AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5995WX Box

Product Information

The Threadripper Pro debuted in 2020 as a Lenovo exclusive in the company's ThinkStation P620 desktop workstation, which we reviewed at the link. We tested that machine with the 16-core, 32-thread Ryzen Threadripper Pro 3955WX. Though it was blisteringly fast for multi-threaded scenarios, we wished that first-generation Threadripper Pro had been based on AMD’s “Zen 3” architecture, which was brand new at the time. Engineering simulation includes Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). FEA can help predict how a product reacts to real-world forces or temperatures. CFD can be used to optimise aerodynamics in cars or predict the impact of wind on buildings. Both types of software are extremely demanding computationally. The Threadripper Pro 5995WX was 10% faster than the Xeon w9-3495X when registering our 99 GB dataset. Both CPUs lagged behind AMD’s and Intel’s consumer processors. Even though those test machines only had 64 GB of memory, so only ran on 5 threads, their higher frequencies and IPC gave them the lead. Both Intel processors fared much worse in the Calculix (FEA) test, where the Threadripper Pro 5995WX took a substantial lead. If you're wondering why the 'Pro' models cost so much more, it's because they're legitimately more workstation oriented. For example, you get twice as many PCIe lanes from the CPU, 128 versus 64 while the current AM4 desktop parts have 24 in total, 16 for the primary PCIe slot, 4 four the primary M.2 and then 4 connecting the chipset.

For our testing we used three select workloads from the SPECworkstation 3.1 benchmark. This includes two CFD benchmarks (Rodinia, which represents compressible flow, and WPCcfd, which models combustion and turbulence) and one FEA benchmark (CalculiX, which models a jet engine turbine’s internal temperature).Rainbow Six Extraction sees similar margins to that of Hitman 3, the 5995WX was 4% slower than the 5950X, but 10% faster than the 3990X. However, removing the power limits allowed the 5995WX to match the 5950X. The Threadripper 3000 series had no issues with 4K60 footage from the older GH5, but when we upgraded to the GH6 we wanted to start working with 5.7K60, and this proved troublesome. Of course, we could use proxies but they are a pain for editing, taking a lot more time, and overall just a more cumbersome method than we prefer. Meanwhile, the Intel Xeon W-3400 Series is for ‘experts’ with seven models ranging from 12 to 56 cores and 8-channel DDR5 4400/4800 memory. If your product develops a fault outside of the manufacturer warranty or PB Tech warranty period, we offer a full repair service and are an authorised repair agent for leading brands such as Samsung, HP, Toshiba, Lenovo and more. For comparison we've included the Threadripper 3990X which was tested on the MSI Creator TRX40 motherboard using the same Team T-ForceDDR4-3600 memory at 3400. Then we have a few desktop CPUs for comparison: a Ryzen 9 5950X tested with dual-rank DDR4-3200 memory, and the Intel Core i9-12900K using DDR5-6400 memory. The graphics card used for all testing is the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti. Let's get into the data... Benchmarks

All these factors leave a slimmer cross-section of users to support an entire ecosystem of motherboards and chips, and it's apparent that AMD doesn't think that's enough to prop up what we would traditionally consider an HEDT platform. Such is the price of progress. 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 enthusiasts. After several generations, AMD released its Threadripper Promodels 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. From our tests, however, Sapphire Rapids is not going to be the Threadripper Pro 5000 WX-Series killer we thought it might be, at least in the broader AEC sector. We run these synthetic gaming tests as part of our main application test script. We use an RTX 2080 Ti for these tests to facilitate faster testing, but we use the RTX 3090 for all other gaming benchmarks (we don't include these tests in the geometric mean listed above).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.

In ray trace rendering, the 64-core Threadripper Pro 5995X still has a considerable lead over the 56-core Xeon w9-3495X. And while Intel may possibly win out at certain price points, simply because it has so many different models across its Xeon W-2400 and W-3400 families, we certainly don’t expect viz specialists to move to ‘Sapphire Rapids’ en masse. Plus, as you move down the range, it will face more competition from 13th Gen Intel Core. The Hitman 3 results are a bit more typical, where the 5995WX was slightly slower than the 5950X, a mere 3% decline in performance which meant it was still 18% faster than the older 3990X. We're only looking at an 8% improvement in the 7-zip file manager decompression test for the 5995WX over the 3990X. But this time removing the power limits resulted in a slightly more impressive 9% performance increase. You might say it's kitted to the nines, but that would be understatement. Maybe we should say kitted to the eighty-ones...nine squared! Our sample tester has 128GB of eight-channel DDR4-3200 ECC memory, Nvidia’s flagship RTX A6000 professional graphics card (with a whopping 48GB of its own GDDR6X ECC memory), and a 2TB PCI Express 4.0 solid-state drive. AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper™ PRO Processors Support for 128 PCIe® 4.0 lanes, which delivers twice the I/O performance over PCIe 3.0.In short, the 5995WX is a game changer for our workflow and as such it's difficult to put it into the context of percentage gains, it's not just faster, it's wildly more practical. You could say editing is now more playable, to use a gaming term. However, in other tests, such as Handbrake and Photoshop, the Threadripper Pro didn’t stand out, scoring much like a typical high-end consumer desktop CPU. It won’t let you down for tasks like that, but you wouldn’t get the 32-core Threadripper Pro, let alone the 64-core chip we tested, for those kinds of applications. The chip giant certainly has its work cut out here. With Threadripper Pro, AMD delivered the holy grail of workstation processors, combining vast numbers of cores (up to 64) with high turbo frequencies and high-memory bandwidth to deliver impressive performance wherever your workflows may take you — single threaded CAD, multi-threaded rendering, or memory intensive simulation, Threadripper Pro can handle pretty much anything you throw at it. AMD’s elite Ryzen Threadripper processors and their huge dies, derived from the company's Epyc server chips, have distinguished themselves as the ultimate multi-core monsters. They are ideally suited for pro-grade content-creation and rendering—not the kind your occasional YouTuber needs, but for the likes of Pixar and well-funded movie studios. They're also great for crunching titanic data sets and spinning up modeling applications at full tilt.

The ThinkStation P620 didn’t complete Premiere Pro for reasons I couldn’t determine, but you wouldn’t buy a workstation equipped like ours just to run apps like that. It showed more promise in SPECviewperf 2020 and also scored the lowest time we’ve recorded in Blender’s CPU test. To see how memory bandwidth impacts performance in different workflows, we tested the Xeon w9-3495X with a variety of different memory configurations, from 1-channel with a single 32 GB DIMM, all the way up to 8-channels with 8 x 32 GB DIMMs. Interestingly, even with 6-channels, the Xeon w9-3495X edged out the Threadripper Pro 5995WX in memory bandwidth, delivering 141.21 GB/sec in SiSoft Sandra. There are many different types of ‘solvers’ used in FEA and CFD and each behaves differently, as do different datasets. This is governed largely by the number of memory channels each processor supports, but also by the type of memory. Our first test is UL's PCMark 10, which simulates a variety of real-world productivity and office workflows to measure overall system performance and also includes a storage subtest for the primary drive. The ThinkStation P620 didn’t stand out in the main test, something that’s not surprising; PCMark scoring doesn’t linearly scale with CPU core count. At least its storage drive helped it place nicely in the storage test.Here the 5995WX was 28% faster than the 3990X, which is a significant performance advantage and this translates into serious real-world improvements. We believe the increased memory bandwidth and improved single core performance is largely responsible for the performance gains seen in Adobe Premiere.