The AMD Threadripper 2 CPU Review: The 24-Core 2970WX and 12-Core 2920X Tested
by Ian Cutress on October 29, 2018 9:00 AM ESTTest Bed and Setup
As per our processor testing policy, we take a premium category motherboard suitable for the socket, and equip the system with a suitable amount of memory running at the manufacturer's maximum supported frequency. This is also typically run at JEDEC subtimings where possible. It is noted that some users are not keen on this policy, stating that sometimes the maximum supported frequency is quite low, or faster memory is available at a similar price, or that the JEDEC speeds can be prohibitive for performance. While these comments make sense, ultimately very few users apply memory profiles (either XMP or other) as they require interaction with the BIOS, and most users will fall back on JEDEC supported speeds - this includes home users as well as industry who might want to shave off a cent or two from the cost or stay within the margins set by the manufacturer. Where possible, we will extend out testing to include faster memory modules either at the same time as the review or a later date.
| Test Setup | |||||
| AMD TR4 | TR2 2970WX TR2 2920X |
ASUS ROG X399 Zenith |
1501 | Enermax Liqtech TR4 |
Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 4x8GB DDR4-2933 |
| TR2 2990WX TR2 2950X |
ASUS ROG X399 Zenith |
0508 | Enermax Liqtech TR4 |
G.Skill FlareX 4x8GB DDR4-2933 |
|
| TR 1950X TR 1920X |
ASUS ROG X399 Zenith |
0508 | Enermax | G.Skill FlareX 4x8GB DDR4-2666 |
|
| TR 1900X | ASUS X399-A Prime |
0407 | Enermax Liqtech TR4 |
Crucial Ballistix 4x4GB DDR4-2666 |
|
| AMD EPYC | EPYC 7601 | GIGABYTE MZ31-AR0 |
F07 | Gamerstorm Fryzen |
Micron LRDIMM 8x128GB DDR4-2666 |
| AMD 2000 | R7 2700X | ASRock X370 Gaming K4 |
P4.80 | Wraith Max* | G.Skill SniperX 2x8 GB DDR4-2933 |
| Intel HEDT | i9-7980XE i9-7960X i9-7940X i9-7920X i9-7900X i7-7820X i7-7800X |
ASRock X299 OC Formula |
P1.40 | TRUE Copper |
Crucial Ballistix 4x4GB DDR4-2666 |
| Intel 9th Gen | i9-9900K | ASRock Z370 Gaming i7 |
P1.70 | TRUE Copper |
Crucial Ballistix 4x4GB DDR4-2666 |
| GPU | Sapphire RX 460 2GB (CPU Tests) MSI GTX 1080 Gaming 8G (Gaming Tests) |
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| PSU | Corsair AX860i Corsair AX1200i |
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| SSD | Crucial MX200 1TB | ||||
| OS | Windows 10 x64 RS3 1709 Spectre and Meltdown Patched |
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| *VRM Supplimented with SST-FHP141-VF 173 CFM fans | |||||
All of AMD’s Threadripper 2 processors are unlocked, allowing users to push the frequency and voltage higher for extra performance. Due to time constraints, we will hopefully examine this in a later review.
Many thanks to...
We must thank the following companies for kindly providing hardware for our multiple test beds. Some of this hardware is not in this test bed specifically, but is used in other testing.
| Hardware Providers | |||
| Sapphire RX 460 Nitro | MSI GTX 1080 Gaming X OC | Crucial MX200 + MX500 SSDs |
Corsair AX860i + AX1200i PSUs |
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 |
 |
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| G.Skill RipjawsV, SniperX, FlareX |
Crucial Ballistix DDR4 |
Silverstone Coolers |
Silverstone Fans |
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peevee - Monday, October 29, 2018 - link
You don't have real workstation tests except for Chromium compile, and even that is apparently broken (for example, no /Gm on the projects or something like that).Schmich - Monday, October 29, 2018 - link
Your ads are one of the worst of tech blogs. Distracting ads with moving items. Dynamic resizing of the slow loading header ads, so by the time you want to click on something you've clicked on something else. Autoplaying videos that follow you down as you read the article. No wonder people install adblock but strangely blogs call the readers a problem.peevee - Wednesday, October 31, 2018 - link
Somebody reading anandtech who does not use adblocking?I am genuineley shocked.
And it's not a blog.
firestream - Monday, October 29, 2018 - link
Can someone test the those in-memory business application like Qlikview? It should be very interesting whether TR2 can replace the developer machine who are crunching large amount of dataset to build dashboard or analytic.crotach - Tuesday, October 30, 2018 - link
Damn, this i9-9900k is a beast! It even looks like good value for money when compared like this.SanX - Wednesday, October 31, 2018 - link
What the problem with AMD AVX or test's AVX?GreenReaper - Wednesday, October 31, 2018 - link
AMD's AVX units are limited due to the Zen architecture. Basically, they cut stuff down into 128-bit chunks but only certain modules can do certain things. AVX2 requires work over two instructions. And it can't do AVX-512 yet. This might well have been the appropriate decision - after all, wider units means more to go wrong, and more power. But it limits performance on AVX workloads.Henk Poley - Saturday, November 10, 2018 - link
I wonder when they'll include a few high performance cores for single core heavy tasks. Kinda ridiculous that an iPad Pro / iPhone XR can get +33 to +50% better performance on Speedometer 2.0Henk Poley - Saturday, November 10, 2018 - link
It could be cool to throw in a 4-core Intel Core i7-7740X, which appears to be fairly efficient in multicore performance. I wouldn't be surprised if it held up decently at the bottom spot, but using much less cores.