AMD Threadripper 2970WX & 2920X Review > Price vs. Performance, Best Workstation CPUs

Price vs. Operation, All-time Workstation CPUs

Before wrapping things up let's go over a few functioning vs. price scatter plots which give us a skillful overview of where things stand up, starting with Blender. On the graph you want to be positioned as low every bit possible and as far to the right every bit possible, lower means cheaper and farther right means faster.

The blue dots represent the Intel CPUs tested, and well, they're all higher and more than to the left than the contest. The Threadripper 2920X destroyed the Cadre i7-7820X for example, it also beats out the Cadre i9-9900K and in terms of value the starting time-gen TR 1920X destroys them all.

Meanwhile the 2970WX is much cheaper and faster than the 7960X, and so an piece of cake win there. For those taking on 3D rendering tasks the Threadripper series is a must.

When information technology comes to video encoding we get more mixed results. The ultimate value award again goes to the TR 1920X, simply the new 2920X while non as good value as the 1920X, information technology does beat out the Intel Core i7-7820X by a convincing margin and even edged out the 9900K.

The TR 2950X also does very well just unfortunately the 2970WX and 2990WX are underutilized and have issues with encoding workloads, particularly on Windows x. At least at the very high-end of things, Intel does come up out well on top for this type of workload.

Margins when encoding with Premiere are far less cruel however, and while the 2990WX is worse value than the 7960X yous could argue that the 2970WX isn't, offer reasonable functioning for a much lower cost. That said, the 2950X makes so much more sense as information technology's faster and cheaper. The new TR 2920X roughly matched the 9900K and 7820X. The Intel CPUs were slightly ameliorate but it's a shut call.

Closing Remarks

But those graphs don't tell united states everything well-nigh this comparison in terms of value. Usually AMD tends to grab Intel out with ameliorate motherboard prices along with the inclusion of a decent included libation, but that's not the case with Threadripper. The cheapest X399 boards typically toll around $300 whereas X299 boards start at just nether $200, this is a factor for those ownership the mainstream CPUs on these platforms. For your sixteen-core+ CPUs yous're probably looking at spending over $400 on a motherboard for either platform. Neither Threadripper or Skylake-Ten CPUs come with a cooler, then you're looking at a similar expense there, too.

Where AMD currently has an advantage is in the platform itself, they offering loads of PCIe lanes, ECC memory support and the ability to expand beyond just 18 cores. That last one is a big one, especially when 3rd-gen Threadripper will work on the same boards, so that MSI X399 Creation you spent $500 won't need to be tossed for a considerable amount of fourth dimension still.

But what to purchase, and what CPUs make the near sense?

Starting with the Threadripper 2920X, it has an MSRP of $650 which is considerably cheaper than the $800 the 1920X came in at. AMD's offering 12 cores for the cost Intel volition requite you viii, you become basically 3x the L3 cache and just over twice as many PCIe 3.0 lanes. There were just two tests where the 7820X beat the 2920X and that was single-thread Cinebench and PCMark 10. For everything else AMD'due south new 12-core Threadripper part wiped the floor with the 7820X, it was basically a non-contest.

We didn't accept time to retest the Cadre i9-7900X, merely I can assure you with the data we accept on hand the 2920X also dominates that part every bit well, more often than not because the 10-core Intel CPU costs over twoscore% more than. That just leaves the 9900K, and honestly, if productivity tasks are the focus then we believe the 2920X is the smarter buy. It will terminate up costing a fiddling more overall but for applications that utilize the 12-cadre Threadripper CPU well, a heavily overclocked 9900K will melt trying to keep upwards.

Of course, if yous mostly desire to game then the 9900K is a better selection... though nosotros'd recommend y'all forget the 9900K even exists -- let'southward exist honest, right now it doesn't -- and just go Intel'due south own 8700K, or AMD's 2700X, your choice.

We had nothing bad to say about the 2950X when it launched dorsum in Baronial and information technology's the same story with the 2920X in late October. The only effect for the 2920X correct at present is the first-gen TR 1920X sells for a little over $400, that'due south the obvious choice now and if I were in the market for a high-end desktop system that's what I'd be snapping up before stock runs out.

And so we take the 24-core Threadripper 2970WX which is a 3D rendering beast, just similar the 2990WX. Unfortunately right at present Windows won't permit you to become the well-nigh out of this processor, then it's not a CPU we recommend unless you lot're using Linux or you are certain information technology can boom its way through any workload you want to throw at information technology.

Overall we see less reason to invest in Intel's X299 platform. If AMD didn't accept the loftier-stop desktop market segment all stitched up last yr, they certainly do now, seeing how Intel's remained stubborn and won't become competitive on pricing (read our editorial on the affair).