AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7980X & 7970X Review: Many-Core Desktop Supremacy
AMD Threadripper 7000: CPU, Full System And Browser Benchmarks
When configuring our test systems for this article, we first made sure all firmwares were up to date, then we entered each system's respective BIOS / UEFI and set each board to its "Optimized" or "High Performance" defaults. We then saved the settings, re-entered the BIOS and set the memory frequency to the maximum officially supported speed for the given platform (without overclocking) with optimal XMP / EXPO timings for the respective memory kits installed. The SSDs were then formatted, and Windows 11 Pro was installed and fully updated.
We began our testing with the latest version of SiSoftware's SANDRA 2021, the System ANalyzer, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant. We ran four of the built-in sub-system tests that partially comprise the suite with the new AMD Threadripper processors (CPU Arithmetic, Multimedia, Memory Bandwidth, and Cache and Memory Latency). All of the scores reported below were taken with the CPUs running at their default settings, with 64GB of DDR5 RAM running at an effective 5,200MHz, in quad-channel mode.
Threadripper 7980X CPU Arithmetic & Multi-Media
Threadripper 7980X Memory Bandwidth & Cache Tests
Threadripper 7970X CPU Arithmetic & Multi-Media
Threadripper 7970X Memory Bandwidth & Cache Tests
The Threadripper 7980X and 7970X put up some monstrous numbers in all of the SANDRA benchmarks. The 7980X peaked at 2.46TOPs in the CPU Arithmetic benchmark, while the 7970X -- with half the number of cores, hit 1.55TOPs. Memory bandwidth fell within the 117GB/s - 120GB/s range, with average memory latency of about 69ns, with the platform running at its officially supported DDR5-5200 memory speed.
Here you can see the effective bandwidth difference between the Threadripper Pro's eight-channel memory configuration and the HEDT Threadripper's quad-channel configuration. Although clocked higher, the higher latency and platform differences for these latest 7000-series processors result in roughly the same memory bandwidth on the Threadripper 7000 series as the previous-gen 5000 series, which is to say about 133GB/s - 169GB/s, depending on the operation.
In terms of memory latency, the Threadripper 7000 series processors landed about in the middle of the stack, with their DDR5-5200 (CAS 38) RAM. And once again we see measured performance that's quite similar to the previous-gen. We expect latency to improve over time, however, as faster RDIMMs hit the market.
Cache latency is very good with these new Threadripper 7000 series processors. Overall, cache latency is roughly in-line with the mainstream Ryzen 9 7950X, and much lower than the Intel Xeon W processors and the previous-gen Threadrippers.
There's no catching the 96-core Threadripper Pro 7995WX in the Geekbench multi-threaded benchmark, but the Threadripper 7970X and 7980X finish just behind it, well ahead of all of the other processors. Single-thread performance is very good too, outpacing the other many-core processors and trailing only the higher-clocked, mainstream Core i9-14900K.
PCMark 10 doesn't take full advantage of the immense resources available on today's many-core processors. In fact, the benchmarks fails to run properly on a couple of the highest core count parts, hence the omission of the Xeon w9-3495X and Threadripper Pro 7995X in the chart. That said, the Threadripper 7970X and 7980X perform relatively well and trail only the higher-clock, mainstream processors.
When the Windows installation was complete, we installed all of the drivers necessary for our components, disabled Auto-Updating and Windows Defender, and installed all of our benchmarking software. When that process was done, we performed a disk clean-up, cleared any temp and prefetch data, and optimized all of the SSDs using Windows' built-in utility. Finally, we enabled Windows Focus Assist to minimize any potential interruptions and let the systems reach an idle state before invoking a test.
There is one caveat we must note, however. Our W790 motherboard for the Intel Xeon W processors, the Asus Pro WS W790 Ace, supports only quad-channel memory, when the processors are able to support eight-channel memory configurations. Much more memory bandwidth would be available on the Xeon platforms by doubling the number of memory channels, which would impact performance in a few of the benchmarks, like Blackmagic RAW, Cinebench 2024, and the computational fluid dynamics test, not to mention the actual memory bandwidth and latency benchmarks. We don't think moving the Xeons to an eight-channel setup would change the overall picture, but we felt the need to point out this caveat nonetheless.
Our Test Systems: Bleeding Edge Platforms
SANDRA CPU Arithmetic, Multimedia, Memory Bandwidth & Cache Latency
Threadripper 7980X CPU Arithmetic & Multi-Media
Threadripper 7980X Memory Bandwidth & Cache Tests
Threadripper 7970X CPU Arithmetic & Multi-Media
Threadripper 7970X Memory Bandwidth & Cache Tests
The Threadripper 7980X and 7970X put up some monstrous numbers in all of the SANDRA benchmarks. The 7980X peaked at 2.46TOPs in the CPU Arithmetic benchmark, while the 7970X -- with half the number of cores, hit 1.55TOPs. Memory bandwidth fell within the 117GB/s - 120GB/s range, with average memory latency of about 69ns, with the platform running at its officially supported DDR5-5200 memory speed.
AIDA64 Memory Bandwidth, Memory Latency & Cache Latency
AIDA64's CPU Cache and Memory benchmarks measure memory bandwidth during read, write and copy operations, in addition to memory latency, and cache bandwidth and latency.
In terms of memory latency, the Threadripper 7000 series processors landed about in the middle of the stack, with their DDR5-5200 (CAS 38) RAM. And once again we see measured performance that's quite similar to the previous-gen. We expect latency to improve over time, however, as faster RDIMMs hit the market.
Geekbench v5.4.1 CPU Compute Benchmark
In the Geekbench tests, we're stressing only the CPU cores in a system (not the graphics card and GPU), with both single and multi-threaded workloads. The tests are comprised of encryption processing, image compression, HTML5 parsing, physics calculations and other general purpose compute processing workloads.
There's no catching the 96-core Threadripper Pro 7995WX in the Geekbench multi-threaded benchmark, but the Threadripper 7970X and 7980X finish just behind it, well ahead of all of the other processors. Single-thread performance is very good too, outpacing the other many-core processors and trailing only the higher-clocked, mainstream Core i9-14900K.
UL PCMark 10 Benchmarks
Next, up we have some full-system testing with PCMark. We're reporting all test results from the PCMark 10 benchmark suite, including the Essentials, Productivity, Digital Content Creation and and total PCMark score. The Essentials test covers workloads like web browsing, video conferencing and app start-up times, while Productivity tests everyday office apps from spreadsheets to word processing. Finally, the Digital Content Creation test evaluates performance of a machine with respect to photo and video editing, as well as rendering and visualization.
PCMark 10 doesn't take full advantage of the immense resources available on today's many-core processors. In fact, the benchmarks fails to run properly on a couple of the highest core count parts, hence the omission of the Xeon w9-3495X and Threadripper Pro 7995X in the chart. That said, the Threadripper 7970X and 7980X perform relatively well and trail only the higher-clock, mainstream processors.
Browser & Web App Benchmarks: Jetstream 2 And Speedometer 2
Next up, we have some numbers from the Speedometer 2.0 and Jetstream 2 tests available at browserbench.org. The Speedometer Benchmark Suite uses a wide array of latency and throughput benchmarks to evaluate web application performance and Jetstream evaluates Javascript and WebAssembly performance; both tests take all of their individual results and tabulate them into a final score.
These benchmarks measures performance of an array of browser-based technologies used on modern, rich web applications. Scores in these benchmark are an indicator of the performance users would see when browsing the web and running advanced web apps. All of the systems were tested using the latest version of Microsoft's Edge browser, with default browser settings, on a clean, fully-updated install of Windows 11.
These relatively light-duty browser benchmarks don't tax a many-core processor either, and since processors like the Threadripper 7970X and 7980X don't clock as high as mainstream parts, they won't typically catch those CPUs here. Still, the Threadripper 7970X and 7980X perform quite well. These tests, and the PCMark test above, show that users won't give up much in terms of responsiveness and perceived performance with the Threadripper 7970X and 7980X processors, even though they're meant for much more taxing, multi-threaded workloads.
These benchmarks measures performance of an array of browser-based technologies used on modern, rich web applications. Scores in these benchmark are an indicator of the performance users would see when browsing the web and running advanced web apps. All of the systems were tested using the latest version of Microsoft's Edge browser, with default browser settings, on a clean, fully-updated install of Windows 11.
7-Zip Data Decompression Tests
The 7-Zip benchmark measures compression and decompression performance using the LZMA method, which leverages the Lempel–Ziv–Markov chain algorithm to perform lossless data compression. The benchmark produces a final rating in GIPS (giga instructions per second).
So, technically the Threadripper 7980X came out on top in our 7-Zip test, besting even the 96-core Threadripper Pro 7995X. This is a side effect of the slower memory installed on the Dell workstation we used for testing the 7995WX and the version of 7-zip that as installed on the machine—we've seen the Threadripper Pro 7995X break 1000GIPs on this test. Still, the Threadripper 7970X and 7980X perform exceptionally well and outrun all of the Intel processors.
So, technically the Threadripper 7980X came out on top in our 7-Zip test, besting even the 96-core Threadripper Pro 7995X. This is a side effect of the slower memory installed on the Dell workstation we used for testing the 7995WX and the version of 7-zip that as installed on the machine—we've seen the Threadripper Pro 7995X break 1000GIPs on this test. Still, the Threadripper 7970X and 7980X perform exceptionally well and outrun all of the Intel processors.
