The 64 Core Threadripper 3990X CPU Review: In The Midst Of Chaos, AMD Seeks Opportunity
by Dr. Ian Cutress & Gavin Bonshor on February 7, 2020 9:00 AM ESTAMD 3990X Against $20k Enterprise CPUs
For those looking at a server replacement CPU, AMD’s big discussion point here is that in order to get 64 cores on Intel hardware is relatively hard. The best way to get there is with a dual socket system, featuring two of its 28-core dies at a hefty $10k a piece. AMD’s argument is that users can consolidate down to a single socket, but also have better memory support, PCIe 4.0, and no cross-memory domain issues.
| AMD 3990X Enterprise Competition | |||
| AnandTech | AMD 3990X |
AMD 7702P |
Intel 2x8280 |
| SEP | $3990 | $4450 | $20018 |
| Cores/Threads | 64 / 128 | 64 / 128 | 56 / 112 |
| Base Frequency | 2900 | 2000 | 2700 |
| Turbo Frequency | 4300 | 3350 | 4000 |
| PCIe | 4.0 x64 | 4.0 x128 | 3.0 x96 |
| DDR4 Frequency | 4x 3200 | 8x 3200 | 12x 2933 |
| Max DDR4 Capacity | 512 GB | 2 TB | 3 TB |
| TDP | 280 W | 200 W | 410 W |
Unfortunately I was unable to get ahold of our Rome CPUs from Johan in time for this review, however I do have data from several dual Intel Xeon setups that I did a few months ago, including the $20k system.
This time with Corona the competition is hot on the heels of AMD's 64-core CPUs, but even $20k of hardware can't match it.
The non-AVX verson of 3DPM puts the Zen 2 hardware out front, with everything else waiting in the wings.
When we add in the AVX-512 hand tuned code, the situation flips: Intel's 56 cores get almost 2.5x the score of AMD, despite having fewer cores.
Blender doesn't seem to like the additional access latency from the 2P systems.
For AES encoding, as the benchmark takes places from memory, it appears that none of Intel's CPUs can match AMD here.
For the 7-zip combined test, there's little difference between AMD's 32-core and 64-core, but there are sizable jumps above Intel hardware.
Verdict
In our tests here (more in our benchmark database), AMD's 3990X would get the crown over Intel's dual socket offerings. The only thing really keeping me back from giving it is the same reason there was hesitation on the previous page: it doesn't do enough to differentiate itself from AMD's own 32-core CPU. Where AMD does win is in that 'money is less of an issue scenario', where using a single socket 64 core CPU can help consolidate systems, save power, and save money. Intel's CPUs have a TDP of 205W each (more if you decide to use the turbo, which we did here), which totals 410W, while AMD maxed out at 280W in our tests. Technically Intel's 2P has access to more PCIe lanes, but AMD's PCIe lanes are PCIe 4.0, not PCIe 3.0, and with the right switch can power many more than Intel (if you're saving 16k, then a switch is peanuts).
We acknowledge that our tests here aren't in any way a comprehensive test of server level workloads, but for the user base that AMD is aiming for, we'd take the 64 core (or even the 32 core) in most circumstances over two Intel 28 core CPUs, and spend the extra money on memory, storage, or a couple of big fat GPUs.
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tuxRoller - Saturday, February 15, 2020 - link
Funny."WINDOWS 10 ENTERPRISE for this renderer was also performing much better than WINDOWS 10 PROFESSIONAL up until hitting 128 threads."
My question is why didn't you at least click on the link?
Korguz - Saturday, February 15, 2020 - link
then something has changed, as farther up, another poster made a post, and posted the SAME link as you did, and at the time, it looks like Mr Larabel didnt use anything other then win 10pro, as Sandtitz posted in reply to another that posted the SAME link then :Well, that's where the Win10 Pro Enterprise/Workstations comes to play.
Had you read this Anandtech article you'd see how much faster it is than the plain Win10Pro.
Mr. Larabel didn't use the Enterprise version for testing. This is quite understandable since Microsoft doesn't make it clear that there is a tremendous performance boost.
as i had read the link when jospoortvliet posted it, it didnt state that the review used anything other then win 10 pro.
so maybe the original review was updated since then.
tuxRoller - Monday, February 17, 2020 - link
I don't believe anything changed. The earlier poster linked to an older article (https://www.anandtech.com/comments/15483/amd-threa... linked to https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&... )tuxRoller - Monday, February 17, 2020 - link
Eek, sorry, I prematurely posted:)The link texts are pretty much identical save "3990x" vs "2990wx".
The last thing I wanted to mention was that Enterprise didn't perform significantly better than pro (this might be due to it having been patched).
tuxRoller - Monday, February 17, 2020 - link
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&...This article was just posted and compares W10 pro & Enterprise vs a number of different distros. Again W10P ≈W10E
Thanny - Saturday, February 8, 2020 - link
You don't need to reboot a Linux server to patch it.It's a consequence of how the file systems work. In Linux, the name and location of the file are distinct from its contents. You can unlike an open file from the directory, create a new one with the same name, and the open file will continue functioning until it's closed. You can update everything in Linux outside the kernel without rebooting (and even that with a bit of prep work).
So you're using a weakness of Windows as an excuse for the inferior stability of Windows mattering less.
PeachNCream - Monday, February 10, 2020 - link
There is some argument for an occasional restart in the case of long-lived processes that retain older, unpatched binaries in memory due to in-flight workloads. A periodic restart will address that, but in general it is absolutely true that Linux does not really require reboots in order for patches to take effect.clsmithj - Thursday, February 13, 2020 - link
Linux IS more stable and it runs my Ryzen Threadripper 2990wx much better than Windows 10 Pro for Workstation I have it dual booting to with Fedora 31.baka_toroi - Friday, February 7, 2020 - link
If you get out of your bubble you'd realize most of them. What a useless comment.rrinker - Friday, February 7, 2020 - link
Oh I dunno, our not very large consulting firm has thousands of clients who all run Windows infrastructure.... Though the #1 use of servers with > 32 cores is running VMWare hypervisor with Windows servers as guests on top of that.