AMD and Intel are on the racetrack again. Who will
offer the fastest CPU for the fairest price out there?
It seems as if AMD is tackling Intel once more by
releasing a new beast to the public in near future…

The beast is called AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990X and comes with a whopping 32 cores / 64 threads at 3.4GHz baseline speed while being able to spike up to 4.0GHz.

Manufactured with four 8-core dies at 12nm under it’s huge heatspreader, the CPU is designed to fit the current SP3 socket mainboards with an X399 chipset. It is the successor to the already famous 1950X Threadripper which has torn the 7960X from intel with ease while being less expensive! So AMD decided to shift to the next gear and release this enormous beast to the consumer in the new future. It’s codename will be “Pinnacle Ridge” and is designed with 12nm structure size so that this number of cores and threads may fit under that heatspreader while not dissipating too much heat. Speaking of that, the designed TDP is at 250W which will require a powerful CPU cooler, let alone a powerful water cooling solution to keep that beast cool.

With this spoken, have a glance at these numbers which are just silly:

Windows 10 shows all 64 cores in a 17 by 4 array. Still wondering why no 16 by 4 grid is used instead…

With 3 MB L1 cache (resulting from 1MB L1 Data and 2MB Instruction cache), 16MB L2 cache and a massive 64MB L3 cache, this beast may be armed to have the biggest tasks fired at it.

According to the numbers seen above, the speed is really hefty and you can expect a big bang for the dough!

The screenshot above shows the numbers generated in Cinebench R15. Okay, I admit that the comparison to the 7900X is a bit unfair as this processor has only 10 cores / 20 threads. Thats less than one third of what Threadripper has. So the result is clear that it is only one third of what Threadripper can achieve.

The anonymous news portal publishing the screenshots stated that they successfully overclocked the beast to a stable 4.12Ghz using the Corsair H150i Pro liquid cooling solution (360mm radiator with 3 fans). However at 4.2GHz on all cores a thermal proctection kicked in as the Cinebench results were below those at 4 or 4.12GHz.

But even a beast like this without overclocking might produce outstanding results…

The chart above shows a bit more recent and potent processors. But even a 28core / 56thread Xeon is only at 66% of what the Threadripper can achieve! And let alone to say that the 8190 Xeon has a 7500US$ pricetag which is out of the scope of most or all normal High-End users.

So when this CPU hits retail stores and the price tag will be known, the fight between Intel and AMD may reach a new height!

Update:

Cyberport has enlisted the 2990X Threadripper for 1.509€ for a short time – Quite a high price tag but you get a lot of bang for the buck! Currently the offer is no longer visible anymore. Maybe Cyberport has fired too quickly…