The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3960X and 3970X Review: 24 and 32 Cores on 7nm
by Dr. Ian Cutress, Andrei Frumusanu & Gavin Bonshor on November 25, 2019 9:05 AM ESTGaming: Grand Theft Auto V
The highly anticipated iteration of the Grand Theft Auto franchise hit the shelves on April 14th 2015, with both AMD and NVIDIA in tow to help optimize the title. GTA doesn’t provide graphical presets, but opens up the options to users and extends the boundaries by pushing even the hardest systems to the limit using Rockstar’s Advanced Game Engine under DirectX 11. Whether the user is flying high in the mountains with long draw distances or dealing with assorted trash in the city, when cranked up to maximum it creates stunning visuals but hard work for both the CPU and the GPU.
For our test we have scripted a version of the in-game benchmark. The in-game benchmark consists of five scenarios: four short panning shots with varying lighting and weather effects, and a fifth action sequence that lasts around 90 seconds. We use only the final part of the benchmark, which combines a flight scene in a jet followed by an inner city drive-by through several intersections followed by ramming a tanker that explodes, causing other cars to explode as well. This is a mix of distance rendering followed by a detailed near-rendering action sequence, and the title thankfully spits out frame time data.
There are no presets for the graphics options on GTA, allowing the user to adjust options such as population density and distance scaling on sliders, but others such as texture/shadow/shader/water quality from Low to Very High. Other options include MSAA, soft shadows, post effects, shadow resolution and extended draw distance options. There is a handy option at the top which shows how much video memory the options are expected to consume, with obvious repercussions if a user requests more video memory than is present on the card (although there’s no obvious indication if you have a low end GPU with lots of GPU memory, like an R7 240 4GB).
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
| AnandTech | IGP | Low | Medium | High |
| Average FPS |  |
 |
 |
 |
| 95th Percentile |  |
 |
 |
 |
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
245 Comments
View All Comments
zky1 - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link
Too expensive. Anything over $300 for a cpu is a ripoff. See you in two years when these threadrippers are obsolete.peevee - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link
Very likely it is a new plateau enabled by 7nm and brand new Zen architecture developed to its potential. I predict small improvements from here for the next several years as it has been with Intel since Sandy Bridge - only better AVX512 implementation on something like 5nm and DDR5 will bring some improvements, but don't expect wonders on most tasks which don't care about memory throughput or AVX512.Slash3 - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - link
The upcoming Zen 3 architecture revision is reported to provide up to a ~10% IPC uplift, with some neat tricks such as unifying the L3 cache per chiplet (no more CCX contention).There's always something better around the corner. :)
lobz - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - link
Nope, it's the CCX size that changes from 4 to 8 cores.peevee - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - link
"Up to 10%" - exactly what I have meant, a plateau, like Intel had after Sandy Bridge, adding only ~5% each year...Korguz - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - link
peevee um intel could of improved their ipc more each year.. but they didnt, there was no reason too.. just like they could of given mainstream more then 4 cores.. but they didnt as well.. mostly because of zen.. is there more then 4 cores from intel..catheryn75 - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link
It's too bad they aren't available anywhere other then a few system builders. ie CyberPower , Origin , and others.Some of us who would use one of these new processors dont want to pay the extra 1500-2k for someone else to build it when we could do it ourselves.
AMD was really short sighted not at least having some supply at Newegg, Microcenter, Fry's, etc.. on launch day.
Dug - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link
That's a lot of power needed for 24 cores. 3960 at 280w. And it's recommended to get water cooling? They aren't going to get many buyers on that.6 more cores than Intel 10980, but needs 90w more power to get there.
I thought 7nm would be better than this.
The Xeon is way out of wack at 381.
People that really need the speed to save in man hour costs, expect a high end system with warranty, instant replacement, compatibility (especially vm), and reliability. I don't think you are going to get that with water cooling. And I don't see any major players that offer what I listed, going to a water cooled system anytime soon.
alufan - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - link
https://www.scan.co.uk/3xs/configurator/amd-thread...pricey though but its liquid cooled
Dug - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - link
Not exactly mainstream. I'm talking Dell, HP