Author Topic: Threadripper 3990x vs 3970x  (Read 10123 times)

2021-04-12, 18:03:55

JF_Jacques

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Looking to get a new build. Current build is an i7-8700k. It works fine, but I'm looking to upgrade.
I use revit-3ds-corona. I spend maybe a quarter of my time in 3ds, but rendering is the bottleneck. What I'm most concerned with is IR speed as I test materials and scenes. Once the thing is rendering, it's not the end of the world.

I see myself having 3 options.
1-  Get the 3970x.
2-  Get the 3990x. 
3 - Wait till new chips come out.

I know the 3970x has a bit of a leg up on single core speed and it's cheaper, while the 3990x is twice as fast with renders. I wonder just how much faster in 3ds it would be than my current 3.7 ghz cores?
Is the extra single core speed noticeable when working with large scenes in 3ds or revit? Is the 3970x a better all-round workflow pic or is the difference not really noticeable?
I know that the Ryzen 5 is also an option - would it be significantly better on single core tasks? I wonder how people feel having used these chips with 3ds and corona?

Also, does anyone know when new chips might be coming out?


2021-04-13, 00:37:19
Reply #1

twoheads

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I jump the gun but i'll add my two cent anyway.

As a 3970 user I wish i could get 3990 i'll tell you that, but.... 3990x is twice as expensive as 3970, requires more expensive board  and makes sense only with water loop which is much more expensive than noctua.

Ask Juraj for help, he's the guy.



2021-04-13, 10:52:21
Reply #2

hldemi

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I will say that this depends upon your needs and budget.
I for example bought 3960x and my interactive is almost realtime responsive while renders take up to 10 minutes to render. This is for me ideal since in this 10 minutes I tweak tonemapping and other stuff so I got basically no time loss.
If we consider that unfourtunately 3ds max is still mainly single core, the good tradeoff of single core / multi core is needed.

Now if you do animations or extremely complex scenes in very high resolution and/or are a big studio that has big budget I would say to go for the 3990x. Otherwise I feel 3970x is the sweetspot.



2021-04-13, 12:03:41
Reply #3

twoheads

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I will say that this depends upon your needs and budget.
I for example bought 3960x and my interactive is almost realtime responsive while renders take up to 10 minutes to render. This is for me ideal since in this 10 minutes I tweak tonemapping and other stuff so I got basically no time loss.
If we consider that unfourtunately 3ds max is still mainly single core, the good tradeoff of single core / multi core is needed.

Now if you do animations or extremely complex scenes in very high resolution and/or are a big studio that has big budget I would say to go for the 3990x. Otherwise I feel 3970x is the sweetspot.

My sentiments exactly.

2021-04-13, 14:09:08
Reply #4

Vuk

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The 3990x doesn't require a more expensive board. It can run easily on any of the 16 phase boards and pretty much 90% of the lineup is ok apart from some Asrock budget boards that come with 12 phases if I remember well. As for the cooling, it works perfectly fine with the Noctua U14s cooler you need a water loop only if you are planning to overclock it.

The 3990x is not twice as fast as the 3970x, don't look at the corona render benchmark it is not a real-world scenario. Bigger scenes take more time to parse and will open faster on computers with a higher turbo on a single core. The scenario is this first comes the cpu in terms of scene opening than the hard drive than networking (Cpu>ssd>network). My 3990x is around 80-85% faster than the 3970x.

As for the price it depends from country to country you can get the 3990x for less than twice as much but keep in mind that for 2x3970x you need 2xPSU 2xram kits 2xgpu's and so on. If you can afford the 3990x I would go for it over the 3970x. If you want to wait sure wait but I doubt you will be buying anything new before July or even August.

2021-04-13, 17:40:04
Reply #5

twoheads

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you need a water loop only if you are planning to overclock it.

From my personal point of view not getting 100% more power from 3990 is just unprofitable (strictly money wise). And to get that kind of benefit you certainly need water loop which means extra 700euro/800euro?  maybe more? Not to mention, not all of us can or want to build water cooled workstations (including myself) so again you need extra cash for that.

mind sharing your hardware setup? Do you run 3990 stock on noctua?

cheers

2021-04-13, 18:18:10
Reply #6

ADVenturePO

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Hi,
I'm an oveclocker but also a company which builds workstations (99.99% of work)
I have been beating records with CPUs all over the place. Corona, Vray, Kray etc.
The thing is: AMD Threadripper have some sensor which checks how fast CPU is getting hot changing states from C6 to C0 and P0 - core sleep and work modes.
If CPU is heating up fast the Perfect Clock (visible in CPU-Z will not be changed) but Effective Clock will be lower - HWINFO64

Do to only this fact the most benefit from good cooling are for 3970x and 3990x.
With bad cooling and high memory latency those chips are just expensive piece of silicon.
Considering long tests in Blender - as I do not have Corona.

3990x 64GB RAM 4 sticks 1600W PSU
Barbershop scene -  Ultra settings and 4k Resolution.
AIR Dark Rock Pro 4 TR: 1h45m
LC 480+360 HWLABS GTX: 1h 24m
LC     --//--   & OC @3.8GHz: 1h09m

The thing is that 3970x will do that test on LC in 1h33m

Just look at Corona benchmarks :
https://corona-renderer.com/benchmark/results/cpu/3990x
With a LC this CPU will run some about 3.2GHz by itself.
On air (open benchtable) Effective Clock can drop to some about 2.65GHz.
With OC @ 3.8 GHz and 33dB you can go all the time average 3.75GHz.
When silence is not the case: 38db, 4.15GHz and 4.1 Effective clock is maintained.

All TR3 39xxx series have TDP 280W. If you are to work on it efficiently accordingly to its price, than you have to have LC.
You can use AIR like Silver Arrow TT with 3 fans for 3960x and 3970x and you will be able to OC it a bit.
But 3990x is just a power and cooling hungry monster. And even with best air cooling you will not be able to maintain high effective clocks,
do to some internal heating up checking mechanism.

Cheers

 

2021-04-13, 18:31:46
Reply #7

JF_Jacques

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Thanks all for the comments!

Would optimizing a 3990x build vs a 3970x build cost 1.5K more due to other board/cooling required + 2.5k for the chip dif. ? I might have underestimated cooling costs for OC the90x vs the 70x. Though it seems I need to LC the 70x anyway. 
My build for the 3970x is around 6.5k - meaning the 3990x would be around 10.5k. (Canadian prices.) 

My main concern for the 3990x is the 2.9 base vs the 3.7 base clock. I have no idea if that matters. Turbo clocks are pretty similar. 

As in, would max be noticeably less sticky (a mild annoyance atm) with the 3970x? I note that some have said that the 3970x would be the sweet spot.
Does anyone running the 3990x in max find it underpowered compared to cheaper chips outside of rendering/multi-core tasks?

As for IR, my main concern is that it can run all the cores, and that, as I'm moving the scene around, hiding/unhiding objects, testing materials, it will have a hard time activating all cores and I wouldn't notice a dif. between the 90 and 70 as other hardware factors come into play anyway. Again, some have alluded to as much in this thread and noted the importance of single core on larger scenes. Perhaps a raid would be more important for this stuff. As I said, once I click render, the thing's not really an issue anymore - I 90% care about IR. 

Also being implied is that maybe overclocking a core or 2 is much much easier on the 70x vs the 90x. How high can single-core overclocks clocks go on either realistically?

Regarding scaling on final renders - is the 13s benchmark not a real-world scenario?

As for chips - shouldn't 4th gens be coming out sometime soon?

Apologies if this is all over the place. It's an expensive system.

Looks like I might be leaning 3970x.

« Last Edit: 2021-04-13, 19:37:16 by JF_Jacques »

2021-04-14, 08:56:29
Reply #8

ADVenturePO

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Also being implied is that maybe overclocking a core or 2 is much much easier on the 70x vs the 90x. How high can single-core overclocks clocks go on either realistically?
Answer: Overclocking only 2 cores is not a good idea for any threadrippers. You cannot have big differences between cores. It's better to use PBO with LC - so single core loads will make CPU run faster.

Regarding scaling on final renders - is the 13s benchmark not a real-world scenario?
Answer: This Corona 1.3 Benchmark is not even using AVX. You will not be able to uphold even 4.3GHz for long. This CPU draws avg 700W at this speed.
Theoretically: 1.you need very good sample with low Vcore hunger. 2. manual regulation 3. Cooling capacity gotta be huge as avg 700W of heat will easily go with water temps above 50 deg. C and than the cooling power is l insufficient to maintain it under 90 deg. So there comes instability.


As for chips - shouldn't 4th gens be coming out sometime soon?
Answer: Should be. But bare in mind the Ryzen 5000 series are flawed and a lot of them have problem with memory and BIOSes.
16,5% of 5950x is supposed to be bad.


Apologies if this is all over the place. It's an expensive system.
Answer: It is. But 3990x only makes sense on LC or it will have efficiency 20% more than 3970x.
For 3990x you have to have min 4 sticks of RAM in other case you'll have 1/3 of it's computing power.

Looks like I might be leaning 3970x.
Comment - IMHO: The thing is tricky. Investing in good cooling and good motherboard now will let you go for 3990x in the future.
But buying 3990x and leaving it on stock with air cooling is just throwing money thru a window. Especially when in near future new chips will arrive and prices of 3990x will drop.

Cheers.

2021-04-14, 14:40:52
Reply #9

Vuk

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@ twoheads

I run the 3990x at stock with xmp  turned on in bios on 4x sticks of 32gb memory at 3200mhz. We run it as a render node while the 3970x's and the 3960x's are the main cpu's we use in our workstations. I stopped overclocking all my machines in the last 2-3 years. I can see someone who has 1-2 computers getting out a benefit from this but from my point of view (13+ machines) it is just a hassle.


I build and maintain all the computers in the studio and the overclocked machines are usually consuming 200% of the electricity at the cost of a 5-10% performance increase. Not to mention the stability issues which tend to develop over time. I am not saying I am an expert overclocker but I just don't have time to play with the settings and risk stability issues during project deadlines so lately I just go with the stock+xmp solution which works great for me to be honest.


Also a side note regarding water loops you mention. Just for reference, I paid my water loop and all of its components (EK) + the water block for TRX around 500-550 euros and my 3970x runs at the same temperature as the other identical workstation which runs the Deep Cool Castle V2 360 Aio (135-150 euros) which is an AIO that doesn't even cover the entire CPU like my block does. The performance between ours cpu's is identical so it's pretty much all about the silicon lottery at the end of the day.


2021-04-14, 15:33:18
Reply #10

Juraj

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At least some sensible opinions by VUK :- ).
Please follow my new Instagram for latest projects, tips&tricks, short video tutorials and free models
Behance  Probably best updated portfolio of my work
lysfaere.com Please check the new stuff!

2021-04-14, 16:16:22
Reply #11

twoheads

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@Vuk

Thanks for the info, it's interesting.

@Juraj

What's your position on perfect clock vs effective clock as more accurate method of measuring "real" clock speeds?

2021-04-14, 20:33:23
Reply #12

ADVenturePO

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@ twoheads

I run the 3990x at stock with xmp  turned on in bios on 4x sticks of 32gb memory at 3200mhz. We run it as a render node while the 3970x's and the 3960x's are the main cpu's we use in our workstations. I stopped overclocking all my machines in the last 2-3 years. I can see someone who has 1-2 computers getting out a benefit from this but from my point of view (13+ machines) it is just a hassle.


I build and maintain all the computers in the studio and the overclocked machines are usually consuming 200% of the electricity at the cost of a 5-10% performance increase. Not to mention the stability issues which tend to develop over time. I am not saying I am an expert overclocker but I just don't have time to play with the settings and risk stability issues during project deadlines so lately I just go with the stock+xmp solution which works great for me to be honest.


Also a side note regarding water loops you mention. Just for reference, I paid my water loop and all of its components (EK) + the water block for TRX around 500-550 euros and my 3970x runs at the same temperature as the other identical workstation which runs the Deep Cool Castle V2 360 Aio (135-150 euros) which is an AIO that doesn't even cover the entire CPU like my block does. The performance between ours cpu's is identical so it's pretty much all about the silicon lottery at the end of the day.

Dear VUK,
Please install HWINFO64 on both machines. Find rows Effective Clock on both machines and return after tests.  You can also run PBO. You'll see the difference.

2021-04-15, 11:56:36
Reply #13

Vuk

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I think the best person to ask this would be Juraj since from what I remember from the forum threads he has the 3990x on both air and loop but I might be wrong :)

@ADVenturePO

I am pretty sure that Blender, Cinebench, and Corona benchmarks don't scale the same way. Maybe I am wrong but from what I've seen on youtube reviews Corona was the only benchmark that was giving 2xperformance versus 3970x.
I never ever ran a Blender benchmark in my life so I can't really talk about that. What I can talk about is real-world performance, and in my case, the results are not always in line with the Corona benchmark.

I won't even mention animation frame rendering (especially frames that are under 20mins) where at least in "my case" the 5950x works the best as it's always the first machine that loads the scene due to the best max turbo on one core. By the time, the 3990x has loaded the scene the 5950x is already a few passes in :).

I would like to hear the opinion of the people who ran their 3990x's on-air and then upgraded to a custom loop. If it's actually that much worth it and their use case scenario since mine is purely from a rendering node perspective :).


2021-04-15, 12:02:59
Reply #14

twoheads

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This is getting interesting I must say. Shall we continue here or it would be a good idea to move discussion to a proper thread? (Threadripper & Ryzen only builds (3rd Gen starts on page 50))