AMD's Threadripper 2990WX is officially the fastest consumer processor on the planet - taking the performance crown from Intel's 28-core chiller setup. The Threadripper 2990WX is the flagship part of AMD's Threadripper 2 platform and based on the 12nm node from TSMC and based on the Zen+ architecture.
AMD's Theadripper 2990WX 32-core overclocked to 5.1 GHz under LN2 just took the world record from Intel's 28-core chiller setup
This is a pretty big deal for two important reasons. A couple of years ago, AMD's CPU offerings were multiple times slower than even the most modest Intel CPU. Today, however, we are seeing the company take the performance crown (albeit in an LN2 setting which is not indicative of a real-life setting). Before we go any further, let's take a look at the actual benchmark, courtesy of Toms'sHardware.
The fastest Intel consumer offering on the market right now is the Intel Core i9-7980XE 18-core, and the fastest prototype is the 28-core which was demoed at Computex. Intel's 28-Core put out a cinebench score of 7,344 using an aquarium chiller setup. At this point, it is not known what the 28-core could achieve under LN2 but one thing is clear: the Threadripper 2990WX LN2 demo is faster than Intel's demo. It is now the world-record holder.
Interestingly, however, Intel still seems to be leading in the core-for-core performance department but all of that pales in comparison to the fact that the Threadripper 2990WX is priced very affordably for a processor of its caliber. It's actually priced cheaper than the original MSRP of the Intel Core i9-7980XE ($1999). It will almost certainly be incredibly cheaper than the 28-core against which it is competing (and winning).
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX will have the SKU nomenclature of YD299XAZAFWOF. The Threadripper 2990WX will have a 250W TDP, 16MB of L2, 64MB of L3 cache but only 4 memory channels. Unlike the 1950X which was still targeted somewhat towards gamers and streamers, the 2990WX is dead center serious amateur/video professional territory – people who aren't owners of render farms or data centers yet are running rendering or video operations requiring serious compute. I wouldn’t be surprised if SMEs picked this up for the perfect server processor without any of the cost associated with EPYC.
The chip features a base clock of 3.0 GHz and a maximum boost clock of 4.0 GHz while the precision boost overdrive clocks are rated at +200 MHz so expect up to 4.20 GHz in single core optimized workloads. This shows that AMD can still achieve very high clock speeds even when they jumped to twice as many cores as their previous flagship, the Ryzen Threadripper 1950X. All current generation TR4 socketed boards will be fully compatible with the 2nd generation Ryzen Threadripper processors.
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2000 Series CPU Specifications:
| CPU Name | AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX | AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2970WX | AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2950X | AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2920X |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CPU Family | AMD 2nd Gen Threadripper (COFLAX) | AMD 2nd Gen Threadripper (COFLAX) | AMD 2nd Gen Threadripper (COFLAX) | AMD 2nd Gen Threadripper (COFLAX) |
| CPU Architecture | 12nm Zen+ | 12nm Zen+ | 12nm Zen+ | 12nm Zen+ |
| Cores/Threads | 32/64 | 24/48 | 16/32 | 12/24 |
| Base Clock | 3.0 GHz | 3.0 GHz | 3.5 GHz | 3.5 GHz |
| Boost Clock | 4.2 GHz | 4.2 GHz | 4.4 GHz | 4.3 GHz |
| Cache (L3) | 64 MB | 64 MB | 64 MB | 64 MB |
| Cache (L2) | 16 MB | 12 MB | 8 MB | 6 MB |
| TDP | 250W | 250W | 180W | 180W |
| Platform | TR4 X399 | TR4 X399 | TR4 X399 | TR4 X399 |
| Price | $1799 US | $1299 US | $899 US | $649 US |
