The 64 Core Threadripper 3990X CPU Review: In The Midst Of Chaos, AMD Seeks Opportunity
by Dr. Ian Cutress & Gavin Bonshor on February 7, 2020 9:00 AM ESTAMD 3990X Against Prosumer CPUs
The first set of consumers that will be interested in this processor will be those looking to upgrade into the best consumer/prosumer HEDT package available on the market. The $3990 price is a high barrier to entry, but these users and individuals can likely amortize the cost of the processor over its lifetime. To that end, we’ve selected a number of standard HEDT processors that are near in terms of price/core count, as well as putting in the 8-core 5.0 GHz Core i9-9900KS and the 28-core unlocked Xeon W-3175X.
| AMD 3990X Consumer Competition | ||||||
| AnandTech | AMD 3990X |
AMD 3970X |
Intel 3175X |
Intel i9- 10980XE |
AMD 3950X |
Intel 9900KS |
| SEP | $3990 | $1999 | $2999 | $979 | $749 | $513 |
| Cores/T | 64/128 | 32/64 | 28/56 | 18/36 | 16/32 | 8/16 |
| Base Freq | 2900 | 3700 | 3100 | 3000 | 3500 | 5000 |
| Turbo Freq | 4300 | 4500 | 4300 | 4800 | 4700 | 5000 |
| PCIe | 4.0 x64 | 4.0 x64 | 3.0 x48 | 3.0 x48 | 4.0 x24 | 3.0 x16 |
| DDR | 4x 3200 | 4x 3200 | 6x 2666 | 4x 2933 | 2x 3200 | 2x 2666 |
| Max DDR | 512 GB | 512 GB | 512 GB | 256 GB | 128 GB | 128 GB |
| TDP | 280 W | 280 W | 255 W | 165 W | 105 W | 127 W |
The 3990X is beyond anything in price at this level, and even at the highest consumer cost systems, $1000 could be the difference between getting two or three GPUs in a system. There has to be big upsides here moving from the 32 core to the 64 core.
Corona is a classic 'more threads means more performance' benchmark, and while the 3990X doesn't quite get perfect scaling over the 32 core, it is almost there.
The 3990X scores new records in our Blender test, with sizeable speed-ups against the other TR3 hardware.
Photoscan is a variable threaded test, and the AMD CPUs still win here, although 24 core up to 64 core all perform within about a minute of each other in this 20 minute test. Intel's best consumer hardware is a few minutes behind.
y-cruncher is an AVX-512 accelerated test, and so Intel's 28-core with AVX-512 wins here. Interestingly the 128 cores of the 3990X get in the way here, likely the spawn time of so many threads is adding to the overall time.
GIMP is a single threaded test designed around opening the program, and Intel's 5.0 GHz chip is the best here. the 64 core hardware isn't that bad here, although the W10 Enterprise data has the better result.
Without any hand tuned code, between 32 core and 64 core workloads on 3DPM, there's actually a slight deficit on 64 core.
But when we crank in the hand tuned code, the AVX-512 CPUs storm ahead by a considerable margin.
We covered Digicortex on the last page, but it seems that the different thread groups on W10 Pro is holidng the 3990X back a lot. With SMT disabled, we score nearer 3x here.
Luxmark is an AVX2 accelerated program, and having more cores here helps. But we see little gain from 32C to 64C.
As we saw on the last page, POV-Ray preferred having SMT off for the 3990X, otherwise there's no benefit over the 32-core CPU.
AES gets a slight bump over the 32 core, however not as much as the 2x price difference would have you believe.
As we saw on the previous page, W10 Enterprise causes our Handbrake test to go way up, but on W10 Pro then the 3990X loses ground to the 3950X.
And how about a simple game test - we know 64 cores is overkill for games, so here's a CPU bount test. There's not a lot in it between the 3990X and the 3970X, but Intel's high frequency CPUs are the best here.
Verdict
There are a lot of situations where the jump from AMD's 32-core $1999 CPU, the 3970X, up to the 64-core $3990 CPU only gives the smallest tangible gain. That doesn't bode well. The benchmarks that do get the biggest gains however can get near perfect scaling, making the 3990X a fantastic upgrade. However those tests are few and far between. If these were the options, the smart money is on the 3970X, unless you can be absolutely clear that the software you run can benefit from the extra cores.
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Logic28 - Monday, May 11, 2020 - link
Link or it didn't happen.8180 which has only 28 cores has a list price on NewEgg right now of $11000
vs the 4k 3990X Threadripper....
I don't get this need to push out information that is clearly not truthful. The price of these procs need to eventually fall, right now Intel is living off the upgrade path many studies are dug in on, and so you have IT trying to justify a much worse cpu so they dont' have to do a bunch of work replacing all the machines currently getting their assets kicked by a consumer cpu, again at a fraction of the cost.
sharath.naik - Saturday, February 8, 2020 - link
Agree, for a 64 core processor to be fully utilized you need more ram capacity. But we do have 64gb rams already available which means that you can go up to 512GB today. It is an unnecessary limitation.antus - Sunday, February 9, 2020 - link
It still has use for scientific workloads. Its up to the user to decide if this many cores in this configuration at this low price works for them.Its a pitty this article centered so much on windows limitations. Sure some people might want this many cores in a HEDT configuration but i'd like to see linux benchmarks due to it being a free OS that can handle this cpu properly and run scientific workloads. It likely would have a place in the racks of university where I work.
GreenReaper - Sunday, February 9, 2020 - link
Ultimately this is a Windows shop, you need to look to Phoronix or ServeTheHome (which did both). Takeaway is the same but they do more traditional server workloads. For parallel sever tasks, it's great. Most people will want to use one of the cut-down CPUs and use the savings on for RAM/storage.alysdexia - Monday, May 4, 2020 - link
It's, whom, I'd, CPU, shouldkardonn - Tuesday, February 11, 2020 - link
I run a very high end VFX studio and do simulation work for big features, high end commercials, and big productions for Amazon/Netflix. I assure you, 256GB RAM is way more than I've ever needed and will easily be futureproof enough until larger UDIMMS become available one day to unlock the 512GB potential.All of my current workstations are 128GB of RAM and it's very rare for me to work on jobs that even approach that limit. 256GB is tons for 99% of the work people will be throwing a 3990X at.
alysdexia - Monday, May 4, 2020 - link
its, hickLogic28 - Monday, May 11, 2020 - link
You guys are flat out wrong about the usefulness in vfx. I work in vfx, Blur used this chip to render Dark Fate - Terminator. And no single render is going over 128GB in more renders. You don't treat this like a standard server where you are running 4-8 frames/jobs on one machine like you would with say a 8280 with 56 cores, and enough ram to give each job 128 GB for instance.You instead put this on lighting artists desk, or a Houdini Physics sims, or you can use it as a server, but only pushing through 1-2 frames at a time on it.
But here is the kicker people need to compare this to.
This proc is literally priced at 1/7th to 1/10th the price of the Xeon, and it destroys it in rendering speed.
So you can increase lighting artist working speed by like several orders of magnitude.
And no you cannot find the Xeon for $4700 that is comparable. What are you guys fake bots pushing intel prop? Seriously just looked on Newegg.com you can get the 8180 which has 28 cores, for $11000. Which is like less then half the speed of the 3990x. Which is $4k. So you need 2 xeons, at $22000 and dual motherboard add another 2k extra for setup costs, etc.
So what would you have one Xeon 8280 server with 2 process for $24k and 128GB * 6 Ram
or
6 full Xeon 3990x Threadrippers servers each with 128-258GB of ram
Option 2 gives you literally 7-8 times the rendering power for the same price? I mean, seriously.
No use, you have no idea about hardware if you think that a machine that is destroying a server 3 times the price.
Yea it has a place, under my bloody desk, or terradici'd from my closest.
Again, Blur did brilliant work on Dark Fate, a heavy CG movie, no problem with a server room full of these babies.
And that is not even talking the fact that the upgrade path for the x3990 has much more potential with a x3999 future, vs the Xeon which is basically on a beast of a die that consumes twice the power consumption for less rendering speed.
Seriously. Even Premiere benchmarks fall to this and the Ryzen 3950X beast as well vs inteal.
It is amazing how people just refuse to admit AMD is winning...
Santoval - Sunday, February 9, 2020 - link
It depends on how you define "enthusiasts". If you mean enthusiast *creators* who need a workstation for their work then sure, that's the CPU for them. Video editors, photographers, graphics designers, industrial designers, game designers ... these kinds of creators. It's not just for playing games or merely running benchmarks though. Even for a professional musician it might be overkill.WaltC - Friday, February 7, 2020 - link
I found this article a bit baffling, frankly. I did not understand the "out of chaos" titling at all...;) But anyway--it should be obvious what AMD is doing here--people running desktops for gaming running Win10 home or Pro are *not* the people the CPU is aimed at--the CPU is aimed at Prosumers who would rather not spend $20k for Intel's inferior solutions but would rather spend $4k for a faster cpu solution and save a cool $16k in the bargain and come out with something appreciably faster. Yes, people are going to run this with Enterprise--duh...;) You aren't going to spend money on a 128t cpu and then run it with a 64t OS--don't even know why Win10 and Win10 Pro were mentioned at all--other than to state they shouldn't be used with the CPU--which would take but a single sentence. Then there the handful of benchmarks used here--how many threads do each of these benchmarks support at maximum? Article didn't say--so that was sort of a strike out, etc. I think Anandtech needs to come back and do this review properly--as it stands, this one makes it seem like the only "chaos" involved is the obvious confusion in the minds of the AT reviewers....;) (No offense) Simply put: if Intel couldn't sell $20k cpu systems Intel wouldn't make them--so obviously, there's a market for 128t cpus--again, duh. You can do much better than Intel at a fraction of the cost--and there's your market! No chaos at all. Also: this CPU is very new--there remain the usual AGESA bios improvements that need to be made in the upcoming months, etc. That fact should have garnered at least a sentence, don't you think? In the past I've seen much better reviews than this--especially for the world's first and only 128t single CPU!