The third-generation Ryzen CPUs were outfitted with DDR4-3600, while the Intel platforms used DDR4-3200. While we can’t do an exact apples-to-apples test without a third-generation Threadripper to evaluate, any benchmark where the 2950X takes an unusual lead could be a sign it’s leveraging additional memory bandwidth.Gaming performance shows a few surprising wins for the Ryzen Threadripper 2950X, but the Ryzen 9 3950X hits higher frame rates overall and offers more regular performance besides. We also used a beefy custom watercooling loop with two 360mm radiators for overclocking testing.With 16 cores hammering away, the per-core frequency recordings create almost-unintelligible charts, so the album above only includes the maximum and minimum frequencies recorded during each 1-second measurement interval (100ms sampling). The first two tests are LAME and Cinebench in single-core test mode.
The 9700K gets included because it’s kind of an oddity — slower than the 8086K in some things, but Intel’s overall fastest gaming chip if what you care about is pure frame rate.
Do you need a Ryzen 9 3950X? The Ryzen 9 3950X consistently renders in 76-77 percent the time of the 3900X. Therefore, we're using pure package power to avoid possible influences from our motherboard.
That means these measurements could come from any one core, but it makes the charts easier to digest. If you’re a gamer, CPUs like the Core i7-9700K or the Ryzen 7 3700X are going to be far more cost-effective and practical. Twelve months ago, the 2950X wasn’t taking any tests off the Core i9-9980XE — the combination of two additional CPU cores and Intel’s higher overall IPC was a barrier second-generation Threadripper wasn’t capable of scaling very often. But on top of that, some builders know that they will want to game. The impact was definitely there when I tested a 3900X like that. We frequently reached 4.7 GHz with the Corsair H115i cooler, and even recorded a few bursts of 4.75 GHz. At ~$500, you’ve got chips like the Core i9-9900K.
Keep in mind, like many enthusiast-centric processors, the Ryzen 9 3950X does not come with a stock CPU cooler in the box, so you'll need to have one on hand or buy one. The 3900X/3950X are top-of-the-line Zen 2 CPU’s, and their high thread/core counts make them great productivity machines. Windows 10 1903 with the latest updates and patches was used.
The fact that AMD is delivering performance gains like this in a high-core part is particularly impressive. Second, while there have been points in the past where it was possible to boost CPU core counts over and above what was available when a hardware platform launched, it doesn’t happen all that often. The Core i9-9980XE is vastly outside the Ryzen 9 3950X’s price range — but this was also true for the Threadripper 2950X versus 9980XE comparison.
Probably not.
That will prevent boosting to 4.6GHz or 4.7GHz on a 3950X.
I’ve had to remove all 7zip results due to cross-contamination between 32-bit and 64-bit results, and will be restating these results for previous reviews as well. AVX instructions need copious data throughput, and the extra cores on the 3950X might incur a slight penalty from contention on the Infinity Fabric. The 3950X is at least a couple hundred dollars extra but performs worse in games. Coffee Lake reset things a bit closer to parity later that same year, but AMD undoubtedly liked being able to queue up 2x the CPU cores in an apples-to-apples comparison. Nvidia GeForce driver 430.86 was used to maintain identical configurations with our previous round of testing.At $750 for 16-cores, the 3950X is a fair step up from the $500 price point, and the increase in core count (1.33x) doesn’t quite match the increase in price (1.5x). The Ryzen 7 2700X and Core i7-8086K are retained to give some performance data on last-gen chips. It doesn’t make the high-core CPU a good choice for people who principally game — but it does mean that you have to give up much less performance in gaming with the 3950X than with previous solutions — including, in a few places, the 9980XE.Subscribe Today to get the latest ExtremeTech news delivered right to your inbox.The Ryzen 9 3950X is a further uplift over the 3900X and the 3700X in both single-threaded and (obviously) multi-threaded performance.