AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX & 2950X CPU Review @ [H]

Don't see how companies can still not buy AMD for workstations at this point, AMD should take over the damn market with this kind of pricing and performance at this level.

Unless Intel has them in some sneaky iron clad contracts paid for with their souls.

Yeah....that's probably it.
 
Don't see how companies can still not buy AMD for workstations at this point, AMD should take over the damn market with this kind of pricing and performance at this level.

How about ECC being an official, certified, and marketed thing by AMD and not just by board makers? I stand corrected- AMD is supporting ECC on Threadripper!

I can get a Dell or HP workstation with a Xeon and ECC. see above correction

And where's AVX512? Edit: this is still a thing

Unless Intel has them in some sneaky iron clad contracts paid for with their souls.

Yeah....that's probably it.

Not that you're likely to prove it either way, but AMD really still isn't catering directly to the workstation market. Your guess is as good as mine as to why, as they could easily have a quick lock on that market for a number of workloads.

Apologies- I was basing this statement off my misconception that AMD wasn't supporting ECC directly for Threadripper- thanks N4CR!
 
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While those are great benchmarks for encoding, I am obviously disappointed in the encoding performance for the 2990WX. I encode all of my content using FFmpeg which sadly can be tricky for many people to use, but it does saturate all eight cores on my Intel Core i7-3770k. Fortunately I have ten years of experience in streaming media and can bend FFmpeg to my will. If anyone here is interested in using FFmpeg then please reference the article I wrote as it debunks almost everything people get wrong when encoding content to streaming media specifications.

Is there any chance that you can test your content using FFmpeg using the information in the article I wrote? I use the 64bit static Windows builds that Zeranoe provides.
 
I'm really glad to see the 2950x isn't hugely faster than my 1950x. Means I won't be jonesing to upgrade anytime soon. That in turn makes my bank account really happy. :D
 
How about ECC being an official, certified, and marketed thing by AMD and not just by board makers? I can get a Dell or HP workstation with a Xeon and ECC. And where's AVX512?
This is the second time you have tried this.
You are comparing Xeon to an HEDT product and complaining that AMD doesn't have concrete ECC support on HEDT? So why don't you bitch about Intel not supporting ECC on HEDT 100% either? It's the same fucking story as AMD HEDT that you bitch about! https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/list-of-x99-motherboards-compatible-with-ecc-memory.2532948/
It's mobo manufacturer based, let alone needing a Xeon to do it (a professional CPU!), at least AMD will not stop you using ECC on a lowly Ryzen outside of HEDT.
And AVX5 what? Hardly anything uses that so far. AMD has mentioned it can be added in a future release, likely 7nm Zen.

Not that you're likely to prove it either way, but AMD really still isn't catering directly to the workstation market. Your guess is as good as mine as to why, as they could easily have a quick lock on that market for a number of workloads.
Really now?
https://www.amd.com/en/products/epyc
 
There was a lot of information in this review to process in one reading, so I'll probably have to give it another go through, but I am initially left wondering what excuses I can make to myself to justify a 2950X purchase. Furthermore, the honest tone and writing for the review itself was really good. I guess it is easier to write reviews for good products than it is for less than good products. A+ would read again.
 
Currently, I have two 1950X systems up and running, one with the ASUS X399 Zenith Extreme motherboard and one with the Gigabyte X399 Aorus Gaming 7. Honestly I didn't expect any IPC improvement from the 2950X, however, I expected better overclocking. The 1950X is a lousy overclocker. I mean, it's goo to see some improvement, but 6~7% over 1950X isn't worth buying the 2950X and replacing my current CPUs with it.

On the other hand, I see the 2990WX a huge missed opportunity for AMD. I am not sure what AMD was thinking, or what the specific use case scenarios are that AMD envisioned for this massive CPU, but to me, it looks like a handicapped product. Single threaded performance, or per cor performance sucks, and for anything that's memory bandwidth intensive it sucks. To make matters worse, the infinity bandwidth is halved even between the cores that have direct access to memory.

I think that AMD will "fix" their 32 core CPU next year when they go to 7nm for Zen 2 by going back to a two die configuration. That will be the 32 core Threadripper CPU to buy. Until then, the 1950X and 2950X are excellent CPUs. The 1950X can be had anywhere between $700 ~ $780, and that's more than 10% less than the 2950X. I would say that the 1950X is a bargain at this point in time for what it is.
 
Kyle, thanks soooooo much for including the V-Ray benchmarks, this is definitely going to help others like myself in the 3d rendering field at better decisions when it's time to upgrade. With that said, the price/performance value of the 2950x is going to be extremely attracive when comparing it to the 7980xe, it's pretty much a no brainer.
 
Dang, that 2990WX is a heat producing beast. Not unexpected though. I may just stick with a 2950X and call it a day.

Anandtech even forgot to remove the plastic film...

Ian Cutress - Monday, August 13, 2018 - link
Hey everyone, sorry for leaving a few pages blank right now. Jet lag hit me hard over the weekend from Flash Memory Summit. Will be filling in the blanks and the analysis throughout today.

But here's what there is to look forward to:

- Our new test suite
- Analysis of Overclocking Results at 4G
- Direct Comparison to EPYC
- Me being an idiot and leaving the plastic cover on my cooler, but it completed a set of benchmarks. I pick through the data to see if it was as bad as I expected

He swallows that Intel dick to the balls and then some
 
So Phoronix benchmarked Windows against Linux on the 2990WX and found that, yes it is Windows that royally sucks.

Particularly interesting are the 7-zip results on 2990WX:
7zip-2990wx.png


For comparison, here are the results of an older test of the 8700K:
7zip-8700k.png


How about ECC being an official, certified, and marketed thing by AMD and not just by board makers?
"Quad-Channel DDR4 ECC Memory Support
With the most memory channels you can get on desktop, the Ryzen™ Threadripper™ processor can support Workstation Standard DDR4 ECC (Error Correcting Mode) Memory to keep you tight, tuned and perfectly in sync."
https://www.amd.com/en/products/ryzen-threadripper

How much more official do you want?
 
The Zenith of the Core Wars is upon us: the 32 core 2990X being its Apex.

This message brought to you by Asus.

..

AMD has pushed their core counts nearly to their breaking points. Its amazing to me that 32 Threadripper cores can concurrently be fed 1.4 vcore and still a chance in hell of being being cooled propperly. To think that is even possible speaks to the benefits of Ryzen's MCM approach.
 
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That 2950x looks pretty awesome for an all rounder.

Interesting problem to have though, having to choose between going for a manual overclock for best fully loaded performance, or PB2 for best single threaded (and presumably gaming) performance.

I'm very interested to see what will happen when you guys get a stable version of PBO. It would be nice to get all core overclock results that match the single threaded performance of PB2
 
The real question is whether I want to drive to Dallas or Houston to hopefully pick one up at microcenter because I'm feeling impatient. Decisions.
 
This has been among the most exiting times for CPU's I can recall in the two decades I've been working in the industry. So I'm eager to see what I can do with Threadripper in this scenario.


You think it's more exciting than the K7 launch and the back and forth with P3 and P4?
 
You think it's more exciting than the K7 launch and the back and forth with P3 and P4?
he said "among".

---------

someone I know wondered what use case a 2990wx has, which isn't already covered by/will soon be covered by GPU usage. And faster, at that.

I don't know everything, so maybe someone could cleanly communicate some bullet points? Seems like virtual machines might be one thing.
 
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I like that. Your VM IS game mode as you lock it to the right cores.

Just have to get a GPU that works with passthrough.

I'm fairly certain KVM can be tied to specific cores. Less certain about VMWare.

There is no need for game mode.

Use Process Lasso, I made an informative video back on the 1950x. You can lock a game to the cores with direct memory access and it wont let game us any other cores at all.

I was able to do that on the 16 core and it worked wonderfully.

Unless there is something different with these chips and that may be the case. I am not correcting anyone. Just suggesting.
 
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I like that. Your VM IS game mode as you lock it to the right cores.

Just have to get a GPU that works with passthrough.

I'm fairly certain KVM can be tied to specific cores. Less certain about VMWare.

Well that's the sort of thing I'm working through. While I have a background dealing with VMWare, I haven't been using it for playing games.
 
Great read up! Thanks a ton :)

Just for shits and giggles, I would like to see core usage info on BFf or newer on 64m large maps.
 
It's interesting how AMD can release an 1800 dollar CPU and we all think "This is fantastic value".
That says something.

actually, very few people said that. MOST people wrote "AMD IS CHARGING 1800!? WHO WOULD PAY THAT FOR THE GENERIC BRAND?"


Now that reviews show this CPU absolutely humiliating the more expensive i9, literally outclassing it by another i9's worth of percentage, people are starting to realize AMD isn't the generic, bargain-bin brand anymore.

The 2990WX is the most powerful HEDT CPU on the planet right now, and will likely stay that way unless Intel decides to ship their 28-core with a 500w TDP, as with a water chiller and running at 5GHz, most likely using OVER 700W at the socket, Intel pushed past the cinebench score of what the WX chip does on normal custom loop water.
 
The 2990wx really behaves strange when overclocking. Several reviews now show power draw doubling over stock without any real performance gains.

The lack of direct ddr4 connection for 2 of the modules really kills performance in so many benchmarks.
 
The 2990wx really behaves strange when overclocking. Several reviews now show power draw doubling over stock without any real performance gains.

The lack of direct ddr4 connection for 2 of the modules really kills performance in so many benchmarks.

Anandtech's review delved a bit deeper into the mesh power usage on the HEDT+ CPUs, which was pretty enlightening. Fricking half of the TDP just to move data from one die to the next? Sheesh.

The performance is worth it, but you figure they will be working hard to bring that interconnect cost down!
 
The 2990wx really behaves strange when overclocking. Several reviews now show power draw doubling over stock without any real performance gains.

The lack of direct ddr4 connection for 2 of the modules really kills performance in so many benchmarks.


Almost EVERY last mainstream reviewer tested these on Windows 10. Load up a Windows Server and then lets see what happens. According to reviews on Ubuntu and Linux these processors are absolutely smoking. Blowing Win 10 away. Thus we do not have a full picture to paint such a drastically negative image as your purporting , which has good cause by the way, until Microshaft patches in some optimizations if ever.
 
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please start adding keyshot to your cpu benchmarks. How much do you think this will push those 18 core intel processors down?
 
Anandtech's review delved a bit deeper into the mesh power usage on the HEDT+ CPUs, which was pretty enlightening. Fricking half of the TDP just to move data from one die to the next? Sheesh.

The performance is worth it, but you figure they will be working hard to bring that interconnect cost down!

Take their numbers with suspicion, they are reporting as "IF" power that corresponds to other planes as IO or memory controllers.

Said that, moving data is the big problem today in computer microarchitecture. In the past most of the computation power was taken by execution units; today moving data to and from execution units takes most of the power budget. There are studies that predicted that this was going to happen

why-we-need-exascale-and-why-we-wont-get-there-by-2020-31-638.jpg


And the problem will get worse with future nodes 5nm, 3nm,... Engineers will have to rethink future CPUs to avoid the wire problem.
 
Take their numbers with suspicion, they are reporting as "IF" power that corresponds to other planes as IO or memory controllers.

Said that, moving data is the big problem today in computer microarchitecture. In the past most of the computation power was taken by execution units; today moving data to and from execution units takes most of the power budget. There are studies that predicted that this was going to happen

View attachment 96046

And the problem will get worse with future nodes 5nm, 3nm,... Engineers will have to rethink future CPUs to avoid the wire problem.

Not just CPU's...I wacthed a study done by NVIDIA +10 years ago about the cost (in Watt) of moving data around on chip.
 
What would you suggest to help with handling core allocation? I have a measly 16 core (8/8) machine and as soon as I do an export in lightroom my machine slows to a crawl. I haven't been able to figure out any way to bypass this.


Concerning the 2990x, I think that's pretty damn neat. I know a few people who are wanting it. Doesn't motivate me to move from Intel at all though, but I think the guys trying it out should be happy.
Have you tried setting processor affinity for LR once its started and limit the # of cores it has access to? Thats about the only way I know of preventing an application from consuming all the cores on a CPU. I haven't used LR so I can't help here :(
 
The benchmark numbers for the 2990WX are all over the place which is rather disappointing, though the Linux benchmarks are rather impressive, hopefully AMD and Microsoft will work together to optimize Threadripper 2 because right now the 2990WX is an immature product that needs to be patched and optimized for it to work to its full potential.

The gaming results are rather disastrous, but yet again, HEDT CPU's aren't meant to be for gaming.
 
Great review.

I just missed seeing the epeen benchmarks.

But I have a feeling it would do well in those.

By epeen I mean, loud, pointless and wastes lots of fossil fuels. Like a dragster.

Cause 'Merica!

PS, I'm Portuguese. But love 'Merica!
 
This is the second time you have tried this.
You are comparing Xeon to an HEDT product and complaining that AMD doesn't have concrete ECC support on HEDT? So why don't you bitch about Intel not supporting ECC on HEDT 100% either? It's the same fucking story as AMD HEDT that you bitch about! https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/list-of-x99-motherboards-compatible-with-ecc-memory.2532948/
It's mobo manufacturer based, let alone needing a Xeon to do it (a professional CPU!), at least AMD will not stop you using ECC on a lowly Ryzen outside of HEDT.
And AVX5 what? Hardly anything uses that so far. AMD has mentioned it can be added in a future release, likely 7nm Zen.

I corrected my post above about ECC- very nice to see support from AMD!

As for Intel not supporting it; I'm not trying to be 'fair' to AMD here, I am (or was) trying to point out a niche that AMD could fill that Intel does not. And it looks like AMD has!

[a use case I've considered recently: using Threadripper as a large NAS- all of those PCIe lanes could be used for controllers for tiered storage, that is fast NVMe caches including perhaps Optane, with high-capacity SATA SSDs and even higher capacity NAS/Enterprise spinning disks, while simultaneously supporting local application server VMs, and the major point here is that high-usage storage arrays essentially demand ECC RAM to keep the bitrot out]


While I will agree that AMD does have 'workstation-class' processors, they don't appear to market Epyc as such, and Epyc tops out at a pretty low burst speed- only 3.2GHz. One of Threadrippers attractions is that top 4.4GHz burst speed on a few models, and >4.0GHz for the whole lineup.
 
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