AMD pleasantly surprised us earlier this year with the Ryzen 7 2700X, which restored the company's competitiveness against Intel's Core i7-8700K, and now we see the Ryzen Threadripper 2950X do an even better job at establishing itself as the most powerful processor under $1000. This 16-core/32-thread behemoth isn't even the biggest processor in AMD's Threadripper arsenal, which expanded their lineup to 24-core and 32-core Threadripper WX models, but that doesn't take away from the sheer "wow-factor" this chip has compared to Intel Core X models in its vicinity. Intel recently cut prices of its $999 Core i9-7900X to match that of the Threadripper 2950X, and our results show you the sheer extent of Intel's failure.

The Threadripper 2950X ends up 9.3 percent faster than the i9-7900X across our mix of single- and multi-threaded tests. Intel still has a slight edge in single-threaded performance, but AMD is catching up quickly. When it comes to multi-threaded workloads, the Intel chip is simply no match. Despite lower IPC, armed with 6 more cores and 12 more threads, the 2950X ends up 20 percent faster in multi-threaded video encoding and about 25 percent faster at encryption. The differences are even more stark with rendering workloads such as Blender; we see the 2950X crunch our test workload in just 154 seconds, compared to 227 seconds with the Core i9-7900X. The extra cores translate into 45 percent higher scores in Cinebench R15 nT.

When it comes to gaming, both the 2950X and the i9-7900X fall behind today's mainstream desktop champions, the i7-8700K and 2700X, in both absolute performance and price/performance. This is because today's games aren't parallelized to HEDT levels, don't need much memory, and can make do with lower memory bandwidths, benefiting from lower latencies instead. At 4K UHD, the GPU limitation makes the comparison kind of meaningless. At 1080p (a resolution no human having spent $900 on a processor should game at), the two chips are somewhat comparable in performance. 720p (scientific test, don't worry) reveals that Intel's higher IPC still pays dividends, and that if you're gaming, the Intel chip is still the way to go. Then again, if you're only gaming, then neither of the two HEDT chips are for you, and you're better off with an i7-8700K. The Threadripper 2950X isn't that far behind the 7900X at gaming, but if your applications satisfy the HEDT use-case, then choosing the 2950X over the i9-7900X is a no-brainer because your multi-threaded workloads will simply run so much faster.

Enthusiasts will obviously want a piece of AMD's new Threadripper lineup to climb some wPrime leaderboards, and there's some overclocking fun to be had with the 2950X, but only if your cooling is up to the job and you can get the clocks way above 4.50 GHz, approaching 5.00 GHz. If you're on air-cooling or AIO liquid cooling, then you're better off letting the processor overclock itself by tinkering with Precision Boost Overdrive in Ryzen Master. AMD has obviously put a lot of thought and testing into getting its multi-threaded boost algorithm right, and PBO lets you increase the boost limits without worrying about unstable setting combinations that can crash your machine. In our testing, we saw excellent results from PBO, which were very easy to achieve, and the system never even crashed once. Manual overclocking does have a slight performance edge if you are running highly threaded workloads 24/7 because you can lock in the exact clock and voltage you want. This comes at the cost of significantly increased power consumption though, which also increases requirements for cooling on both CPU and VRMs.

We also tested the performance impact of switching memory access mode from "Distributed" to "Local", which improves memory latency at the cost of maximum bandwidth. Our benchmarks show extremely mixed results which are highly dependent on the tested application. Generally, tasks that don't require a lot of memory, and games, are better off using "Local", but the devil is in the details. So if you only have one application you run most of the time, do some testing to see whether Local or Distributed will give you better results. Just picking one blindly won't cut it. Basically, if your applications don't use a lot of memory or most of the work happens in the CPU cache, then "Local" is worth exploring for performance improvements.

Idle power consumption of the Threadripper platform is a bit higher than comparable consumer platforms, by about 15 W, which isn't that much of a difference and justified by the higher core count and more complex platform. In single-threaded workloads, the TR 2950X is the least energy efficient CPU in our test group, which isn't surprising because Threadripper wasn't built for single-threaded applications. When we move on to multi-threaded work loads, we see impressive results. With a total system power consumption of around 250 W, the Threadripper 2950X is power-hungry, no doubt, but what makes the difference is how quickly jobs get finished, which helps with power efficiency since higher power draw over a short time can still be more efficient than low power draw over a much longer duration. When looking at that metric, the Threadripper 2950X is around 30% more power efficient than Intel's 7900X.

Going with the Threadripper 2950X won't be cheap. In addition to $900 for the processor, you'll need four modules of some decent memory, which will cost you about $400 for 32 GB. On top of that, expect to spend around $300 for the motherboard—the super high-end $500 boards might be good for breaking records, but are just too expensive for everyday use, especially when not using a 32-core CPU (2990 WX). So total platform cost will be at least $2,000, more if you opt for a high-end graphics card. This is roughly twice that of a solid consumer system, a cost that has to be justified somehow. I'd say if you make money with your computer, running highly threaded applications all day and getting results is time critical, which could make it worth it. On the other hand, if your workflow allows you to do something else while you wait for results, or applications can run overnight, then a cheaper system will mean more money in the bank. This makes higher-priced options like Intel Xeon even more difficult to justify, which probably require a new motherboard every time you want a faster CPU. With Threadripper, you can happily use any of the existing motherboards, which opens up a nice upgrade path ranging from the $320 first-generation Threadripper 1900X all the way up to the 32-core 2990 WX ($1799).

With the introduction of these new Threadrippers, things are looking pretty shaky for Intel. The Core i9-7900X clearly cannot compete with the Threadripper 2950X at $900, and we doubt those two extra cores you get by paying $1000 for the i9-7920X will make much of a difference. Perhaps the best way forward for Intel would be to snap out of its arrogance and price the i9-7900X at $700 (competitive to the Threadripper 2920X), and get the i9-7920X below the Threadripper 2950X. Perhaps, the 14-core i9-7940X could be offered at $1000. We doubt Intel will make the right choice, and so for prosumers, the Threadripper 2950X takes the crown.