Over the past couple or more years AMD has successfully beat Intel in both performance and price in the CPU world. AMD’s Threadripper series offers large number of cores on a single CPU board and for a fraction of a price compared to the Intel i9 series.

AMD announced on November 7, 2019 (today) the upcoming release of two new Threadripper CPU’s, 3970x and 3960x. Both products are scheduled for sale on November 25, 2019.

Socket xTRX4, New Motherboard

The 3970x and 3960x are going to use a new socket, xTRX4. This means if you already have a Threadripper and want to upgrade, you’ll need to get a new motherboard. If this is your first Threadripper, I suggest getting the newer 3rd Generation Threadripper simply because of the long run. I’m sure shortly after Nov 25, when the 3970x and 3960x goes on sale, we will see discounts for the old 1950x, which is AMD’s 1st Gen Threadripper (16 cores). However if we think about the long run, a couple years later when AMD releases another CPU, it’ll probably be available on the xTRX4 socket and when that happens, having the new xTRX3 motherboard will make upgrading easier and cheaper than replacing the entire motherboard out again.

3970x offers 32 Cores

The 3970x contains a 32 cores! That’s 64 threads available for calculating the most complex things you want to run on your workstation. If you are into 3D rendering in Houdini or Blender, try to imagine 64 rendering squares on your render view panel. If you use a CPU rendering engine, this is going to benefit you the most. The 3970x is the 3rd generation in the Threadripper family series from its predecessor, AMD’s 2990wx, which also contains 32 cores.

According to AMD’s site, the new Threadripper 3970x will have 72 PCIe 4.0 lanes which is more than the 66 PCIe 3.0lanes available on its predecessor 2990wx.

AMD’s 2990wx has benchmarks beating in performance and price when comparing its competitor CPU, Intel’s i9-7980xe which contains 18 cores and costs a few hundred dollars more. The 2990wx have very impressive benchmark performance when it comes to 3D rendering, I can’t imagine what the 3970x will be like.

Specs: Comparing 3rd & 2nd Generation Threadripper

AMD Threadripper Comparison Chart (3rd Generation vs 2nd Generation, 3970x & 3960x)

Links

TRX40 Platform (3rd Gen Threadripper)

X399 Platform (2nd Gen Threadripper)

AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970x Processor Specs

AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990wx Processor Specs

AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3960x Processor Specs

AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2970x Processor Specs

The Catch of Having Too Many Cores

Even though the 2990wx, the predecessor of the 3970x which also has 32 cores, it doesn’t mean everything is faster. Every core on the CPU needs to access data in order to process the data and if there are too many cores fighting to access the same data it becomes a bottleneck.

This is where Intel really shines on its CPU architecture. Intel has always been able to maintain a very well balanced ratio between core count and bandwidth for optimal performance among all tasks. However, having said that, AMD’s 2990wx chip still beats Intel’s i9-7980xe in performance for tasks that require a lot of computations like scientific research and 3D simulations.

Intel’s i9 really shows off its power when it comes to more data intensive workloads, for example when using Adobe Media Encoder it might do a lot better, since Adobe Media Encoder uses large amounts of caching derived from its siblings applications, After Effects and Premiere Pro.

Which one to Buy?

If you are doing CPU intensive tasks that doesn’t rely on the GPU or M.2 SATA drives or doesn’t rely too heavily on other PCI-E devices, I think AMD’s Threadripper series is definitely a hands down choice. However that being said, the benchmarks for the Threadripper series still stand pretty good in gaming, but that also depends on what game is being played. In certain high disk writing tasks, like Adobe Media Encoder, the 2990wx seems to lack behind Intel’s i9-7980xe.

I have seen very pleasing benchmarks on the 2990wx for tests done in Blender for 3D rendering, beating Intel’s i9-7980xe. So performance is definitely a win, but one major factor to discuss is price. We need to keep in mind AMD’s 2990wx is available for much cheaper than the i9-7980xe. That also plays a huge part when considering a new CPU.

PCI-E Lanes & GPU

The CPU is the heart of the computer and it handles all the tough calculations that undergo the daily tasks our computer processes. The CPU needs to be able to access the data in order to process it for the necessary calculations. In today’s computing world, we rely more and more on GPU’s to perform daily tasks. The GPU’s are not only used for rendering images onto the screen, GPU’s are heavily used for calculations and help out the CPU processing wherever GPU computations can be applied, which varies from task to task. This is due to the fact that GPU processing power is more advanced when compared to the CPU’s processor.

There is something known as PCI-E lanes that the CPU’s use to access data from and to other peripherals on the computer in order to communicate with other components on the computer. PCI-E are data buses that allow seamless communication lines between the components and the CPU to share tasks. The best example is gaming. As games have become far more complicated and graphic intensive, more PCI-E lanes available on the CPU will equal better gaming performance.

If you plainly keep increasing the core count on a CPU without improving any other parts of the architecture, it will eventually bottleneck the memory bandwidth for each core, because each core doesn’t have enough PCI-E lanes to access data for computing. So it doesn’t matter how many cores you have, the data bandwidth eventually becomes a bottleneck. So you can imagine 32 cores fighting over each other.

This is a very simplistic explanation to give you an idea of how important PCI-E lanes are to CPU architecture design and how it plays a role to the performance of the CPU.

More Cores Benefit Simulations

This doesn’t mean it bottlenecks on every task. Certain things you do on the computer doesn’t rely on the GPU or other peripherals. For instance cooking simulations on Houdini or Blender. Calculating simulations for those awesome visual effects like pyro, fluid, and particles are CPU intensive and doesn’t necessarily need GPU.

Of course it would be nice to use the GPU to cook simulations, but that doesn’t exist yet. One can dream.

3D Rendering

3D Rendering is a different story, it heavily utilizes the GPU for rendering images and this task will definitely benefit from more PCI-E lanes available for the CPU. Many people have multiple GPU’s setup for a workstation used for rendering large scenes. Having multiple GPU’s will occupy more PCI-E lanes and this is where you’ll start to really notice the power of having more PCI-E lanes available for the CPU.

Benchmarks

Since the 3970x isn’t released yet, I can only comment on the 2990wx. You’ll be happy to know the 2990wx still beats Intel’s i9-7980xe during rendering tests done in Blender. So we can only imagine how much more potential the 3970x has as a descendant of a titan. Nonetheless, it has a lot to live up to.

It gets even better, the Threadripper 2990wx costs several hundred dollars less than its direct competitor the Intel i9-7980xe.

Check out the benchmarks done in this video (on the right) around the 8min mark.

But near the end of the video during a rendering done in Adobe Media, which goes through a lot of data intensive tasks you will see the Intel i9-7980xe beat the AMD 2990wx in performance. So this shows both CPU’s have their strengths and weaknesses and depending on what tasks you do on your computer, that will make the most of the CPU.

Also the video on the right is a direct comparison between AMD’s 2990wx & Intel’s i9-7980xe.

AMD Threadripper 3970X & 3960X Announcement