The 64 Core Threadripper 3990X CPU Review: In The Midst Of Chaos, AMD Seeks Opportunity
by Dr. Ian Cutress & Gavin Bonshor on February 7, 2020 9:00 AM ESTAMD 3990X Against Prosumer CPUs
The first set of consumers that will be interested in this processor will be those looking to upgrade into the best consumer/prosumer HEDT package available on the market. The $3990 price is a high barrier to entry, but these users and individuals can likely amortize the cost of the processor over its lifetime. To that end, we’ve selected a number of standard HEDT processors that are near in terms of price/core count, as well as putting in the 8-core 5.0 GHz Core i9-9900KS and the 28-core unlocked Xeon W-3175X.
AMD 3990X Consumer Competition | ||||||
AnandTech | AMD 3990X |
AMD 3970X |
Intel 3175X |
Intel i9- 10980XE |
AMD 3950X |
Intel 9900KS |
SEP | $3990 | $1999 | $2999 | $979 | $749 | $513 |
Cores/T | 64/128 | 32/64 | 28/56 | 18/36 | 16/32 | 8/16 |
Base Freq | 2900 | 3700 | 3100 | 3000 | 3500 | 5000 |
Turbo Freq | 4300 | 4500 | 4300 | 4800 | 4700 | 5000 |
PCIe | 4.0 x64 | 4.0 x64 | 3.0 x48 | 3.0 x48 | 4.0 x24 | 3.0 x16 |
DDR | 4x 3200 | 4x 3200 | 6x 2666 | 4x 2933 | 2x 3200 | 2x 2666 |
Max DDR | 512 GB | 512 GB | 512 GB | 256 GB | 128 GB | 128 GB |
TDP | 280 W | 280 W | 255 W | 165 W | 105 W | 127 W |
The 3990X is beyond anything in price at this level, and even at the highest consumer cost systems, $1000 could be the difference between getting two or three GPUs in a system. There has to be big upsides here moving from the 32 core to the 64 core.
Corona is a classic 'more threads means more performance' benchmark, and while the 3990X doesn't quite get perfect scaling over the 32 core, it is almost there.
The 3990X scores new records in our Blender test, with sizeable speed-ups against the other TR3 hardware.
Photoscan is a variable threaded test, and the AMD CPUs still win here, although 24 core up to 64 core all perform within about a minute of each other in this 20 minute test. Intel's best consumer hardware is a few minutes behind.
y-cruncher is an AVX-512 accelerated test, and so Intel's 28-core with AVX-512 wins here. Interestingly the 128 cores of the 3990X get in the way here, likely the spawn time of so many threads is adding to the overall time.
GIMP is a single threaded test designed around opening the program, and Intel's 5.0 GHz chip is the best here. the 64 core hardware isn't that bad here, although the W10 Enterprise data has the better result.
Without any hand tuned code, between 32 core and 64 core workloads on 3DPM, there's actually a slight deficit on 64 core.
But when we crank in the hand tuned code, the AVX-512 CPUs storm ahead by a considerable margin.
We covered Digicortex on the last page, but it seems that the different thread groups on W10 Pro is holidng the 3990X back a lot. With SMT disabled, we score nearer 3x here.
Luxmark is an AVX2 accelerated program, and having more cores here helps. But we see little gain from 32C to 64C.
As we saw on the last page, POV-Ray preferred having SMT off for the 3990X, otherwise there's no benefit over the 32-core CPU.
AES gets a slight bump over the 32 core, however not as much as the 2x price difference would have you believe.
As we saw on the previous page, W10 Enterprise causes our Handbrake test to go way up, but on W10 Pro then the 3990X loses ground to the 3950X.
And how about a simple game test - we know 64 cores is overkill for games, so here's a CPU bount test. There's not a lot in it between the 3990X and the 3970X, but Intel's high frequency CPUs are the best here.
Verdict
There are a lot of situations where the jump from AMD's 32-core $1999 CPU, the 3970X, up to the 64-core $3990 CPU only gives the smallest tangible gain. That doesn't bode well. The benchmarks that do get the biggest gains however can get near perfect scaling, making the 3990X a fantastic upgrade. However those tests are few and far between. If these were the options, the smart money is on the 3970X, unless you can be absolutely clear that the software you run can benefit from the extra cores.
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nightmared - Friday, February 7, 2020 - link
While I have to admit Microsoft AD is fairly well integrated (with regards to features such as a folder redirections and GPOs) and coherent, there is alternatives (after all the core of AD resides in a "simple" LDAP server). The most compliant (because it is a re-implementation of the AD) is SAMBA4 and it works quite well. You can fairly easily manage a windows AD with it, free of charge (and it's open source, of course). Still not as pervasives as Microsoft AD with all its Powershell dedicated commands and its GUI managers.Whiteknight2020 - Friday, February 7, 2020 - link
But no group policy, integrated CA, recycle bin, DSC, third party ecosystem, gmsa etc. Not industrial strength, no support, no federation services....jospoortvliet - Saturday, February 8, 2020 - link
Check out Univention Corporate Server, they build quite the drop-in AD alternative.tuxRoller - Friday, February 7, 2020 - link
FreeipaWhiteknight2020 - Friday, February 7, 2020 - link
Is junk. Fundamentally badly designed, appalling to administer and weak on features. Nice try.tuxRoller - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
Badly designed? Do you mean because it's mostly an orchestration tool?Whiteknight2020 - Friday, February 7, 2020 - link
RedHat have tried, but it's solution is pants. You can make Linux full citizens of AD with QAS though so you only need windows for the directory. Also does a nice job of certificate authority too.Chaitanya - Friday, February 7, 2020 - link
Many of my clients are running windows servers even in Datacentres.29a - Friday, February 7, 2020 - link
Lots.Hulk - Friday, February 7, 2020 - link
I like what AMD is doing. 8, 16, 24, 32, and 64 cores based on the same architecture. If you have the need for the compute and the cash they have you covered. Not to mention the fact that they've totally blown the lid off Intel's stratospheric pricing. If not for AMD I firmly believe 8 core parts would still cost $1000 or more.My next build is going to be my first AMD. Unless Intel can pull a rabbit out of their hat my next build is going to be my first AMD build.... and I've been building since the early 1990's.