about "No Nighttime Lanes / Channels / Ports?" Those are shots at Intel'south X299 platform, which transforms dramatically depending on what kind of CPU you lot plug into information technology. If you drop in a height-end Cadre i9, similar the 7900X we're testing, everything is great. If, yet, you opt for a Kaby Lake X CPU, you're express to one-half the total RAM slots on the motherboard. Depending on how your motherboard vendor wired upward its PCI Express lanes and back panel I/O, diverse ports and PCI Express slots may not be available, either. Kaby Lake Ten is probably the worst Intel kludge we've seen in a decade, and it'due south obvious Intel made jerky plans to yank the part into the Skylake-Ten / Core X-Series family. If you lot buy X399, you avoid all such problems, and go 64 PCIe three.0 lanes for your GPU to boot.

This is a adept fourth dimension to mention Asus' ROG Zenith Farthermost is an amazing board, with a slew of included and integrated features. Included, in no item lodge, are:

ROG-Overview

two×2 MU-MIMO 802.11AC + 1×one 802.eleven AD WiFi
8x USB three.one Gen 1 Ports.
2x USB 3.i Gen 2 (10Gbps) ports (1x Blazon A, 1x Type C)
1x USB 3.1 Gen two Front Panel Connector Ports
4-mode SLI / Crossfire support
3x Grand.2 Slots with support for both SATA and PCIe mode (ii of these support the longest Type 22110)
1x U.two Port
BlueTooth 4.1

In that location are headers for boosted USB 3.one Gen 1 ports on the board equally well, if yous somehow need more of them. The other great feature on the ROG Zenith Extreme, and one nosotros haven't personally seen before, is a DIMM.2 slot.

module

This riser card has ii M.2 slots on it, i on each side. You install SSDs to the riser card, so plug the riser carte du jour into the DIMM-like slot that's get-go from the balance of the RAM on the correct side of the motherboard (outlined in the image below):

ROG-Zenith3

Each bulldoze supports an x4 PCIe iii.0 connection and the motherboard slot is keyed and so yous can't stick DRAM in information technology. If that'due south non enough to spark your interest even so, well, the Zenith Farthermost also features a 10G Ethernet card every bit a pack-in accessory. Granted, that's massive overkill for virtually everyone on World right now, only if you lot similar the idea of future-proofing at least one system in your abode for high-terminate broadband circa 2050, this'll practise it.

In contrast to the rather haphazard state of affairs that typified the Ryzen 7 launch, the Asus ROG Zenith Extreme was a delight to work with. We had no problems with the platform whatsoever, despite its early land. Then once again, for $550, we'd hope for a flawless experience.

Test Configuration and Results

Both our Intel Core i9-7900X and AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X testbeds were benchmarked with 32GB of DDR4-3200 and a GTX 1080 Ti running Nvidia's latest not-beta driver release, 384.94. A Thermaltake 80 Plus Gold power supply (1200W) was used for both testbeds. We had to omit PCMark viii from these tests — information technology has an sound outcome that hard-crashes the application related to Realtek audio solutions and the Creators Update.

A notation earlier we brainstorm, on game benchmarks. In our Ryzen 7 1800X launch commodity, nosotros used 1080p benchmarks to highlight differences betwixt AMD'due south new CPU compages and Intel'south Kaby Lake. At the time, Ryzen's issues in certain tests, particularly at lower resolutions, weren't known (or addressed). Nosotros've included 1080p results hither as well, but added 1440p and 4K benchmarks to give additional context. Nobody who drops $1K on a CPU with a $550 motherboard and a $700 GPU is gaming at 1080p, but it tin all the same be a useful way to run across how games scale.

Nosotros've broken our results into ii slideshows, one for games, and one for application tests and benchmarks. Let'south kicking off with applications:

Our awarding benchmarks show AMD sweeping Intel in almost every multi-threaded test. In the handful of cases it does non win, it at least ties things upward with Santa Clara. Intel however has an reward in some unmarried-threaded tests, but we've already established the only people who ought to be considering Threadripper in the outset place are people who are running multi-threaded workloads.

Gaming Benchmarks

The slideshow below contains our gaming benchmark results, divide into 1080p, 1440p, and 4K.

Our game benchmarks weren't a focus of this review simply nosotros wanted to run enough tests to certify that Threadripper's lower clock speeds when under load weren't a detriment to its overall game functioning. They aren't — the chip tin hang with its lower-core brethren from AMD also as the best Intel has to offering. Threadripper isn't a gaming chip as such (not unless y'all're working on other things at the same time), but if you are a streamer or someone who uses the same box for professional work and gaming, yous won't be giving upward any performance by opting for an AMD solution.

Nosotros'll have power consumption figures added subsequently today; some of the results were odd and demand to exist double-checked.

AMD's Threadripper Rips Intel a New One

If Intel had any doubts about whether AMD could compete at the top of the HEDT space, they're undoubtedly gone past now. Threadripper doesn't merely compete, it oftentimes leaves Intel eating grit. Across all of our awarding benchmarks, Threadripper wins 11 tests, loses v, and ties two. That'south a very solid set of performances, particularly for a company whose elevation-cease CPU was sucking wind six months agone. Intel has already announced that it intends to launch 12, 14, 16, and eighteen-core processors by the middle of September, simply with a top-end price tag of up to $2,000 even those fries volition struggle to match Threadripper's price/performance ratio.

There are, meanwhile, existent questions about what to expect from Intel's upcoming 18-core processors. We've asked the visitor if it will solder its loftier-finish CPUs, but have nonetheless to hear back from them. Given that Skylake-X is already pushing the limits of what paste can handle, the CPU giant would seem to have little option, simply they're playing mum on this point.

There will however be plenty of people who opt to stick with Intel and play a wait-and-see game with AMD. This even makes sense, depending on your business organisation and market — if software costs are the bulk of your concern expenses, the difference betwixt Intel and AMD's hardware prices aren't going to have a huge affect on your bottom line. But if hardware costs take an impact on your bottom line — and for almost of united states of america, they do — AMD's Threadripper is in a class of its ain. From Ryzen three to Threadripper, AMD has redefined functioning at every toll point, to the do good of consumers, businesses, and pretty much everybody — except, of form, Intel.