AMD's Cheap Threadripper HEDT CPU: 7960X 24-Core CPU Review & Benchmarks
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Date: 2023-12-12
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Comments and reviews: 20
BCSJRR
Five years back I bought a 2965X 16-core gen 2 threadripper. At first I was very pleased with it. Then the Enermax 360 gunk problems occurred. Ugh. After the E(holes) claimed they fixed it I got another one. Fixed? Not so much. My choices became going full custom loop (not interested in the maintenance) or going with an air cooler (but it was build in a PC-011 dynamic case and hardcore air coolers didn't fit).
Or use another 360 aio but the cold plates didn't give full heat shield coverage. I ended up with the Dark Rock cooler with a full coverage cold plate. While it does a fairly decent job, the 2965X at full boogie overwhelmed it. Not as good as the E(hole) 360 cooler (when it was working). It also meant I had to move my builtiful custom cabled installation to another case (Fractal R6). Bummer dude.
So! I noticed you didn't seem to be using a cooler with a full coverage cold plate. Are there any AIOs with such a cold plate? Can an air cooler even think about 300W+ cpu? How much performance was being left on the table with such a cooler?
Does one need a case that allows dual 420 radiators for the cpu?
I recently upgraded to a 7950x which comes close to doubling the 2965X scores in Cinebench and appears to render DaVinci twice as fast. Plus it has a more standard heat spreader so I could stick on a lian li galahad II trinity which allowed me to built in my pc o11 dynamic again.
I would really need a hard core video editor rig again before I'd pay the extra for a thread ripper again.
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Five years back I bought a 2965X 16-core gen 2 threadripper. At first I was very pleased with it. Then the Enermax 360 gunk problems occurred. Ugh. After the E(holes) claimed they fixed it I got another one. Fixed? Not so much. My choices became going full custom loop (not interested in the maintenance) or going with an air cooler (but it was build in a PC-011 dynamic case and hardcore air coolers didn't fit).
Or use another 360 aio but the cold plates didn't give full heat shield coverage. I ended up with the Dark Rock cooler with a full coverage cold plate. While it does a fairly decent job, the 2965X at full boogie overwhelmed it. Not as good as the E(hole) 360 cooler (when it was working). It also meant I had to move my builtiful custom cabled installation to another case (Fractal R6). Bummer dude.
So! I noticed you didn't seem to be using a cooler with a full coverage cold plate. Are there any AIOs with such a cold plate? Can an air cooler even think about 300W+ cpu? How much performance was being left on the table with such a cooler?
Does one need a case that allows dual 420 radiators for the cpu?
I recently upgraded to a 7950x which comes close to doubling the 2965X scores in Cinebench and appears to render DaVinci twice as fast. Plus it has a more standard heat spreader so I could stick on a lian li galahad II trinity which allowed me to built in my pc o11 dynamic again.
I would really need a hard core video editor rig again before I'd pay the extra for a thread ripper again.
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dannotdaniel9361
Great vid as always Steve et all. I would love to know more about the Blender benchmarks. This is EXACTLY what I'm interested in, and I appreciate that you're looking at it and not just games etc.
Even for those using EEVEE with CUDA, it's still impressive to see how much can be done with CPU rendering
OK but why? Why focus on rendering for CPU benchmarks? Is the CPU really going to matter when you have a 4090 in there and you're rendering on that with Optix?
1. if we're using GPU rendering, I'd be much more interested in knowing how fast the CPU did a liquid simulation (which I think is CPU bound?) Why are the CPU benchmarks focused on The Thing That Will Be Running On The GPU?
2. I would expect most anyone with a recent NVidia GPU would be using OptiX not CUDA, but same applies
Thanks for the vid! and ps it's Poisson pwa-sson
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Great vid as always Steve et all. I would love to know more about the Blender benchmarks. This is EXACTLY what I'm interested in, and I appreciate that you're looking at it and not just games etc.
Even for those using EEVEE with CUDA, it's still impressive to see how much can be done with CPU rendering
OK but why? Why focus on rendering for CPU benchmarks? Is the CPU really going to matter when you have a 4090 in there and you're rendering on that with Optix?
1. if we're using GPU rendering, I'd be much more interested in knowing how fast the CPU did a liquid simulation (which I think is CPU bound?) Why are the CPU benchmarks focused on The Thing That Will Be Running On The GPU?
2. I would expect most anyone with a recent NVidia GPU would be using OptiX not CUDA, but same applies
Thanks for the vid! and ps it's Poisson pwa-sson
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MaxHaydenChiz
Spec benchmarking was extremely helpful. Hope that info stays available going forward b/c it really helps in terms of deciding whether the expected performance increase is worth paying for.
I hope you'll consider doing it on lower end hardware. If you don't need the threadripper IO and the extra performance doesn't have enough ROI, it's good to have a comparison between the 7950x and the 14900k. (And ideally a part or two lower down so that we can get a good sense of where the ROI stops making sense.)
P.S. Happy to talk to you about the details of the benchmark stuff if you think it would help you improve your coverage. (At least the details within my wheelhouse.)
P.P.S. Look up the pronunciation for Poisson distribution . It's French and pronounced like Pois-son.
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Spec benchmarking was extremely helpful. Hope that info stays available going forward b/c it really helps in terms of deciding whether the expected performance increase is worth paying for.
I hope you'll consider doing it on lower end hardware. If you don't need the threadripper IO and the extra performance doesn't have enough ROI, it's good to have a comparison between the 7950x and the 14900k. (And ideally a part or two lower down so that we can get a good sense of where the ROI stops making sense.)
P.S. Happy to talk to you about the details of the benchmark stuff if you think it would help you improve your coverage. (At least the details within my wheelhouse.)
P.P.S. Look up the pronunciation for Poisson distribution . It's French and pronounced like Pois-son.
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michaeldavis7943
Question:
When LN testing, would it not provide better thermals to have a taller tube of LN over the CPU? Ideally you want the boiling layer over the CPU to be as thin as possible and since liquid pressure is directly a result of depth and not strictly volume of a container, would a taller cone not create more pressure and limit how large the boiling layer becomes under load? Of course with this it may be beneficial to create a cage to limit how much LN is thrown by rapidly boiling LN.
OR, is the compression negligible and doesn t change the gas layer much? Strictly asking about pressure via gravity and not pumps.
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Question:
When LN testing, would it not provide better thermals to have a taller tube of LN over the CPU? Ideally you want the boiling layer over the CPU to be as thin as possible and since liquid pressure is directly a result of depth and not strictly volume of a container, would a taller cone not create more pressure and limit how large the boiling layer becomes under load? Of course with this it may be beneficial to create a cage to limit how much LN is thrown by rapidly boiling LN.
OR, is the compression negligible and doesn t change the gas layer much? Strictly asking about pressure via gravity and not pumps.
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denvera1g1
for 1500 and only 24 cores, i would like for it to have 30-60CUs of RDNA3
Yes it would be slower and more expensive than just buying a GPU with a 7950X, but part of the reason i am currently using a 7950X with no GPU is that it has the built in RDNA2 CUs so i dont need to give up PCIE slots
A 7960X is worse for my use case because i will not have the room to take advantage of the extra lanes, if i have to give up 2.5 slots to a GPU that has hardware encoding. though that new single slot 4060 is tempting, assuming it doesnt give up the hardware transcoding like past 30 class cards
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for 1500 and only 24 cores, i would like for it to have 30-60CUs of RDNA3
Yes it would be slower and more expensive than just buying a GPU with a 7950X, but part of the reason i am currently using a 7950X with no GPU is that it has the built in RDNA2 CUs so i dont need to give up PCIE slots
A 7960X is worse for my use case because i will not have the room to take advantage of the extra lanes, if i have to give up 2.5 slots to a GPU that has hardware encoding. though that new single slot 4060 is tempting, assuming it doesnt give up the hardware transcoding like past 30 class cards
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powerpower-rg7bk
This is the Threadripper part I've been interested in due to the entry level price of the processor and the base platform. Still expensive but there is already an upgrade path to the 96 core part on a motherboard I'd get even if AMD were once again to forget about workstation. Hopefully they stick with this socket for Zen 5 and Zen 6 parts.
As for the GN video editing workstation build, perhaps pair with both a fast nVidia card for CUDA based applications and an Intel ARC card for QuickSync? Best of both worlds? The unholy trifecta of red, green and blue teams?
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This is the Threadripper part I've been interested in due to the entry level price of the processor and the base platform. Still expensive but there is already an upgrade path to the 96 core part on a motherboard I'd get even if AMD were once again to forget about workstation. Hopefully they stick with this socket for Zen 5 and Zen 6 parts.
As for the GN video editing workstation build, perhaps pair with both a fast nVidia card for CUDA based applications and an Intel ARC card for QuickSync? Best of both worlds? The unholy trifecta of red, green and blue teams?
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gamersnexus
Well, with virtualization, even gaming on these isn't as dumb as it sounds. Building a couple of servers at the same time or being able to launch multiple clients sure has its benefits. My first and so far only Threadripper (1950x) paid for itself in less than a month when i made the ultimate Lineage 2 AFK farming machine with it back in 2018. Hosting multiple gaming servers also turns quite profitable once ads revenue starts rolling in.
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Well, with virtualization, even gaming on these isn't as dumb as it sounds. Building a couple of servers at the same time or being able to launch multiple clients sure has its benefits. My first and so far only Threadripper (1950x) paid for itself in less than a month when i made the ultimate Lineage 2 AFK farming machine with it back in 2018. Hosting multiple gaming servers also turns quite profitable once ads revenue starts rolling in.
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Ojref1
I know it's not intended for gaming, but as it is the performance is unacceptable considering the cost of the CPU and motherboards. One would think this would be mitigated via Ryzen Master changing things like the cache segmenting and association. After dumping on the 3000x and 5000x buyers with those unnecessary CPU slot changes, you'd think they'd want to make this product have a lot of value added for the consumer.
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I know it's not intended for gaming, but as it is the performance is unacceptable considering the cost of the CPU and motherboards. One would think this would be mitigated via Ryzen Master changing things like the cache segmenting and association. After dumping on the 3000x and 5000x buyers with those unnecessary CPU slot changes, you'd think they'd want to make this product have a lot of value added for the consumer.
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gamersnexus
Steve, I really do appreciate you putting in a few game benchmarks. My system is about 70% video & audio editing / encoding / bluray authoring (Dolby Media Encoder, MainConcept's Encoders TopazLabs Video AI), & C# development (VS 2022), about 30% some gaming nothing amazing (BG3, WoW, etc.). So seeing it's not going to just wreck my experience is nice. I have been really looking at either the 24 or 32 core
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Steve, I really do appreciate you putting in a few game benchmarks. My system is about 70% video & audio editing / encoding / bluray authoring (Dolby Media Encoder, MainConcept's Encoders TopazLabs Video AI), & C# development (VS 2022), about 30% some gaming nothing amazing (BG3, WoW, etc.). So seeing it's not going to just wreck my experience is nice. I have been really looking at either the 24 or 32 core
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briannaschuman547
RE: Squarespace ad...
I'm old enough to remember when FrontPage, Dreamweaver, etc were new on the block and considered cheating when building a website. (I understood the FrontPage hate at the time with its massive markup issues behind the scenes bloating pages in an era of dial up, but tools like Dreamweaver comparatively weren't nearly as bad IMHO.) Now, this is just what we do. SMH
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RE: Squarespace ad...
I'm old enough to remember when FrontPage, Dreamweaver, etc were new on the block and considered cheating when building a website. (I understood the FrontPage hate at the time with its massive markup issues behind the scenes bloating pages in an era of dial up, but tools like Dreamweaver comparatively weren't nearly as bad IMHO.) Now, this is just what we do. SMH
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afre3398
Remember Intel charged 2000 US dollar for a HEDT desktop CPU in gen 9. In gen 10 they charged 1000 for the equivalent CPU. And how many cores was that I do not remember but it was less than 10. And now we get 24 cores for 1500 us dollar. I would say that is a win for the consumer. And that Intel back in the days Price gouged the HEDT market. Just because AMD could no deliver anything to compete
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Remember Intel charged 2000 US dollar for a HEDT desktop CPU in gen 9. In gen 10 they charged 1000 for the equivalent CPU. And how many cores was that I do not remember but it was less than 10. And now we get 24 cores for 1500 us dollar. I would say that is a win for the consumer. And that Intel back in the days Price gouged the HEDT market. Just because AMD could no deliver anything to compete
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rekareaper
It s always amusing to see how badly gimped Intel systems are in these reviews. Cyberpunk 2560x1440 at medium settings with resolution scaling off getting 229fps average on a 13900k/4090. More than any of their results even in 1080p. Same settings but at 1920x1080 and 254fps average. Even at 3440x1440 I m still beating their 14900k and 13900k results with 183fps average.
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It s always amusing to see how badly gimped Intel systems are in these reviews. Cyberpunk 2560x1440 at medium settings with resolution scaling off getting 229fps average on a 13900k/4090. More than any of their results even in 1080p. Same settings but at 1920x1080 and 254fps average. Even at 3440x1440 I m still beating their 14900k and 13900k results with 183fps average.
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jackchid6040
The thing that would really interest me is how much would running a VM with a given corecount of lets say 4 and 16 GB Ram affect the rest of the system for performance intensive activities like gaming that per se do not use or need these resources. These additional cores could be used to make a second PC that is being used as a server or something unnecessary.
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The thing that would really interest me is how much would running a VM with a given corecount of lets say 4 and 16 GB Ram affect the rest of the system for performance intensive activities like gaming that per se do not use or need these resources. These additional cores could be used to make a second PC that is being used as a server or something unnecessary.
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milo8425
Y'all seriously need to adopt an AI t/s test. It's one of the most popular use cases for enthusiast lvl hardware and nobody is doing it on review sites. The fluid dynamics tests are close-ish but a proper GGUF quantized 70b model would be the actual thing people are looking for, especially with new models that look like they're going to be suitable for CPUs.
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Y'all seriously need to adopt an AI t/s test. It's one of the most popular use cases for enthusiast lvl hardware and nobody is doing it on review sites. The fluid dynamics tests are close-ish but a proper GGUF quantized 70b model would be the actual thing people are looking for, especially with new models that look like they're going to be suitable for CPUs.
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beedoox5613
Thanks for reviewing this part; I was curious as to how it would perform when compared to my TR2950X, and whether it would be a good upgrade path. It seems the answer (considering I want to game as well), is no. Looks as though we'll be waiting for the 8950X/3D parts - unless I get very restless and just plump for a 7950X...
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Thanks for reviewing this part; I was curious as to how it would perform when compared to my TR2950X, and whether it would be a good upgrade path. It seems the answer (considering I want to game as well), is no. Looks as though we'll be waiting for the 8950X/3D parts - unless I get very restless and just plump for a 7950X...
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jimmay8627
As impressive as this is, I'm glad to see that it doesn't stomp my 3 year old TR 3970X too hard (unlike what the 4090 did to my 3090's in Redshift rendering). My usual upgrade cadence for work machines is 5 years/4x performance boost (whichever comes first) at comparable budget levels, so I'm still good for a while longer.
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As impressive as this is, I'm glad to see that it doesn't stomp my 3 year old TR 3970X too hard (unlike what the 4090 did to my 3090's in Redshift rendering). My usual upgrade cadence for work machines is 5 years/4x performance boost (whichever comes first) at comparable budget levels, so I'm still good for a while longer.
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gubmentmang-gp2jd
I really want consumer CPUs to have 32 PCIe lanes. I know it doesn't make that much of a difference for GPUs to run in x8. I just think it would be beneficial for everyone to have more because of NVMe storage becoming the standard. 8-16 for the GPU then at least 16 for multiple drives or other things.
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I really want consumer CPUs to have 32 PCIe lanes. I know it doesn't make that much of a difference for GPUs to run in x8. I just think it would be beneficial for everyone to have more because of NVMe storage becoming the standard. 8-16 for the GPU then at least 16 for multiple drives or other things.
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chris6ix.
For the love of god, Steve, please stop showing white pages for so long. This video is just painful to watch in a darker room, and my monitors are already on minimum brightness and I use Windows Night Light. Either explain the tests while showing a graph, or just use dark mode when you screenshot the pages.
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For the love of god, Steve, please stop showing white pages for so long. This video is just painful to watch in a darker room, and my monitors are already on minimum brightness and I use Windows Night Light. Either explain the tests while showing a graph, or just use dark mode when you screenshot the pages.
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McLongSausage
I know you guys don't care for the 7950X3D as it gets left out of a lot of comparison charts, even if it was used in certain charts in a video it will get left off of others in the same video. I would love to start seeing it included in more testing especially in all of these novel tests.
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I know you guys don't care for the 7950X3D as it gets left out of a lot of comparison charts, even if it was used in certain charts in a video it will get left off of others in the same video. I would love to start seeing it included in more testing especially in all of these novel tests.
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mritunjaymusale
I would say please do more testing of threadripper for Linux, I know Wendell does it but variety of reviewers is better and Dev workload will probably be Linux + docker and not windows.
You could use wendells compiling Linux kernel with all submodules script for benchmarking.
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I would say please do more testing of threadripper for Linux, I know Wendell does it but variety of reviewers is better and Dev workload will probably be Linux + docker and not windows.
You could use wendells compiling Linux kernel with all submodules script for benchmarking.
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