The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X and 1920X Review: CPUs on Steroids
by Ian Cutress on August 10, 2017 9:00 AM ESTCPU Office Tests
The office programs we use for benchmarking aren't specific programs per-se, but industry standard tests that hold weight with professionals. The goal of these tests is to use an array of software and techniques that a typical office user might encounter, such as video conferencing, document editing, architectural modeling, and so on and so forth.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
Chromium Compile (v56)
Our new compilation test uses Windows 10 Pro, VS Community 2015.3 with the Win10 SDK to compile a nightly build of Chromium. We've fixed the test for a build in late March 2017, and we run a fresh full compile in our test. Compilation is the typical example given of a variable threaded workload - some of the compile and linking is linear, whereas other parts are multithreaded.
One of the interesting data points in our test is the Compile, and it is surprising to see the 1920X only just beat the Ryzen 7 chips. Because this test requires a lot of cross-core communication, the fewer cores per CCX there are, the worse the result. This is why the 1950X in SMT-off mode beats the 3 cores-per-CCX 1920X, along with lower latency memory support. We know that this test is not too keen on victim caches either, but it does seem that the 2MB per core ratio does well for the 1950X, and could explain the performance difference moving from 8 to 12 to 16 cores under the Zen microarchitecture.
PCMark8: link
Despite originally coming out in 2008/2009, Futuremark has maintained PCMark8 to remain relevant in 2017. On the scale of complicated tasks, PCMark focuses more on the low-to-mid range of professional workloads, making it a good indicator for what people consider 'office' work. We run the benchmark from the commandline in 'conventional' mode, meaning C++ over OpenCL, to remove the graphics card from the equation and focus purely on the CPU. PCMark8 offers Home, Work and Creative workloads, with some software tests shared and others unique to each benchmark set.
Strangely, PCMark 8's Creative test seems to be failing across the board. We're trying to narrow down the issue.
SYSmark 2014 SE: link
SYSmark is developed by Bapco, a consortium of industry CPU companies. The goal of SYSmark is to take stripped down versions of popular software, such as Photoshop and Onenote, and measure how long it takes to process certain tasks within that software. The end result is a score for each of the three segments (Office, Media, Data) as well as an overall score. Here a reference system (Core i3-6100, 4GB DDR3, 256GB SSD, Integrated HD 530 graphics) is used to provide a baseline score of 1000 in each test.
A note on context for these numbers. AMD left Bapco in the last two years, due to differences of opinion on how the benchmarking suites were chosen and AMD believed the tests are angled towards Intel processors and had optimizations to show bigger differences than what AMD felt was present. The following benchmarks are provided as data, but the conflict of opinion between the two companies on the validity of the benchmark is provided as context for the following numbers.
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Pekish79 - Friday, August 11, 2017 - link
Vraybench 1.0.5SanX - Friday, August 11, 2017 - link
*** AMD, make 2-chip mobos for upcoming multicore wars, you will double your profit from this at no cost for you +++vicbee - Friday, August 11, 2017 - link
Off subject: Having just read the article about nVidia's meteoric rise in profits, some of which directly attributed to high end "gamers" video cards purchased expressly for coin mining, I wonder if it and AMD are going to manufacture CPU's and GPU's specifically for that purpose and how that will affect the price of said parts...Avro Arrow - Friday, August 11, 2017 - link
Hi Ian, thanks for doing this article. It's important to see all possible outcomes because in the real world, anything is possible. I do have one question that has be puzzled. Why do you say that Threadripper only has 64 PCI-Express 3.0 lanes when it's been reported several times by everyone, including official AMD releases (and also including by you) that it has 64? I thought it might be just a typo but you state it in several places and in all of your specs. This is not a new thing so is there something about Threadripper that we don't know?HotJob - Friday, August 11, 2017 - link
Could someone explain to me what a "2P" system is from the competition section of the article?coolhardware - Saturday, August 12, 2017 - link
"2P" system = two processor system, i.e. a system with two physical CPU sockets and two CPUs installed.In the past a 2P (or 4P) system was really handy to get more cores especially back when 1 core, 2 core, and eventually 4 core CPUs were high end. In the consumer realm, way back, the Pentium II was the first 2P system I ever built and people even did it with Celerons as well:
http://www.cpu-central.com/dualceleron/
the Opterons were also fun for dual or quad processor systems including some SFF options like the ZMAX-DP socket 940 system.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N...
Now fast forward with ThreadRipper already available at Amazon and NewEgg
http://amzn.to/2wDqgWw (URL shortened)
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N...
I do not think I will ever be building a 2P or 4P system again!!!
:-)
rvborgh - Friday, August 11, 2017 - link
hi Ian,i think the Cinebench 11.5 benchmarks are incorrect for both ThreadRippers. ThreadRipper is almost equivalent to my Quad Opteron (48 core) system which scores 3229cb on R15... and 39.04 on Cinebench 11.5. if i downclock all cores to approximately 2.9 GHz i end up with around 3000cb in R15 and in the 36 range point range for 11.5.
The fact that you are only scoring in the 18 range makes me wonder if you had the Threadripper set in some mode where it was only using 8 out of the 16 cores. Can you verify this... please? Thanks :) i would think you should see scores in the 36 range with 11.5.
Other than this minor detail... great article.
PS: i've had the same issues with software not liking NUMA on my quad opteron system as well... Cinebench especially does not like it.
Tchamber - Saturday, August 12, 2017 - link
Hi, Ian. Thanks for the review. As usual it was in depth and informative. I'm in the middle of building a 1700x system now based on your review. I wanted to say you handle all the nay-Sayers, gloomy Gusses and negative Nacies with aplomb! I think most people's own slant colors how they see your reviews. I appreciate the consistency of what you do here. I took a look over at Ars, and they could be called AMD shills for all the positive things they say... Keep it up!Tchamber - Saturday, August 12, 2017 - link
P.S.I loved your Kessel Run reference, it tied in nicely with your Yoda quote.
B3an - Saturday, August 12, 2017 - link
Too many plebs complaining about a lack of 3D rendering benches. The fact is a 16 core CPU is still much slower than GPU's at rendering. I'll be getting a 1950X but it wont even be used for rendering when i know for a fact that my two GPUs will still be much faster with things like Blender. Even a single high-end GPU will still easily beat the 1950X at these tasks.Seems like immature moron fanboys are crying over this stuff because they just want to see AMD at the top of the charts.