The AMD Threadripper 2990WX 32-Core and 2950X 16-Core Review
by Dr. Ian Cutress on August 13, 2018 9:00 AM ESTOverclocking: 4.0 GHz for 500W
Who said that a 250W processor should not be overclocked? AMD prides itself as being a processor manufacturer that offers every consumer processor as a multiplier unlocked part, as well as using a soldered thermal interface material to assist with thermal dissipation performance. This 2990WX has an X in the same, so let the overclocking begin!
Actually, confession time. We did not have much time to do overclocking by any stretch. This processor has a 3.0 GHz base frequency and a 4.2 GHz turbo frequency, and in an air-conditioned room using the 500W Enermax Liqtech cooler, when running all cores under POV-Ray, we observed each core running around 3150 MHz, which is barely above the turbo frequency. The first thing I did was set the all-core turbo to 4.2 GHz, the same as the single core turbo frequency. That was a bust.
However, the next stage of my overclocking escapades surprised me. I set the CPU to a 40x multiplier in the BIOS, for 4.0 GHz on all the cores, all the time. I did not adjust the voltage, it was kept at auto, and I was leaving the ASUS motherboard to figure it out. Lo and behold, it performed flawlessly through our testing suite at 4.0 GHz. I was shocked.
All I did for this overclock was turn a setting from ‘auto’ to ‘40’, and it breezed through almost every test I threw at it. I say almost every test – our Prime95 power testing failed. But our POV-Ray power testing, which draws more power, worked. Every benchmark in the suite worked. Thermals were high (in the 70s), but the cooler could take it, and with good reason too.
At full load in our POV-Ray test, the processor was listed as consuming 500W. The cooler is rated for 500W. At one point we saw 511W. This was split between 440W for the cores (or 13.8W per core) and 63W for the non-core (IF, IO, IMC) which equates to only 12.5% of the full power consumption. It answers the question from our Infinity Fabric power page - if you want the interconnect to be less of the overall power draw, overclock!
We also tried 4.1 GHz, and that seemed to work as well, although we did not get a full benchmark run out of it before having to pack the system up. As stated above, 4.2 GHz was a no-go, even when increasing the voltage. With tweaking (and the right cooling), it could be possible. For anyone wanting to push here, chilled water might be the way to go.
Performance at 4.0 GHz
So if the all-core frequency was 3125 MHz, an overclock to 4000 MHz all-core should give a 28% performance increase, right? Here are some of the key tests from our suite.
Overclocking the 2990WX is a mixed bag, because of how it does really well in some tests, and how it still sits behind the 2950X in others due to the bi-modal nature of the cores. In the tests were it already wins, it pushes out a lot more: Blender is up 19% in throughput, POV-Ray is up 19%, 3DPM is up 19%. The other tests, is catches back up to the 2950X (Photoscan), or still lags behind (app loading, WinRAR).
Overclocking is not the cure-all for the performance issues on the 2990WX, but it certainly does help.
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jospoortvliet - Saturday, August 18, 2018 - link
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&... has some.nul0b - Monday, August 13, 2018 - link
Ian please define how exactly you're calculating and deriving uncore and IF power utilization.alpha754293 - Monday, August 13, 2018 - link
I vote that from now on, all of the CPU reviews should be like this.Just raw data.
Lolimaster - Monday, August 13, 2018 - link
To resume:Intel's TDP is a blatant lie, it barely keeps at TDP at 6c/6t, meanwhile AMD stick on point or below TDP with their chips, boost included :D
Lolimaster - Monday, August 13, 2018 - link
Selling more shares from $1.65 now to $19 :DAMD Threadripper 2, ripping the blue hole.
Lolimaster - Monday, August 13, 2018 - link
It seems geekbench can't scale beyond 16cores.Lolimaster - Monday, August 13, 2018 - link
WHERE IS CINEBENCH?Lolimaster - Monday, August 13, 2018 - link
And I mean CB15Also, for some reason CB11.5 MT seems to be broken for TR, it stops caling at 12cores.
mapesdhs - Monday, August 13, 2018 - link
CB R15 is suffering issues aswell these days, at this level it can exhibit huge variance from one run to another.eastcoast_pete - Monday, August 13, 2018 - link
Thanks Ian, great article, look forward to seeing the full final version!My conclusions: All these are workstation processors, NOT for gaming; the Ryzen 2700X and the upcoming Intel octacore 9000 series are/will be better for gaming, both in value for money and absolute performance. That being said, the TR 2950X could be a great choice, if your productivity software can make good use of the 16 cores/32 threads, and if that same software isn't written to make strong use of AVX 512. If the applications that you buy these monsters can make heavy use of AVX 512, Intel's chips are currently hard or impossible to beat, even at the same price point. That being said, a 2950X workstation with 128 or 256 Gb of RAM (in quad channel, of course), plus some fast PCIe/NVMe SSDs and a big & fast graphics card would make an awesome video editing setup; and, the 60 PCIe channels would come in really handy for add-in boards. One fly in the ointment: AMD, since you're hamstringing TR with only quad-channel, at least let us use faster DDR4; how about officially supporting > 3.2 Ghz?
Unrelated: Love the testing setup where the system storage SSD ( 1TB) is the same size as the working memory (1 TB). With one of these, you know you're in the heavyweight division.
@Ian: I also really appreciate the testing of power draws by cores vs. interconnecting fabric. I also believe (as you wrote) that this is a much underappreciated hurdle in simply escalating the number of cores. I also wonder a. How is that affecting ARM-based multicore chips, especially once we are talking 32 cores and up, as for the chips intended for servers? and b. Is that one of the reasons (or THE reason) why ARM-based manycore solutions have not been getting much traction, and why companies like Qualcomm have stopped their development? Yes, the cores might be very efficient, but if those power savings are being gobbled up by the interconnects, fewer but broader and deeper cores might still end up winning the performance/wh race.
If you and/or Ryan (or any of your colleagues) could do a deep dive into the general issue of power use by the interconnecting fabric and the different architectures, I would really appreciate it.