AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X 64 Core Monster Review

Introduction and Technical Specifications

| Source: AMD Price: Author: Tom Logan

Introduction

First and foremost, we hope that you are all keeping well and not suffering too much from the isolation that we have to do for the sake of humanity. These are very strange times for us all, but we're sure that it is during such situations that we remember the importance of us being one human race, regardless of borders or religions, and that we will all get through. Take care of yourselves and your loved ones, and in doing so you are taking care of others loved ones.

Meanwhile, back in the world of hardware, we've got our hands on the flagship model in the AMD Threadripper range, the behemoth that is the 64 core 3990X.

Computers are somewhat on a sliding scale. At one end, we have the supreme usability and dodgy performance of 'internet-ready PCs' as they used to be called. At the other end is the complexity and number crunching godliness of Supercomputers and things like the Pixar Renderfarm. Along that scale, we all find our own needs and wants. The more towards the right-hand side of the scale you go, the more specific the task you have to need to accomplish. So quad cores are fine for almost everyone, regular content creators might need 8 or 12 cores. If you spend the vast majority of your uptime rendering things, then even 24 or 32 core machines will be of a great benefit, albeit ones that start to lose some of the well-roundedness that computers are famous for.

At the end of the scale, the Ryzen Threadripper 3990X sits, you definitely are losing out on those low-core, high clock speed tasks, but in return, you're getting the most powerful desktop solution for rendering things as quickly as possible. If you've ever encoded a 4K video of your gaming exploits or family talents, you'll understand how long it can take on even fairly powerful setups, and rendering 3D images is so time-consuming that doing it at home requires a full-time commitment. With 64 cores and 128 threads on hand, the Ryzen Threadripper 3990X should significantly reduce your waiting time. So let's find out how well it performs in our usual suite of tests.

Technical Specifications

In a lot of ways, the 3990X is like the 3970X we reviewed earlier this year, except it has twice the cores yet still on the same size die. It's an incredible feat of engineering. For those of us, such as your writer here, who cut their teeth on 386SX processors and their 16MHz clock speed on a single core, the idea of 64 cores deep into the 3GHz bracket seems the stuff of science fiction.

1 - Introduction and Technical Specifications 2 - Test Setup and Overclocking 3 - SiSoft Sandra 4 - Blender 5 - Cinebench R15 6 - Cinebench R20 7 - x265 Benchmark 8 - HEVC 9 - Sony Vegas 10 - Geekbench 11 - Realbench 12 - PCMARK 10 13 - 3D Mark 14 - Time Spy Extreme 15 - CPU Temperatures 16 - VRM Temperatures - Zenith II Extreme 17 - VRM Temperatures - 3960x vs 3970X vs 3990X 18 - Conclusion «Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Next»

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