AMD is just about to launch its 3rd Gen Threaddripper CPUs to challenge Intel’s Cascade Lake-X chips in the HEDT market, and we’ve got a tip on the pricing and specs of these beasts. There are also performance figures but keep in mind that these are official numbers, so take them with a grain of salt.

AMD Ryzen Theadripper 3970X: 32 Cores/64 Threads for $1999, Up to 90% Faster than Intel Cascade Lake-X

According to AMD’s official numbers, the Threadripper 3970X will be as much as 90% faster than the Core i9-9980XE. As you can see, it will be roughly 50% faster in applications like V-Ray, Adobe Premiere and Chromium, and is expected to beat the Intel Cascade Lake-X flagship by a notable margin.

The lower-end Threadripper 3960X sits just atop the Ryzen 9 3950X with 24 cores and 48 threads. On average, it’s 20-25% faster than the Skylake Lake-X flagship, with a delta as large as 54% in Cinebench R20.

TRX40 Platform

As for the chipset, as rumored yes the Threadripper platform will indeed be getting a lofty upgrade. The TRX40 chipset boasts a might 72 lane PCIe 4.0 setup, resulting in a bandwidth boost of 4x over the 2nd Gen Threadrippers. There’s a lot in the USB department as well with support for up to 12 USB 10Gbps ports.

The memory support comes in at 3200MHz quad-channel, up to four NVMe and PCIe SSD drives and a total of 12 USB 3.2 Gen2 ports. The rest is all as per standard HEDT specification, as you can see in the slide above.

There’s a higher-end sTRX4 chipset with more PCIe lanes, but that will probably be launched alongside the 64 core 3990X in January next year.

Prices: Intel Cascade Lake-X vs AMD Threadripper 3rd Gen

For the first time in over a decade, the AMD chips are offering per-core performance on par with the Intel competition, and the result is clear. Team blue has been forced to cut down the prices of its HEDT lineup by as much as 50%. The Threadripper 3960X comes in at $1,399 with an advantage of 25% over the Intel Core i9-9980XE. The i9-10980XE won’t be all that faster, so it’d be fair that the two chips will perform within 15-20% of each other. Neat- didn’t ever think Intel’s CPUs would actually be this competitive.

Moving on to the 32 core Threadripper 3970X, we’re looking at a 50% advantage over the Core i9-9980XE for twice the price. This may not seem like much, but keep in mind the law of diminishing returns and all that. One thing is clear: The high-end desktop market has never been this competitive. Kudos to AMD for that!