Threadripper & Ryzen builds

[Namik Pirkic]

hello :) although it might not be 2990wx strictly, i'm here to spec-out my build with 2970wx.

motherboard: asrock taichi x399;
ram: corsair vengeance lpx 4x16gb, 3000mhz (cmk64gx4m4d3000c16);
cpu: 2970wx;
cooler: noctua nh-u14 s;
gpu (some old radeon from my previous pc);

so far everything is working fine, cinebench score is pretty impressive at stock speed as well as the official corona renderer benchmark.

didn't write other components (casing etc etc as i find it unrellevant :) ).

[maru]

Some interesting news:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/14516/amd-16-core-ryzen-9-3950x-up-to-4-7-ghz-105w-coming-september

[Jpjapers]

Some interesting news:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/14516/amd-16-core-ryzen-9-3950x-up-to-4-7-ghz-105w-coming-september

Pretty cool but isnt it essentially the original 1950x just in a smaller form factor?
Itll definitely make decent rendering performance more accessible for beginners.
I still want my 32 cores haha.

[Nejc Kilar]

Some interesting news:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/14516/amd-16-core-ryzen-9-3950x-up-to-4-7-ghz-105w-coming-september

Pretty cool but isnt it essentially the original 1950x just in a smaller form factor?
Itll definitely make decent rendering performance more accessible for beginners.
I still want my 32 cores haha.

I suppose in a way yeah but it supposedly delivers 15% more firepower per clock and Juraj also mentioned there could be AVX improvements too. Didn't read much about that yet though. Can't wait to see the new 32 (or hopefully more) Threadrippers / Epyc CPUs. I'm also interested in seeing how Intel responds.

The 3950x, I think its shaping up to be a really fine product if you ask me. With some overclocking you've got a "mainstream" priced CPU that rivals what Intel currently offers on its HEDT for twice as much money as the 3950x. I even saw a few 4 PCI-E slot motherboards which probably rely on the PLX switch but it offers a very good entry level platform for GPU rendering as well - if you ask me.

All in all, looking really good. They probably could have pushed the price lower but they do need to make some money after all these years :)

Man, just imagine, 3 years ago you would have payed like 4000$ for this type of performance.

[JoeVallard]

All in all, looking really good. They probably could have pushed the price lower but they do need to make some money after all these years :)

If you compare this to their 2950x on the x399 platform, this does come out cheaper with cpu/mobo/ram/cooler by $100-$200 depending on which motherboard you get. Ohh and your most likely going to better performance on the 3950x with pci gen 4 and faster memory for future use. To me it seems like the 3900x & 3950x's competition is their own threadripper lineup 2920x & 2950x.

Wondering where this is going to leave the threadripper platform for zen 2? Are we only going to see 2 models 3970x & 3990x? Don't get me wrong those are gonna be some monsters of a cpu but the starting price for those threadrippers will be $1k+ based on the current ones.

[Juraj]

The 3950X will be much better CPU than 1950/2950X Threadripper as long as the chiplet communication doesn't end up being secret bottleneck (As we already know from practice, Corona Renderer doesn't mirror more common multithreaded apps like Cinebench).
The Cinebench overclocked on air score is amazing, beyond 4000 points. You can't even get close to that with Zen1 Threadrippers. And yeah, CPU lanes, bla blah...look at the whole platform, it's already taken much more seriously by vendors than X399 sadly.

And what is trully tragic, you can already buy much better X570 boards for workstations than X399 has. There will be more 10gbit Workstation boards for X570 than X399 has in all those years.

So right now I wouldn't hold breath for Zen2 Threadrippers being around the corner.

[JoeVallard]

The 3950X will be much better CPU than 1950/2950X Threadripper as long as the chiplet communication doesn't end up being secret bottleneck (As we already know from practice, Corona Renderer doesn't mirror more common multithreaded apps like Cinebench).
The Cinebench overclocked on air score is amazing, beyond 4000 points. You can't even get close to that with Zen1 Threadrippers. And yeah, CPU lanes, bla blah...look at the whole platform, it's already taken much more seriously by vendors than X399 sadly.

And what is trully tragic, you can already buy much better X570 boards for workstations than X399 has. There will be more 10gbit Workstation boards for X570 than X399 has in all those years.

So right now I wouldn't hold breath for Zen2 Threadrippers being around the corner.

I could only find a cinebench r15 water cooled pic of the 3950x @4300 something. My 1920x can only manage 2700 on r15.

There's going to be plenty of x570 boards for sure. From what i've read over on the amd reddit the prices of some of the x570 board will be in the ballpark of the x399 mobos. If only july would get here sooner so we could see some 3900x benchmarks and uses.

[michaltimko]

Wasnt that new 16c with 80% of 2990wx performance seriously overclocked with like 1.45Vcore ? I dont think thats sometihng you would like to run 24/7.

[Juraj]

Yes, but it's also much lower TDP chip so with good enough cooling, and you don't usually render 24/7 all the time, that would still be years to survive just fine.

Some people are folding at these voltages.

But that's just record. Let's say you can get it under 1.4 for @4000 C15 points. That's still massive and already very sustainable.

We can just pray to rendering gods that somewhere, someday, Zen2 48C Threadripper will become reality.

[Nejc Kilar]

Right on, the excitement is real :P

One thing to note though guys is that the 2990WX scores about 5100~ points in R15 but the performance in Corona equals to around 42 secs which is cca a 2x 2969v3 (~4400 points).

Whether that is because of memory speeds (infinity fabric?) or AVX I am unsure but I will be extremely interested in seeing how that behaves with these new chip designs.

[Juraj]

Yeah that. There is some penalty in Corona to Threadripper. I wondered why is that for long time. Regressing times with lower memory clocks would point towards the architecture itself (Inf Fab) but perhaps it's something potentially alleviable on software side.
I don't think Corona devs do this kind of testing though...and this is still software built upon Intel Framework. Do other Embree softs show such discrepancy ? Like Vray Next ?

[michaltimko]

Its also sad that in CB R20 i can get almost 12 500 points with PBO enabled but in Corona its always 41s.

In C15 with PBO enabled im getting around 5500 points. Thats 31% difference (just with PBO) compared to new 16c unit. And that should be selling point if someone is deciding between new 16c vs 32c. Overclocked 2990wx can climb even higher.

Question is...it is worth ? Price difference is quite big (if TR prices remains the same).

I`d still get 2990wx but we will see. I hope next gen TR will be compatibile with x399.

[Juraj]

In C15 with PBO enabled im getting around 5500 points. Thats 31% difference (just with PBO) compared to new 16c unit. And that should be selling point if someone is deciding between new 16c vs 32c. Overclocked 2990wx can climb even higher.

That is very true, but it comes at higher cost. Overclocked 2990WX can reach beyond 500W draw (from nominal 250 TDP), that is such a massive heat it requires custom loop. Those loops Peter and I built cost 700+ Euro in parts alone.
The 3950X is 105 TDP chip. It will not go above 250W in draw whatsoever, so it will overclock on regular AIO loop without forcing the fans to spin at 2000 rpm. So it's a chip even non-enthusiast can overclock without much of investment, that's further value in price.

Anyway, it's not true contender for 2990WX. But it's fantastic that such chip can get to "masses" (so to speak..). Whethever it will live up to its hype, it's still sort of revolutionary.

This chip is direct contender for Intel's marketing stunt of i9 9990XE which after auctioned part, is selling for 2799 Euro !?!?!

https://www.caseking.de/en/intel-core-i9-9990xe-skylake-x-sockel-2066-tray-hpit-549.html

[Jpjapers]

I wonder if the release of the 3950x will trigger a price drop in any of the threadripper range.

[Juraj]

Absolutely. Any vendor who wouldn't would be massive fool. Look at what happened to prices of 1950X. Yes some shops always keeps their prices up for years, but everyone who actually wanted to sell that CPU did so with up to 60perc. discount. The CPU went for peanuts on bazaars/auctions.

The hype is so strong ! New benchmarks every day. It's crazy that it might obliterate my 18core i9 7980XE (with dellid!!).