AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2 vs. Intel Skylake-X: Battle of the High-End CPUs

[PaulAlcorn]

We put AMD's top CPUs up against Intel's leading chips in a seven-round face-off based on performance, features, value and more.

AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2 vs. Intel Skylake-X: Battle of the High-End CPUs : Read more

 

[y2kmady]

3d rendering then intel or amd ?

 

[jpe1701]

The pictures are all of the mainstream CPUs Mr. Alcorn.

 

[Martell1977]

Why no overclocking stats for TR2? You have them for Intel, but only PBO for AMD?

 

[mrb 59]

$1,7999 Ryzen Threadripper 2 2990WX $1,7999?

 

[mrb 59]

Ryzen Threadripper 2 2990WX $1,7999 is that an extra 9

 

[shabbo]

One of the dumbest review I've read. Only thing Intel is good at is providing a few percent better gaming performance on a chip that's not even meant for gaming.


1) Motherboard choices?? Who cares about that and why should it carry equal weight to other more important categories in this match up? There's more then enough motherboard choices for Threadripper and these motherboards are probably better built and will support future processors. Useless category and the winner should be AMD here

2) Gaming performance. Who the heck cares about the little advantage one may have over the other. Instead it should be game development performance. You just created this category to award Intel a point.

3) Productivity. How is this even a tie? I can run over half a dozen more VMs at higher performance on AMD. I can have more 10GE NICs and better I/O and be way more productive on AMD.

 

[bsaghafi]

The chart in the Features section states the AMD TR 1950x and 1920x as having 64 MB L3 cache while it should be 32 MB.

 

[mbjgjol]

Benchmark:
Use dBpoweramp to encode 250 mp3 files. Its support multi-CPU!
I will love to see the winner of this! ;-)

 

[justanothergeek]

"Intel holds the per-core performance advantage and generally processes more instructions per cycle (IPC)".
Is this before or after all the spectre meltdown patches and security patches have been applied?
Honestly, I would like to see the comparison with after Intel and AMD security patches have been applied, which would be a real world scenario.

Is Tom'sHardware going to have benchmarks on the L1 cache security updates for possible performance degradations?
Source: https://www.altchar.com/hardware/575144/intel-makes-publishing-cpu-benchmarks-illegal-after-security-patch

 

[yurius_r]

if you spent some time you can find support on x299 platform even RDIMM support. But ECC working question still remains - RDIMMS works fine, but who knows if ecc enabled

 

[velocityg4]

The workstation bar graphs are inconsistent in layout. They can lead to misinterpretation if someone isn't carefully paying attention. Some charts are ordered, top to bottom, fastest to slowest. Others are slowest to fastest. The lower is better bar graphs are consistent. The higher is better bar graphs are all over the place.

From a readability standpoint. They need to all be laid out in a fastest to slowest format. You could do slowest to fastest as long as it is consistent. Fastest to slowest is the norm people expect.

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AMD certainly has some impressive results. For those who need a 12+ Core CPU. I doubt minor differences in single threaded performance matter much.

When it comes to performance per dollar. AMD crushes Intel in heavily multi-threaded tasks. You can get a 16-Core TR 2950x for less than a 10-Core i9-7900x. Even after you factor in Motherboard price differences. Other core counts have similar disparity.

 

[carlojoselitoch42]

But still I would like AMD to completely surpass Skylake-E so Intel will learn a lesson and shape up.

 

[PaulAlcorn]

"Intel holds the per-core performance advantage and generally processes more instructions per cycle (IPC)".
Is this before or after all the spectre meltdown patches and security patches have been applied?
Honestly, I would like to see the comparison with after Intel and AMD security patches have been applied, which would be a real world scenario.

These test results are generated on fully-patched systems.

 

[richardvday]

This line "If you want the best performance for the majority of games and productivity apps, which are lightly threaded, Intel Skylake-X is your top choice."
Who buys an 18 core CPU for gaming and Lightly threaded workloads ?
For its intended audience Intel is a LOSER here.

 

[2sidedpolygon]

One of the dumbest review I've read. Only thing Intel is good at is providing a few percent better gaming performance on a chip that's not even meant for gaming.


1) Motherboard choices?? Who cares about that and why should it carry equal weight to other more important categories in this match up? There's more then enough motherboard choices for Threadripper and these motherboards are probably better built and will support future processors. Useless category and the winner should be AMD here

2) Gaming performance. Who the heck cares about the little advantage one may have over the other. Instead it should be game development performance. You just created this category to award Intel a point.

3) Productivity. How is this even a tie? I can run over half a dozen more VMs at higher performance on AMD. I can have more 10GE NICs and better I/O and be way more productive on AMD.

1. The motherboard platform is a big deal. Just because you don't care doesn't mean nobody does.

2. A lot of people. Especially considering how much AMD marketed gaming, having the benchmarks is perfectly reasonable.

3. There are different programs and categories of productivity that are lightly threaded, and others that aren't. Intel is better in lightly threaded workloads, AMD better in ones that aren't. It depends on the workload, so it's a tie.

 

[velocityg4]

This line "If you want the best performance for the majority of games and productivity apps, which are lightly threaded, Intel Skylake-X is your top choice."
Who buys an 18 core CPU for gaming and Lightly threaded workloads ?
For its intended audience Intel is a LOSER here.

iMac Pro buyers:lol:

 

[Lasselundberg]

still no gaming results at 2560 or 3440, people who buys these chips dont play on a 150$ 1080 monitor.....they rock a 27" 2560 or better....what happens when you pair TR2 with a 1070 or 1080(ti) ...does amd close the gap ?

 

[jimmysmitty]

One of the dumbest review I've read. Only thing Intel is good at is providing a few percent better gaming performance on a chip that's not even meant for gaming.


1) Motherboard choices?? Who cares about that and why should it carry equal weight to other more important categories in this match up? There's more then enough motherboard choices for Threadripper and these motherboards are probably better built and will support future processors. Useless category and the winner should be AMD here

2) Gaming performance. Who the heck cares about the little advantage one may have over the other. Instead it should be game development performance. You just created this category to award Intel a point.

3) Productivity. How is this even a tie? I can run over half a dozen more VMs at higher performance on AMD. I can have more 10GE NICs and better I/O and be way more productive on AMD.

1. The platform is very important. What features it has and supports is very important. And are you saying that an Asus ROG X299 board is lower quality than an Asus ROG x399 board? That Asus would for some reason purposefully, or other vendors, make them lower quality? They aren't. Aside from the chipset they build them very similarly.

2. It doesn't matter but some special kid will buy a TR2 or SL-X system with all those cores and a custom water loop and throw in 2 Titan Vs in SLI for the bragging rights.

3. This one is a mix. Productivity is whatever but the NICs belongs in the platform.

Speaking of the platform, unless someone gets one of the oddball 7700 series CPUs for the X299 platform they will have a total of 68 PCIe 3.0 lanes. The difference is in how AMD and Intel do it. AMD has 64 total Gen 3 on the CPU with 4 of them being sent to the PCH and I assume split between all the devices on the PCH. Intel has 44 Gen 3 on anything from the 7820X and up with an additional 24 on the PCH which is used for other devices.

The other side is the support. People talk about having 4 full x16 lanes, well no. You can have 2 x16 and 2 x8 for GPUs per AMDs specs. However as you have said this is not a gaming system so SLI/CFX is pointless. Even on a normal gaming system beyond 2 GPUs is pointless as the gains for the costs do not add up. Add 33% more power, 33% more cost and get little to no real benefits.

Other than possibly supporting the next CPU AMD launches on the platform I see no advantage for AMDs platform. As for 10Gbe nics both have them available but outside of corporate networks are useless as most consumers do not have 10Gbe routers yet and probably wont since consumer routers are moving to 5Gbe setups.

 

[Gh0stWalker]

So which ones are vulnerable to the latest threats and fare the best with the remedies (such as they are) Because what is the point of buying a new processor if it is vulnerable to spectre and other hardware exploits?

 

[agello24]

with this type of chips why are single thread benchmarks still being put in the reviews? who single threads with a multi core chip over 8 cores? im just curious.

 

[DGurney]

How is it the best time to be buying ANY CPU, when we’re waiting for in-silicon mitigation of Spectre eltdown?

 

[b20693010]

AMD released his new threadrippers before Intel released new extreme edition i9 processor, so now comparing i9 79xx and TR29xx isn't fair.

 

[James_514]

TBO whether or not the motherboard choices is important or not, Neither one is going to be a winner. You have cheapo motherboards and you have expensive motherboards. Neither of which is reliant on the chip that goes inside of it, but the manufacturer making the motherboard. If you take any processor since Intel started to win the CPU wars with their core series you would have to come to the same conclusion that 'intel boards are the winner' for the reasons stated, because manufacturers for a very long time have had a wider variety of boards available for the intel side of things than the AMD side of things. This is what makes this a pointless metric. The manufacture is determining the win in this case.

And yes, @JIMMYSMITTER, ASUS DOES make their ROG boards for intel higher quality than their ROG boards for AMD. Case point, the aforementioned Rampage VI VS Zenith Extreme. ASUS rarely and almost sets AMD board quality and design above Intel board quality and design. ASUS highest end Intel boards are always flashier than AMDs. This is fact. Their 'Extreme' for AMD board is never as 'Extreme' as their intel boards. This has been the case for a very long time.

 

[James_514]

Oh also. I think its worth noting that while you can find a cheaper motherboard on the intel side, you'll require a more expensive processor to go with that. Processor prices, since a motherboard is naturally required with them, should be the balancing effect that places AMD in a clear victory for System price with obvious Motherboard + CPU matchup requirements. You'll still pay less for an AMD 16 core processor + Motherboard than and Intel 16 core processor + motherboard. Given this "Price of motherboards" becomes a clear win for AMD.