AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2970WX and 2920X Review

Item: AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2970WX and 2920X Review
Author: Antony Leather

Written by Antony Leather

October 29, 2018 | 13:36

Tags: #amd #threadripper #x399

Companies: #amd

HandBrake Video Transcoding

Website: HandBrake

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We perform a simple encoding test using the freely available HandBrake software, which converts a 60-second, 400MB, 4K, MKV video sample to a high quality, 1080p, MP4 file using the available presets. Our results show strong scaling with increasing threads, which is indicative of high-performance video editing suites, albeit without any GPU acceleration.

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PCMark 10 Photo Editing

Website: Futuremark

This workload involves making a series of adjustments to a set of photographs using ImageMagik - an open-source image processing library - to adjust brightness, contrast, saturation and gamma. When a favourable balance is found, the changes are then applied to the rest of the images in the set. TIFF files up to 67MB in size are used.

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CPU-Z

Website: CPUID

The popular tool for identifying key system information such as real-time CPU frequency, voltage, BIOS version, memory speed, and a whole load of other figures also includes a built-in benchmark tool. This assesses both single and multi-threaded performance in an extremely quick test directly within the usual interface. It also offers a stress test and the ability to limit the number of threads being benchmarked. We use the default settings and obtain both single- and multi-threaded results.

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Discuss this in the forums

Posted by sandys - Mon Oct 29 2018 14:41

I’m itching to jump on one of these 2920/2950x because its more but see it offering very little for me to upgrade as its not enough of an IPC/clkspeed bump, unless I do it for the sake of it, which I may well do

Just doesn’t seem much stronger than first gen offerings, maybe there is a black Friday deal or something I might bite.

I was hoping they would release a 2900x with higher (4.5Ghz+) clocks i could just drop in.

If I was buying a new system now though I couldn’t jump on TR, I’d have to wait and see what the re-freshed X line up from Intel brings, if it has the IPC, the PCIe lanes and a reasonable-ish price that is going to lead to some aggressive price war in HEDT space, might be able to have my cake and eat it with the 9900x/9800x or a cheaper 2950x

Be nice to see what the core clockspeeds are on a per thread basis, a lot of things are using 6-8 threads now, what sort of clock speed do I get at that speed if I don't want to overclock. Thats the biggest problem with my current TR is the drop off after 4 threads, lessened in my case by having the baby chip but basically rarely go beyond 3.9 due to machine load.

Posted by MLyons - Mon Oct 29 2018 14:47

sandys
I’d have to wait and see what the re-freshed X line up from Intel brings, if it has the IPC, the PCIe lanes and a reasonable-ish price

Posted by sandys - Mon Oct 29 2018 15:03

Intels HEDT platform offers pretty good value compared to its current Desktop line up IMO, looking at the prices of highend boards and chips there which are effectively offering next to no expand-ability. new X chips should drop in at similar price points to existing ones and offer more along with strong CPU core, what is not to like, everyone's definition of reasonable is different, a £600 CPU and £1200 GPU are fine to me, obviously if I can pay less, that is better, but if i am getting what I want from it at those price points, it is fine.

Posted by Corky42 - Mon Oct 29 2018 15:26

The Review
We should point out that we've retested the 2990WX with the newer Nvidia drivers that fix a bug that saw gaming performance cut dramatically

Massive props for doing that. It's not often reviewers retest hardware after release, that you managed to find the time to do so and mentioned it was retested is much appreciated. :thumb: