AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X & 1920X Review: Core i9 Killer

[LNCPapa]

Thanks for this review Steve. I just ordered my new rig based around the 1950X. Still stuck with nVidia for GPUs though. Can't wait till it arrives even though I already have some buyer's remorse due to the amount I just spent. I was also unable to source the Thermaltake Floe AIO Riing RGB 360 TT Premium Edition... seems to be sold out everywhere so the parts may just sit around till I can find one somewhere.

 

[namesrejected]

Thanks for this review Steve. I just ordered my new rig based around the 1950X. Still stuck with nVidia for GPUs though. Can't wait till it arrives even though I already have some buyer's remorse due to the amount I just spent. I was also unable to source the Thermaltake Floe AIO Riing RGB 360 TT Premium Edition... seems to be sold out everywhere so the parts may just sit around till I can find one somewhere.

I believe AMDs Vega comes out Monday. If you haven't ordered your videocard yet, or can cancel the order you may want to and wait to see how Vega does.

 

[LNCPapa]

Based on what has leaked so far I'm fairly certain Vega won't match up to 1080 Ti's except in compute performance which I won't be using very often.

Also, I did manage to get the Floe Riing directly from the TT store... they just charged me a bunch for shipping and I couldn't find an online coupon to counter that.

 

[SamuraiSamson]

Sheeeeeet!!!
Waiting for the workstation/commercial users to jump ship from Intel to AMD and hopefully they have a lot of money for future R&D which means better GPU's and CPU's. A good day for the consumer.

 

[rpjkw11]

I think the title is 99% spot on, at least from what we know now. Great going, AMD!

 

[colemar]

Anyone serious about gaming is going to game at resolutions over 1080p and with settings cranked. 1440p is sort of minimum nowadays.

Steam 2017 results showed that most people still game at or around 1080p.
1440p/2K is picking up steam but I believe it was no more then 5-8%, and 4K was below 2-3%.
Steam's June/July Survey 2017 results are in, google them and take a peak, the data they have is pretty awesome.

I am a casual gamer and recently installed the larger 4K TV screen that could make sense for the space in my home. It is a 43 inch screen.
I can clearly spot the value of a 4K versus 2K movie, while for gaming I can't see much improvement.
At 50 fps 4K looks a bit crispier but that's all. Standing about 2 meters from the screen I can discern no more relevant details than 2K. I am a bit farsighted but beyond 1.5 meters my acuity is about 10/10.
Mirror's Edge Catalyst, Far Cry Primal, Assassin's Creed Unity show very little improvement for me.
Given that I own a GTX 1060, not going over 2K means being able to hit a solid 50 fps with settings almost maxed out, therefore for the moment I don't see the point in having more pixels.

 

[Shadowboxer]

Threadripper has killed i9 in price. And for that is by far the better buy.

But I'm still disappointed that it seems to only beat a 10 core Intel chip by a little bit. I'm guessing the 16 core will lay waste to threadripper in terms of actual performance. Not that anyone should buy that CPU for the money Intel want for it!

 

[jojolapin102]

Thank you Steve for another in depth quality review !
It's impressive to see the results, and how good Threadripper is for creators !

 

[QuantumPhysics]

"If your goal is great gaming performance and you have $1,000 to spend on a processor, get the $340 Core i7-7700K and pocket the change for the best GPU you can afford."

A Core i9 is a $1000 CPU right now and well beyond the requirements of any game on the market you can possibly name.

Maybe 3 years from now the i9 and Threadripper will actually be necessary, but unless you're a Youtube-rich gamer who must have bleeding-edge tech, they are both tremendous wastes of money.

 

[Steve]

"If your goal is great gaming performance and you have $1,000 to spend on a processor, get the $340 Core i7-7700K and pocket the change for the best GPU you can afford."

A Core i9 is a $1000 CPU right now and well beyond the requirements of any game on the market you can possibly name.

Maybe 3 years from now the i9 and Threadripper will actually be necessary, but unless you're a Youtube-rich gamer who must have bleeding-edge tech, they are both tremendous wastes of money.

Why are you talking about the Core i9?

 

[TaroT]

Thanks for the review it is one of the better ones I have seen, easy to read and by the looks dead on.
Also you are the only site on the planet testing with the board I am actually getting I cannot see the value of throwing another 200 bucks at the asus, and from all the reviews I have seen you are getting close to the highest and more stable results.
one thing though with overclocking how about the settings used? and n mention of the TCtl offset of 27 degrees(although I have not found anyone who has tested that theory to see where the hard reboot or throttling is)
apart from that great review and t all the INTEL folk out there.....your welcome.

 

[Puiu]

Threadripper has killed i9 in price. And for that is by far the better buy.

But I'm still disappointed that it seems to only beat a 10 core Intel chip by a little bit. I'm guessing the 16 core will lay waste to threadripper in terms of actual performance. Not that anyone should buy that CPU for the money Intel want for it!

Some workloads are improved by over 30% which isn't bad considering the difference in clocks. the 16 core will have lower clocks than the 10 core CPU so don't expect 100% linear scaling (the applications themselves don't scale with more cores perfectly). I expect the 16 core Intel CPU to be 10-15% better than the 16 Core AMD CPU. Let's not forget that it will have a 2.8GHz base clock (2.6GHz for the 18 core CPU). Just how much can you OC it on all cores before you melt the motherboard VRM?

 

[CarlosYusV]

In the first chart on page 09: Price vs. Performance, the results of Ryzen 7 1700 and Ryzen 7 1800X are not correctly plot.
Congrats, Awesome review!

 

[slamscaper]

It's a massive chip with massive performance. AMD is back in the game in a big way. I'm seriously impressed. I would love to have one of these chips. It doesn't fall that far behind in gaming and it SLAYS everything else. It's just that $1000 for a CPU is definitely hefty for me, and I've paid more than that for two GPU's and a few monitors. But this is the first chip that has me tempted to fork over that much cash for it.

 

[antgr]

Nice review.
I would like to see how it handles r3d files. Can it decode red at least in 2k?

 

[JohnnyStone]

If I have to compare this to the extremely poor and biased (read: paid by Intel) review of Anandtech, this was done extremely well. Thanks very much for such a good all rounded review.

Please stay away from Anandtech review, they are terribly biased.

 

[ddferrari]

"If your goal is great gaming performance and you have $1,000 to spend on a processor, get the $340 Core i7-7700K and pocket the change for the best GPU you can afford."

A Core i9 is a $1000 CPU right now and well beyond the requirements of any game on the market you can possibly name.

Maybe 3 years from now the i9 and Threadripper will actually be necessary, but unless you're a Youtube-rich gamer who must have bleeding-edge tech, they are both tremendous wastes of money.

What are you talking about, and who was the bozo who gave this a "like"? Steve said NOT to spend $1K on a CPU for gaming and buy the 7700K.

 

[LNCPapa]

If I have to compare this to the extremely poor and biased (read: paid by Intel) review of Anandtech, this was done extremely well. Thanks very much for such a good all rounded review.

Please stay away from Anandtech review, they are terribly biased.

What made you feel Anand's review was biased? It's easy to accuse someone of being paid off but do you have any proof of that?

 

[Avro Arrow]

If you judge these chips by gaming performance (which is immature and silly as gaming engines are not coded to use everything todays CPU's have to offer, even new games) you may be a little disappointed. A Ryzen 1700/1700X seems to be the sweet spot for all around performance and gaming. That being said I am impressed from the skin to the bone.

With AMD there was always a catch to saving money with their GPUs or CPU's...poor single threading performance, no overclock ability/high temps, poor software/architectural coding, bugs/issues or poor gaming performance. With Ryzen there really is no catch and it will be interesting to see how long Intel can ride out their reputation before AMD buyers increase.

I understand review sites checking single-threaded performance just to be thorough but with CPUs like these, it makes me laugh how some give single-threaded performance actual weight in their conclusions. I mean, sure, if this were an X370 CPU or Z270 CPU then I would understand because gaming would likely be a significant use but anyone who cares about single-thread performance is NOT looking to spend $1000 on a CPU alone. It just makes me shake my head and laugh sometimes.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Beyond what I need at the moment or what I would ever spend on a CPU but nice to see some competition in the CPU market. That said my question is how come the single thread performance is so higher on Threadripper then on Ryzen? Historically the more cores you cram into a CPU the less single thread performance you create.

Well, as madboyv1 pointed out, the Quad-Channel memory capability removes any RAM latency problems that Ryzen may have but I would also add that AMD stated specifically that only the top 5% of binned Zeppelin cores are fit to be made into Threadripper CPUs. That binning might also have a positive effect from allowing XFR to clock higher than it otherwise might have.

EDIT: And of course, Puiu answered before I could. LOL

 

[Avro Arrow]

Intel is gonna do a kneejerk ,just watch..

That's funny, I thought that Intel's knee-jerk was called "i9".

 

[Boilerhog146]

That's funny, I thought that Intel's knee-jerk was called "i9".

nono ,just wait until they actually see AMD cutting into their margins .intel is not cash strapped like AMD usually is.they can slash their prices and still make huge profits.But and a huge but ,if AMD doesn't start cutting into intel and instead have to lower their prices ,intel is just gonna do a little chuckle and go back at what ever they were doing ,putting AMD back on IGNORE.where they've been for the past Decade.

 

[Jagjit Natt]

Steam 2017 results showed that most people still game at or around 1080p.
1440p/2K is picking up steam but I believe it was no more then 5-8%, and 4K was below 2-3%.
Steam's June/July Survey 2017 results are in, google them and take a peak, the data they have is pretty awesome.

As far as CPU gaming comparisons I don't see AMD catching Intel with this generation. With higher resolutions the GPU takes over more so the results might get closer but lower resolution tests give you the real story on what CPU's are holding their own better. Intel's threading and architecture has been more commonly supported by most gaming platforms and engines, this is not something an overnight update will fix. Also, some games that are based on calculation and frequency dependent games will just run better on a CPU that can hit 5.0GHz, sometimes it does come down to raw clock speed. Not saying Intel is better or worse, but that's basically how it played out in the last 10+ years. That will now start to change.

You are assuming that the people who game at 1080p (majority of gamers) are going to consider an upgrade to Threadripper.
Threadripper is for the Richest 0.1-0.2% of all the gamers, and ALL of them would fall into the 4k category running 1080Ti. You need to look at the target audience for the processor. Nobody is going to pair a $1000 CPU with $200 GPU and $200 monitor.

 

[amstech]

You are assuming that the people who game at 1080p (majority of gamers) are going to consider an upgrade to Threadripper. .

What in the hell makes you think I am assuming that?
No one is buying Threadripper to game, and if so they are fools.
My comment applies to all Ryzen chips.

Threadripper is for the Richest 0.1-0.2% of all the gamers, and ALL of them would fall into the 4k category running 1080Ti. You need to look at the target audience for the processor. Nobody is going to pair a $1000 CPU with $200 GPU and $200 monitor.

Your statement is accurate, but has little or nothing to do with my comment.

 

[LNCPapa]

I don't think Threadripper is for the richest .1% of gamers - just users who do more than just gaming. I got the 1950X and I'm certainly not considered rich by any stretch of the imagination. It's all a matter of priorities and what you need it for.