Full disclosure: while we very much enjoyed the 6950X, we didn’t actually pay for it.
Avoiding the hideous $1,700 price tag made the product a whole lot more enjoyable.
Many would argue that the 10-core part is overpriced at $600 and we’d generally agree.
it’s possible for you to’t even buy their current 18-core model.
With no competition from Intel in this space, AMD can get away with charging quite the premium.
Let’s talk a little bit about the Threadripper 3990X before we jump into the blue bar graphs…
This is a 64-core/128-thread Zen 2-based processor.
It comprises eight, 8-core chiplets or ‘core complex dies’, built using TSMC’s 7nm process.
This is extremely valuable for a number of industries as it ensures maximum efficiency on all levels.
Then we have the MSI X399 Creator for the 2nd-gen Threadripper 2990WX, 2950X and 2920X.
For the new 3rd-gen Threadripper 3970X and 3960X, the Gigabyte TRX40 Aorus Xtreme was used.
All Ryzen configurations were cooled using a custom Corsair HydroX loop with a 360mm rad.
All processors were tested using 32GB of Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB DDR4-3200 CL14 memory.
Finally, the graphics card of choice was the MSI Trio GeForce RTX 2080 Ti.
Benchmarks
First up we have theCinebench R20scores and it’s madness, as anticipated.
The7-zip compressionresults are important because this is where the 2990WX fell apart.
The I/O die featured in the 3rd-gen design overcomes this issue.
Here it was 33% faster than the 3970X and almost 100% faster than Intel’s Core i9-10980XE.
Moving on to Adobe Premiere, this is another utility where the 2990WX was a complete trainwreck.
Playback performance was solid.
Again, it’s a little down on the 24 and 32-core models, but nothing alarming here.
The 3990X simply dominates inV-Ray, even more so than it did in Cinebench.
What more can you say, for these rendering applications the 3990X is everything AMD promised it would be.
The 64-core processor took 47% less time to complete the test when compared to the powerful 3970X.
The Threadripper 3990X completed the Blender Open Data benchmark in just under 3 minutes which is insane.
This test has traditionally taken quite some time to complete, even with previous HEDT parts.
POVRay was a last minute addition to this review.
AMD has submitted updated code that allows POVRay to scale beyond 64 threads and fully utilize the 3990X.
Gaming Benchmarks
Gaming on the 3990X is kind of dumb… at least dedicated gaming totally is.
And yet many of you will at least want to know how the CPU behaves in gaming tasks.
Anyway, the performance in Battlefield V was great…
Shadow of the Tomb Raider also played exceptionally well.
You’re looking at a similar experience to that of the 10980XE.
Tom Clancy’s The Division 2… that also worked, performance was as expected.
Borderlands 3 also… worked and it worked well.
We really hope this is the first and last 128-thread Fortnite benchmark.
Overclocking
We fully expect pro overclockers to have a seriously fun time with the 3990X.
The CPU peaked at 92 C and the total system load just exceeded 850 watts.
Using just 1.2v, 3.7 GHz was the best we could achieve while properly collecting all the data.
The good news being out of the box the 3990X isn’t difficult to keep cool.
What We Learned
The Threadripper 3990X is a beast, it’s completely unchallenged andredefines the HEDTspace.
When under-utilized, performance is still strong and comparable to that of lower core count parts.
It was crucial to have your exact workload tested before buying and that’s not always an option.
Saving that kind of time per project is worth paying the 3990X’s asking price.
Right now I’m using the 3960X and I have to say, it’s amazing.
Any more and the system would slow to a crawl and often crash.
It’s phenomenal and has massively speeded up my workflow.
