AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7980X & 7970X Review: Revived HEDT Brings More Cores of Zen 4
by Gavin Bonshor on November 20, 2023 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- AMD
- HEDT
- ThreadRipper
- Zen 4
- Threadripper 7000
- TRX50
TR 7000 vs. Intel: Rendering
Rendering tests, compared to others, are often a little more simple to digest and automate. All the tests put out some sort of score or time, usually in an obtainable way that makes it fairly easy to extract. These tests are some of the most strenuous in our list, due to the highly threaded nature of rendering and ray-tracing, and can draw a lot of power.
If a system is not properly configured to deal with the thermal requirements of the processor, the rendering benchmarks are where it would show most easily as the frequency drops over a sustained period of time. Most benchmarks, in this case, are re-run several times, and the key to this is having an appropriate idle/wait time between benchmarks to allow for temperatures to normalize from the last test.
Some of the notable rendering-focused benchmarks we've included for 2024 include the latest CineBench 2024 benchmark and an update to Blender 3.6 and V-Ray 5.0.2.
We are using DDR5-5200 RDIMM memory on the Ryzen Threadripper 7980X and 7970X as per JEDEC specifications. For Intel's Xeon W9-3495X, we are using DDR5-4800 RDIMM memory as per Intel's JEDEC specifications. It should be noted that both platforms are run with their full allocation of memory channels, eg, TR7000 in 4-channel and Sapphire Rapids in 8-channel.
Below are the settings we have used for each platform:
- DDR5-5200 RDIMM - AMD Threadripper 7000
- DDR5-4800 RDIMM - Intel Xeon Sapphire Rapids WS
- DDR5-5600B CL46 - Intel 14th Gen
- DDR5-5200 CL44 - Ryzen 7000
Now we come to where the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7000 (and Xeon W9-3495X) excel, rendering. In all of the multi-threaded rendering benchmarks, the Threadripper 7980X makes the desktop chips look fairly insignificant in comparison. Interestingly, the Threadripper 7970X ($2499) with 32C/64T performs relatively close to the Xeon W9-3495X ($5889) with 56C/112T. This shows AMD's Zen 4 core not only performs exceptionally well in rendering from a price to performance point of view compared to Intel, but the Threadripper 7980X ($4999) with 64 Zen 4 cores is very well suited to users looking to render videos and other rendering based workloads.
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tamalero - Tuesday, December 5, 2023 - link
One of the most common issues of AMD is sketchy performance and stability with non samsung chips.If you ram had hynix or similar chips..it would usually not post at the advertised max speed.
As soon I moved to Samsung chips in all my AMD builds, all problems went away.
JRF68 - Tuesday, December 12, 2023 - link
Just unlucky. Should RMA the mb. Asus imho, is still the best for HEDT whether AMD or Intel.clsmithj - Sunday, December 31, 2023 - link
I have a 3960X Threadripper on a MSI TRX40 Creator, and a 2990WX Threadripper on a MSI X399 MEG Creation board.Both system use 4 sticks of Kingston 64GB (16GB x 4) DDR4 3200 dual rank memory (HyperX Predaor/Fury) that worked fine at their C16 3200 MT XMP rate.
I used DRAM Calc app and managed to get the RAM of my 3960X to run stable at gear 1 C16 3800 MT with UCLK=MCLK set 1900Mhz.
The ZEN2 CPU is definitely capable of this high memory OC. I've watch Buildzoid clips of him showing how with ZEN2 TR it can go even higher than 3800.
My ZEN+ 2990WX I have running at Gear 1 C16 DDR4-3466 speed, and I checked ZenTimings that revealed its UCLK=MCLK is at 1733Mhz.
The high memory clocking is doable you do need a good motherboard, but I always observed the TRX40 boards having a fast amount of decent boards with high amount of VRM phases.
It was the X399 boards that only had a total of two good boards, which was either the MSI MEG Creation or the ASUS ROG Zenith Extreme.
thestryker - Monday, November 20, 2023 - link
Where have you seen JEDEC compliant 6400 RDIMMs? The highest I've seen is 5600.Rοb - Wednesday, November 29, 2023 - link
Here: https://www.anandtech.com/show/18988/teamgroup-unv... and https://www.anandtech.com/show/21129/micron-introd...demu - Monday, November 20, 2023 - link
I was able to run my 3960X with G.Skill Trident Neo 4x16GB 3600CL16 (B-die) at 3600CL14 and/or 3766 CL16 (Asus ROG Strix TRX40-E Gaming) for weeks without any problems.Broke down the processor about two months ago. Touched accidentally USB-A -port with an USB-C -cable and the processor no longer booted (or booted and went trough all but the last POST test and then stuck - tried two different MB) :(
Put all components into a new 5800X3D system and got 4x16GB memory to work @3600CL16.
Now considering the new 7960X.
Makaveli - Monday, November 20, 2023 - link
So looks like the difference between your system Demu and Teamswitcher is you paired it with high-quality memory.Which is no surprise and it's why I never go cheap on memory.
meacupla - Monday, November 20, 2023 - link
It's not about cheap or expensive, it's if you got Samsung B-die or not.I have G.Skill F4-3600C18-16GVK, and it only works at 3200 CL18. Why? because I was told it would be Samsung B-die, but it turned out to be SK Hynix, and the AM4 platform doesn't like working with anything other than Samsung B-die.
Makaveli - Monday, November 20, 2023 - link
I have B-die and that is what I'm talking about when I said don't buy cheap memory. B-die = expensive but you get what you pay for and it just works. And you should have done your own research I would have caught the memory was Hynix before purchase.meacupla - Monday, November 20, 2023 - link
That's the thing though, I did do my research.