How fast is a $5000 64-core CPU?! Threadripper 7980X and 7970X Review & Benchmarks

How fast is a $5000 64-core CPU?! Threadripper 7980X and 7970X Review & Benchmarks

Level1Techs YouTube Channel -

► TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Welcome to Paul’s Hardware - Threadripper 7980X / 7970X Review
1:56 A Few Notes on Threadripper 7000 for Review Context
3:39 Building the Threadripper Test Bed was Exciting
5:20 Spec and Price Comparison
7:02 Test Bed Setup
7:55 Temps and Power Draw
9:08 BENCHMARKS - Compute
12:05 BENCHMARKS - 4K and 1080 Gaming
14:26 Benchmarks Summary - Overall Results
15:30 Conclusion and Closing Thoughts

Please note that links above may be affiliate links -- clicking them earns me a small commission if you make a purchase and helps support my YouTube channel. Thank you!

▷ SOCIAL
Twitter: @paulhardware
Facebook:
Instagram:

:::Send Me Stuff:::
Paul's Hardware
P.O. Box 4325
Diamond Bar, CA 91765

► Edited by Joe Aguilar - ShaostylePostProductions

Audio file(s) provided by Epidemic Sound

[tacticooldennis]

I always loved the Threadripper concept of selling a server chip to a power hungry power user.

[poeticsilence]

The one thing that I will always love about HEDT builds will be the symmetry of the memory. It gets my tech briefs covered in juices.

[TrueThanny]

06:10 This is wrong, which you can see in your own screenshots. The HEDT parts have 48 PCIe 5.0 lanes, but 88 lanes total. That's an additional 40 PCIe 4.0 lanes. That's plenty of I/O, and the only real use case for PCIe 5.0 anyway is with SSD's.

[prodeous]

@6:20 it shows there are 88 PCIe lanes and only 48 are PCIE 5.0. so that is purely if you need pcie 5.0 lanes. the additioan 4.0 would give you a tad more connecitons.

[arlolambdin]

I've been on my Threadripper 2950x for a while now. I didn't make the jump to the 3000 series (and I am glad of that, for obvious reasons), but upgrading to the consumer lines would remove a lot of PCIe lanes that I use. I have 6 m.2 drives (2 on MB, 4 on a PCIe x16 slot), graphics card, and a couple x4 cards, so I need all the PCIe lanes I can get. I'll probably be looking at the 7960x for my upgrade, but really hope they get some more MB's, as I've not seen any that seem like what I want.

[Gamecapturevideo]

3970x user reporting in: love this CPU after two years of use for work and play. It really is overkill, though, and I think the sensible option at the time would have been a 16-core CPU. I had the money to spend so I went for it, and I think the biggest reason at the end of the day was the extra PCIe lanes for more storage, which will keep me satisfied for years to come. I don't see myself needing to upgrade to this gen but it still looks like a great product!

[JD-efjb]

My X58 is still going strong. Its currently my media pc. Its really hard to let go of. From there I went to X99. And now my main pc is a Threadripper 2920x. So yeah i'm a HEDT addict.

[Tech-Tempest]

As someone who does traditional Vray rendering for Arch Viz, Photoshop and Video editing, I am very interested in getting a Threadripper so thanks for testing those. I can see that it would toast my current 5950x. The only thing holding me back is that I also like to game on the same PC I work on. The 1% lows with a 4090 does not seem like a smooth experience. Appreciate the great review!

[garretthaney]

I rocked my i7-920 system for 10+ years. Although by the end of its life it had an i7-965EE from Ebay and 24 gb of RAM (6! X 4GB). If the system hadn't started frying power supplies it might still be in service....

[thegeneral]

Still running HEDT here, 5820K overclocked and undervolted at 4.2ghz. Looking for an upgrade soon.

[troyfrei]

Another wonderful review!! Wish I had that kind of money.

[hwi]

Not anything I need or want since 95% of what I do on the PC is game, but they are pretty rad and it's always cool to see more options on the market.

[jeremybarber]

This is a great review! I am not in the market for this tier of computer but I can totally see the use case. I know Jay’s over clocking video focused mainly on Cinebench numbers but I’d love to see what a “reasonable” overclock would look like for gaming workloads. 24->64 threads all clocked at 5.6Ghz would be… epic. Great work!

[Jtretta]

The funny thing is that compared to Apple's high end options even the 7980x has good price to performance. A system with that, a 4090 and a tb of ram would cost about the same as an m2/m3 ultra mac maxed out.

[Jay_the_Caffeinator]

Awesomesauce video Paul and Joe!! This video was the first in my YT notification. Now, all the others are popping up. 😂
Joe's Caffeinator out.

[ejtaylor]

May I suggest for next months build, instead of building for a price point, you build a PC by usage, and not just gaming. With more and more doing YouTube, Rumble, etc. maybe a "budget" video processing PC would be a good one (And still being able to game a bit would be helpful too). Give those just starting out a place to start and those already doing it something to look at to figure out what they can get to upgrade a bit.

[adampicklesimer]

I got you Paul, just came from the December Build planning videos!

[TheRealLink]

Great video Paul! Really good to know about the comparative facts for Blender, video compression, gaming etc as your ASUS board is the one I'm looking at purchasing along with a 7960X. While I do a lot of 4K gaming (and good to see the frames on that average out or at worst, are slightly behind), it's 3D and video work that's just starting to demand more resources than my current X299 machine can provide.

Sure, 7950X3D or 14900K are better values, no one's denying that - it just depends on how much work you're needing to leverage on the machine and what those requirements are. At least the prosumers aren't just stuck with paying $5K plus for EPYCs and that's it. HEDT at this level is indeed a niche spot but nice to see AMD offer a solution for it.

[MaxxKoggen]

Why are watercoolers circular when all cpus they cool are rectangular?

[Mo_Klonus]

It seems like only yesterday you were talking about these new Threadrippers....