The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X and 1920X Review: CPUs on Steroids
by Ian Cutress on August 10, 2017 9:00 AM ESTCPU Legacy Tests
Our legacy tests represent benchmarks that were once at the height of their time. Some of these are industry standard synthetics, and we have data going back over 10 years. All of the data here has been rerun on Windows 10, and we plan to go back several generations of components to see how performance has evolved.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
3D Particle Movement v1
3DPM is a self-penned benchmark, taking basic 3D movement algorithms used in Brownian Motion simulations and testing them for speed. High floating point performance, MHz and IPC wins in the single thread version, whereas the multithread version has to handle the threads and loves more cores. This is the original version, written in the style of a typical non-computer science student coding up an algorithm for their theoretical problem, and comes without any non-obvious optimizations not already performed by the compiler, such as false sharing.
CineBench 11.5 and 10
Cinebench is a widely known benchmarking tool for measuring performance relative to MAXON's animation software Cinema 4D. Cinebench has been optimized over a decade and focuses on purely CPU horsepower, meaning if there is a discrepancy in pure throughput characteristics, Cinebench is likely to show that discrepancy. Arguably other software doesn't make use of all the tools available, so the real world relevance might purely be academic, but given our large database of data for Cinebench it seems difficult to ignore a small five minute test. We run the modern version 15 in this test, as well as the older 11.5 and 10 due to our back data.
x264 HD 3.0
Similarly, the x264 HD 3.0 package we use here is also kept for historic regressional data. The latest version is 5.0.1, and encodes a 1080p video clip into a high-quality x264 file. Version 3.0 only performs the same test on a 720p file, and in most circumstances the software performance hits its limit on high-end processors, but still works well for mainstream and low-end. Also, this version only takes a few minutes, whereas the latest can take over 90 minutes to run.
The 1950X: the first CPU to score higher on the 2nd pass of this test than it does on the first pass.
347 Comments
View All Comments
Makaveli - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
Some professional work from home. Kinda of a silly question.mapesdhs - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
Yeah, I just inferred that'd be the case.prisonerX - Friday, August 11, 2017 - link
"640K should be enough for anyone"peevee - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
I had a lot of hope for Threadripper as a development machine... but when 16 core TR loses so bad to 10-core 7900x or even 8-core 7820x in compilation, there is something seriously wrong with the picture. Too much emphasis on FP performance nobody at home needs all that much (except in games where it is provided by GPU and not CPU anyway)? Maybe AT tests are wrong, say, they have failed to specify /m for MsBuild?peevee - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
Well, there is a good chance that the optimal config for the test would be SMT on (obviously) and NUMA on.peevee - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
Hiding the fact that the CPU is NUMA both from the OS and from software is a very bad idea. Thread migration out of a core is a disaster all but itself, but thread migration to different memory and especially L3 cache (as big as it is) should never be attempted.peevee - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
Basically, at this point I would take 7820x over TR1950X for every task, with similar MT performance in vast majority of tasks not offloadable to a GPU, better mixed-load performance and much better ST performance. And would save $400 and electricity costs in the process.BOBOSTRUMF - Friday, August 11, 2017 - link
Take your Intel, I'm with the ThreadRipperLolimaster - Friday, August 11, 2017 - link
X299 + cpu consumes and produces way more heat than TR, and that's a fact, anand is anand, if you're happy for you blu placebo site, good for ya.Notmyusualid - Saturday, August 12, 2017 - link
@ peeveeI'm sort-of eyeing-up the 7900X myself. But I have the feeling the Mrs. will sh1t if I buy any more new toys, and my 13 Nvidia GPUs.... :)