Agent47 Posted August 8, 2022 Posted August 8, 2022 The new 64-core AMD Threadripper Pro 5995WX and 32-core Threadripper Pro 5975WX are finally available at retail, breaking free from the confines of pre-built OEM systems to contend for a spot on our list of best CPUs for workstations. They have a tough act to follow: AMD's previous-gen Threadripper CPUs delivered a crushing blow to the entrenched Intel's HEDT and workstation lineup, with the consumer models essentially muscling Team Blue out of the high end desktop (HEDT) market entirely while the Pro models relegated Intel to an also-ran in the workstation market. But there's a problem for enthusiasts — Intel abandoned the consumer-oriented high end desktop (HEDT) market after its crushing defeat three years ago, and now that AMD is the only game in town for HEDT chips, it's also dropping the segment. AMD says it will no longer make the more affordable non-Pro Threadripper models. Instead, we get the Threadripper Pro chips that are priced for professionals and come with all the trimmings to justify the price tag, like the Zen 3 architecture, clock speeds up to 4.5 GHz, 128 lanes of PCIe 4.0, and eight DDR4 memory channels that deliver unmatchable workstation performance. AMD's original Threadripper chips (and supporting motherboards) were geared for HEDT, meaning they came with higher core counts and access to more memory and PCIe connectivity than mainstream desktop PC chips. However, pricing was still mostly within reach for us mere mortals. After several generations, AMD released its Threadripper Pro models with twice the number of memory channels (eight) for professional users and unique motherboards, but the beefy chips carried the eye-watering pricing to match their incredible performance. AMD then maintained two lineups, one for consumers and one for professional workstations, but they had different pricing tiers even though they were based on the same underlying architecture. AMD changes that with the Threadripper 5000 WX-series, unifying the standard HEDT models with the professional lineup, meaning there's now only one line of chips and motherboards for both OEM workstations and DIYers — Threadripper Pro and the WRX80 platform. Threadripper Pro chips come with the 'WX' suffix to denote they are designed for the workstation market. AMD didn't introduce more cores with the two top-end models, but they're faster due to the step up from the Zen 2 architecture to Zen 3. AMD has increased prices on the 64-core model by $1,000 and bumped up the 32-core chip by $550. All retail Threadripper Pro models have a top dual-core clock speed of 4.5 GHz, a generational increase of 300 MHz for the 5955WX and 5975WX. The 24-core 3975WX didn't have a previous-gen Pro counterpart, but its clock speeds are the same as the consumer 3960X. We also see a 100 MHz improvement to the base clock speed on all models except the 64-core, 128-thread Threadripper Pro 5995WX. The Threadripper Pro chips have the same 280W TDP envelope as the previous-gen chips. Notably, the 280W limit is likely imposed by the sWRX80 socket design, so AMD doesn't have much room to increase frequencies for the highest-end part. As we've seen in previous tests, the core-heavy Threadripper models reach peak power consumption long before all of the cores are fully saturated, but the support for overclocking/PBO will help break those bonds. Threadripper Pro has 128 PCIe 4.0 lanes (the CPU exposes 120 lanes to the user) compared to Intel's 64 lanes, an advantage because most workstations have plenty of additives, like GPU accelerators, NVMe storage, and high-speed NICs. Except for the quad-channel Ryzen Threadripper 3000 chips, all of the above AMD and Intel processors support eight channels of DDR4-3200 ECC memory. Threadripper Pro supports a maximum of 2TB of memory in UDIMM, RDIMM, and LRDIMM flavors, while Xeon W-3300 supports up to 4TB. That's not to mention that AMD's core/thread counts weigh in at 64/128 compared to Intel's 38/76. As you can see, AMD slightly undercuts Intel's suggested pricing for the 24- and 32-core models, but the flagship 64-core 5995WX costs $2000 more than the highest-end 38-core Xeon W-3375. The Threadripper Pro chips drop into single-socket WRX80 motherboards, so existing WRX80 motherboards support the 5000 series chips after a BIOS update. The LGA4094 socket (aka Socket sWRX8) is physically identical to the previous-gen Threadripper consumer and EPYC data center platforms, so coolers are also compatible. However, the socket features different pin assignments: AMD enabled some pins to support more memory channels and PCIe lanes than are available on the old Threadripper consumer chips and disabled certain pins used to support multiple sockets on EPYC platforms. Threadripper Pro is based on a lightly-modified EPYC Milan design, so they move up from Zen 2 to the Zen 3 architecture. The Threadripper Pro chips still top out at an incredible 256MB of L3 cache on the highest-end models, but the cache is now a contiguous 32MB block for each eight-core cluster, improving performance over the prior gen. In contrast, Xeon W-3300 tops out at a paltry 57MB. The chips also bear all of the other benefits of Zen 3, like a 19% increase in instruction per cycle (IPC) throughput. The chips support AMD's Pro Security, Manageability, and Business Ready suites (18-month software stability, 2-year chip availability), an area where Intel's competing chips are lacking. AMD's Pro Security suite includes the same Secure Architecture, Memory Guard (memory encryption with a slight performance penalty), and Secure Processor features as the prior-gen Threadripper Pro models, but AMD added Shadow Stack, a mechanism to counter control flow attacks. In contrast, Intel's Xeon W-3300 series doesn't have an enterprise-class feature set. AMD Threadripper Pro 5995WX and 5975WX Benchmark Test Setup There are quite a few caveats to our testing. First, we tested the Threadripper 5995WX and 3995WX in the Lenovo ThinkStation P620 workstation, which is unabashedly designed for 100% stability and doesn't support the auto-overclocking Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) or any other form of overclocking. Additionally, we're constrained to the systems' installed cooler and power limits, not to mention that the 128GB of ECC memory operates at JEDEC memory speeds. Lenovo uses AMD's vendor-locking Platform Secure Boot (PSB) feature to prevent using the processor with any other motherboard, which you can read about more in-depth here. This technique is used to improve security but is irreversible by the end user, which has terrible implications for the second-hand market. It also impacts our testing — we're stuck with testing the 64-core chips in an unalterable environment. Our results are still plenty valid for our stock configurations, but we can't test overclocking. It wouldn't be surprising if an enthusiast-class motherboard and cooler can extract slightly more performance from the 64-core models, even at stock settings. Luckily we didn't face the same restrictions with the Threadripper Pro 5975WX. AMD sent us a sample, so we're free to test with any platform. We chose an MSI WS WRX80 motherboard because it features all of the high-end features you'd expect from an enthusiast-class motherboard, including overclocking (remember, only a few WRX80 motherboards support overclocking). The MSI WS WRX80 gives you a good idea of some of the features you can expect from a high-end WRX80 motherboard, including eight DIMM slots, seven PCIe 4.0 x16 slots, two M.2 slots, two U.2 connectors, eight SATA ports, and a 10Gbps Aquantia AQC113CS LAN controller. We tested the 5975WX at stock and PBO settings, with the latter using Advanced Motherboard settings with a 10X scalar setting. We used the 128GB of ECC memory from the Lenovo system with the MSI motherboard to keep our test pool consistent (we didn't have an eight-DIMM consumer kit for testing). As such, we use eight channels of DDR4-3200 and JEDEC timings for all tested Threadripper Pro configurations. The other platforms in our test pool have varying memory configurations, listed in a chart at the end of the article. Intel hasn't sampled us any Xeon W-3300 chips, so our testing feels a bit incomplete. While the W-3300 chips lack the connectivity options and sheer threaded heft of the Threadripper Pro 5000-series models, they are known to have competitive performance in single-threaded work. That pays off in some workloads. We're using our Windows 10 test suite for this round of testing, which does necessitate using our older game roster but allows us to compare to our historical results from the previous-gen 64-core 3995WX that we no longer have in the lab. All of the normal caveats of Threadripper 3000 performance still apply. Windows splits cores into 'processor groups' of 64 threads apiece, so some applications and benchmarks that aren't tuned to span across the groups don't benefit from the increased thread count. For applications that can't span processor groups, some professional users will run multiple program instances in VMs to extract the utmost performance. Even without that type of arrangement, we see a marked uplift in several applications that benefit from 128 threads. Additionally, the software is rapidly evolving to support such large processors. AMD's Ryzen Master software, which allows you to tune consumer Threadripper processors, is available with the Threadripper Pro chips, but only if the platform supports overclocking. For instance, the software is locked out on the Lenovo ThinkStation but works perfectly with the MSI WS WRX80. Link : https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-threadripper-pro-5995wx-5975wx-cpu-review
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