AMD ThreadRipper Gen 2 Reviews

[The Benjamins]

VideoCardz Review Roundup

https://videocardz.com/77210/amd-ryzen-threadripper-2990wx-2950x-review-roundup

Quote

AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper is world’s first consumer 32-core CPU. AMD has divided Threadripper 2000 series into two groups: WX and X. The latter is aimed at gamers, while the former is for innovators and creators.

Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX starts shipping today, while the three other SKS will launch in the coming weeks. Motherboard makers have designed new models for TR 2000 series, as new SKUs require up to 250W (70W more than the first generation).

 

Der8auer (OC Video)

Spoiler

 

Glad to see overclocking videos this early, going to add more opinion when I have one.

Crazy to see a stock C15 score of 5000+ on air and you can get past 6000 with a 4.0Ghz OC at 1.25v (385w) (Cooler: Noctua NH-U14S)

 

Best Source: WCCF (they legit did a review)

https://wccftech.com/review/amd-ryzen-threadripper-2990wx-32-core-cpu-review/

Anandtech:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/13124/the-amd-threadripper-2990wx-and-2950x-review

PCPer:

https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Processors/AMD-Ryzen-Threadripper-2950X-and-2990WX-Review-Moving-Forward

Phoronix

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd-linux-2990wx&num=1

 

LTT FP+YT Videos

Spoiler

https://www.floatplane.com/video/YoVLLWLxFX

 

Hardware Unboxed

Spoiler

https://www.techspot.com/review/1678-amd-ryzen-threadripper-2990wx-2950x/page8.html

AMD

Spoiler

 

Paul's Hardware

Spoiler

 

PCWorld

Spoiler

 

OC3D

Spoiler

https://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cpu_mainboard/amd_threadripper_2950x_and_2990wx_review/1

Bitwit

Spoiler

 

 

[Senzelian]

I want one.
Not that I have any use case for it, but I want one!

[Taf the Ghost]

NDA is up at 9 am EDT, I believe.

[Deus Voltage]

Here are the other reviews!

 

Linus:

 

Hardware Unboxed:

 

Paul's Hardware:

 

Pcworld:

 

Will continue to update!

 

 

[Phentos]

Let 'er rip!

[Taf the Ghost]

5 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

oh wow, anything dependant on sourcing from lots of RAM hammered the 2990WX o_o

 

there was a shot discussion in the other thread regarding possible RAM topology in the rumors of the 32-core threadripper 2. I wonder if "single-channel for all CCXes" instead of the "dual channel for two and the others have to ask" would have fared better here (and how much impact would it have on non-workstation workloads)

Without Octa-channel memory, I think 32 cores is probably just too much for any really memory intensive workload. The first batch of simulated 2970WX (24 core) really seems like it'll be the better buy. 2950X really has come along with the year of improvements on the platform, too.

 

That many cores might just be too much for quad-channel until DDR5 lands in a few years. It's fun, but it's going to be pretty niche.

[Taf the Ghost]

I also want to re-up any previous criticisms I've had about Adobe Premiere. Their developers must be smoking something strange for the results that program keeps tossing out.

[Vode]

Oh yesss! Dis gon b gud.

[NumLock21]

https://www.anandtech.com/show/13124/the-amd-threadripper-2990wx-and-2950x-review

[LAwLz]

Very interesting read.

 

Haven't read through all the reviews yet but so far the results seems to be:

• Really, really good performance in applications which don't need to fetch that much data from RAM. We're talking significantly better 7zip compression than even the 32 core EPYC processor for 4200 dollars.
• Not that great performance when the processor needs to fetch data from RAM. We're talking performance on par with the ~350 dollar 2700X and 8700K when decompressing in 7zip.
• The infinity fabric uses a ton of power. Something like 50% of the power budget when all 32 cores are active, which is a lot considering at full load it uses almost 500 watts.

 

1 minute ago, Taf the Ghost said:

I also want to re-up any previous criticisms I've had about Adobe Premiere. Their developers must be smoking something strange for the results that program keeps tossing out.

The encoding engine is shit. Someone wrote a kinda half-assed plugin for encoding with x264 instead, and even though the plugin system is fairly slow, it was still faster and had higher quality than Adobe's own engine.

It's just ass and if Adobe were smart they would replace it with FFmpeg.

[The Benjamins]

2 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Very interesting read.

 

Haven't read through all the reviews yet but so far the results seems to be:

• Really, really good performance in applications which don't need to fetch that much data from RAM. We're talking significantly better 7zip compression than even the 32 core EPYC processor for 4200 dollars.
• Not that great performance when the processor needs to fetch data from RAM. We're talking performance on par with the ~350 dollar 2700X and 8700K when decompressing in 7zip.
• The infinity fabric uses a ton of power. Something like 50% of the power budget when all 32 cores are active, which is a lot considering at full load it uses almost 500 watts.

 

The encoding engine is shit. Someone wrote a kinda half-assed plugin for encoding with x264 instead, and even though the plugin system is fairly slow, it was still faster and had higher quality than Adobe's own engine.

It's just ass and if Adobe were smart they would replace it with FFmpeg.

The 32c 7551p is $2300, the non p are dual socket oriented and cost more.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113470&cm_re=epyc-_-19-113-470-_-Product

[arty_knots]

Has anyone tried to split the 2990WX into VMs like linus did for those intel cpus in those x gamers 1 cpu videos?

[Taf the Ghost]

3 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Very interesting read.

 

Haven't read through all the reviews yet but so far the results seems to be:

• Really, really good performance in applications which don't need to fetch that much data from RAM. We're talking significantly better 7zip compression than even the 32 core EPYC processor for 4200 dollars.
• Not that great performance when the processor needs to fetch data from RAM. We're talking performance on par with the ~350 dollar 2700X and 8700K when decompressing in 7zip.
• The infinity fabric uses a ton of power. Something like 50% of the power budget when all 32 cores are active, which is a lot considering at full load it uses almost 500 watts.

 

The encoding engine is shit. Someone wrote a kinda half-assed plugin for encoding with x264 instead, and even though the plugin system is fairly slow, it was still faster and had higher quality than Adobe's own engine.

It's just ass and if Adobe were smart they would replace it with FFmpeg.

Generally have the idea. Something that thrashes memory is going to run at Ryzen or worse speeds (especially gaming) on the 2990WX, but if you toss a rendering workload at it, it's the most potent single-socket non-server you can buy.

 

As for Adobe, this is a company that still had programs running far faster on worse Apple hardware after they moved to x86. For years. I'm glad I'm not the only one that thought about FFmpeg, as the render times they throw out seem really slow compared to what we've been doing for years in the non-Adobe space.

[Taf the Ghost]

3 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

I'm still feeling that the takeaway is small-set-large-result workloads benefits the 2990WX better than large-set-large-result workloads, after reading the reviews o_o

 

link to your previous comments? o_o kinda curious

I'd have to go find them, but the most recent was about the iGPU on Intel improving rendering. It's not that it shouldn't help, but it is that it shouldn't have that big of an effect. 

[GOTSpectrum]

I cant wait to see what wacky stuff the memory system brings tbh, its going to be fun to say the least. 

[Lathlaer]

I'm a bit underwhelmed tbh.

 

I counted them. Anandtech did 42 benchmarks:

 

The 32-core won in 7 of those. 

The new 16-core won in another 8. 

 

So a total of 15 benchmarks won out of 42. Their 32core CPU loses to their own 16core CPU, sometimes loses to their own Threadripper 1st gen CPU, loses to their mainstream Ryzen and to Intel's 18core CPU, not to mention mainstream 8700k. 

 

If there ever was a definition of an extremely specialized CPU, this is it.

[WereCat]

4 minutes ago, Lathlaer said:

I'm a bit underwhelmed tbh.

 

I counted them. Anandtech did 42 benchmarks:

 

The 32-core won in 7 of those. 

The new 16-core won in another 8. 

 

So a total of 15 benchmarks won out of 42. Their 32core CPU loses to their own 16core CPU, sometimes loses to their own Threadripper 1st gen CPU, loses to their mainstream Ryzen and to Intel's 18core CPU, not to mention mainstream 8700k. 

 

If there ever was a definition of an extremely specialized CPU, this is it.

Read the comments. 

Some benchmarks were accidentaly swapped (2990WX score instead of 2950X and vice versa). Also they forgot to peel away the plastic from the cooler so it affected some benchmarks. 

[Taf the Ghost]

22 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

actually I kinda wonder if thread affinity on the 2990WX was assigned strictly to cores with direct access to RAM, would that run RAM-heavy workloads closer to 2950X? o_o

 

17 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

I imagine virtual CPUs on the far cores would suffer a lot o_o

would definitely love to see Linus test VM performance on far cores

There's some definite Scheduler issues, it seems like, as well. Which probably isn't too surprising. Windows is clearly not balancing workloads quite as well as it should be. However, I think the 2990WX is much more of a render box than a normal workstation. The curious one is the 2970WX. That could be far more interesting.

[The Benjamins]

4 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

actually...

test a 16-core VM ENTIRELY on the far cores O_O

If would be cool to see a VM preformance test of the 2950x vs 2990x vs 7551p

[GDRRiley]

1 hour ago, Taf the Ghost said:

I also want to re-up any previous criticisms I've had about Adobe Premiere. Their developers must be smoking something strange for the results that program keeps tossing out.

Its why I've stopped recommending them, Da Vinci reslove actual can and will use more than 6-8 cores.

 

Now I got sh*t to do but hopefully I'll find some time before like 4 or 5 today

[S w a t s o n]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

Very interesting read.

 

Haven't read through all the reviews yet but so far the results seems to be:

• Really, really good performance in applications which don't need to fetch that much data from RAM. We're talking significantly better 7zip compression than even the 32 core EPYC processor for 4200 dollars.
• Not that great performance when the processor needs to fetch data from RAM. We're talking performance on par with the ~350 dollar 2700X and 8700K when decompressing in 7zip.
• The infinity fabric uses a ton of power. Something like 50% of the power budget when all 32 cores are active, which is a lot considering at full load it uses almost 500 watts.

According to anandtech's IF deep-dive in their article it's more like 35-40% of total power consumption at load, and at stock it's not even reaching the stated 250W TDP. Looks like a 4.0-4.1Ghz all core clock is around ~385W, quite a bit away from 500w.

Quote

Moving through the stack, you will notice that our 2990WX sample never goes near the 250W rated TDP of the processor, actually barely hitting 180W at times. We are unsure why this is. What we can say is that as loading increases, the total contribution that the IF power gives does decrease, slowly settling around 36%, varying between 35% and 40% depending on the specific workload.

Spoiler

Even though der8auer only took it to 4.0ghz with the performance enhancer method, pcper got to 4.1ghz on less voltage.

Quote

With the 2990WX, we were able to hit an all-core overclock of 4.1GHz at 1.2375V, with the temperature remaining under 70 degrees Celsius. This overclock provided a Cinebench R15 score of 6224, roughly 20% performance advantage compared to stock clock speeds.

 

[Taf the Ghost]

1 minute ago, Swatson said:

According to anandtech's IF deep-dive in their article it's more like 35-40% of total power consumption at load, and at stock it's not even reaching the stated 250W TDP. Looks like a 4.0-4.1Ghz all core clock is around ~385W, quite a bit away from 500w.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Hardware Unboxed got his to the 800w range in R15, but I think that was 1.4v at 4.1 Ghz. That had something to do with it.

[S w a t s o n]

Just now, Taf the Ghost said:

Hardware Unboxed got his to the 800w range in R15, but I think that was 1.4v at 4.1 Ghz. That had something to do with it.

Yea, i just edited my previous post with pcper's excellent OC

Quote

With the 2990WX, we were able to hit an all-core overclock of 4.1GHz at 1.2375V, with the temperature remaining under 70 degrees Celsius. This overclock provided a Cinebench R15 score of 6224, roughly 20% performance advantage compared to stock clock speeds.

 

[Taf the Ghost]

9 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

Its why I've stopped recommending them, Da Vinci reslove actual can and will use more than 6-8 cores.

 

Now I got sh*t to do but hopefully I'll find some time before like 4 or 5 today

Adobe normally puts lots of things that "work" in their programs, and keep adding to them. The issue normally ends up being they're never efficient at working. In this case, Media Encoder is one of the core functionalities, yet it seems really slow compared to a lot of other options. Though the thing I don't get is how they can leverage the Intel QuickSync, yet the CUDA acceleration doesn't blow that away. Something doesn't quite align properly.

[S w a t s o n]

5 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

Hardware Unboxed got his to the 800w range in R15, but I think that was 1.4v at 4.1 Ghz. That had something to do with it.

Just double checked and he got 756W of total system consumption, 800w on the cpu itself would have been hilarious