The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2 series has finally arrived with two new chips that promise to deliver exceptional performance and efficiency.

The first chip to get our hands on is the Ryzen Threadripper 2920X, which boasts 12 cores and 24 threads. This is not how all games perform, though, as some may require more complex game modes or have different optimization techniques in place. The best way to ensure optimal performance, however, is to use distributed memory enabled by default with local memory disabled or use half legacy mode. As shown in our favorite Ashes of the Singularity test, the highest frame rates are seen when using distributed memory, while defaulting to local memory and switching to legacy modes results in lower frame rates.

We also have another chip from AMD that is worth talking about - the Ryzen Threadripper 2970WX, which has a whopping 32 cores and 64 threads. This is not how all games perform, though, as some may require more complex game modes or have different optimization techniques in place. The best way to ensure optimal performance, however, is to use distributed memory enabled by default with local memory disabled or use half legacy mode. As shown in our favorite Ashes of the Singularity test, the highest frame rates are seen when using distributed memory, while defaulting to local memory and switching to legacy modes results in lower frame rates.

In terms of temperatures, we tested both chips with the NZXT Liqtec 240 all-in-one liquid cooler, which is designed for the TR4 socket. We ran the Blender Classroom benchmark, which is a worst-case scenario for these CPUs but still realistic load. To our surprise, both chips were performing similarly in terms of temperatures, despite one having twice as many cores as the other.

However, things started to get interesting when we started overclocking or using PBO (Precision Boost Overclock) techniques. The 2970WX under overclock became warmer than expected, while the 2920X remained relatively stable. We also ran the total system power draw test with both CPUs running the same Blender Classroom benchmark, and while the 2970WX had a higher base power draw, its power consumption increased rapidly once we started adding PBO or overclocking.

Pricing for these new chips is now available, with the Ryzen Threadripper 2920X launching at around $1019 Australian dollars, while the 2970WX is priced at approximately double that amount. In the US, the launch prices are $649 and $1299 respectively. Despite being more expensive than some of its competitors, these chips offer a significant advantage in terms of cores per dollar.

In comparison to its first-generation counterpart, the Ryzen Threadripper 1920X, it seems that there may not be too much difference in performance, especially considering the price difference. The 2950X, which is part of the first-generation threadripper series, offers significantly better value for money than the 2920X at launch prices.

Finally, the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2 series offers a significant advantage over its competitors in terms of cores and threads per dollar, making it an attractive option for content creators, gamers, and professionals who require high-performance processing capabilities.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: ena couple of months ago amd launched some of their new threadripper 2 cpus the 2950x and 2990wx 16 and 32 core parts respectively amd have just now added the 2920x and 2970wx chips to the lineup which are 12 and 24 core parts respectively so let's take a look and find out just how well they perform let's start off by taking a look at the specs of these two cpus i've included the 2950x and 2990wx cpu specs here just for reference to provide a full picture of the now complete threadripper 2 lineup however i didn't have them available for this testing like the previous second generation chips these ones will work fine in existing x399 motherboards too although you'll want to grab the latest version of the ryzen master software before we dig into the results i'll briefly cover off the specs of the system that i'm testing with i've got the msi meg x399 creation motherboard with the latest bios update available applied there's four sticks of g-skill flare-x ddr4 3200 cl 14 memory running in quad channel and i'm also using my trusty evga 1080 for the win2 graphics card not the best but realistically threadripper isn't for pro gaming anyway so we should be all right for the cpu cooler i'm using the anomax lictech 240 with its included thermal paste as that's what was available so both the 2920x and 2970wx cpus were tested in the same system and conditions everything was packed into my thermaltake view 71 case as this is the only eatx case i've got you'll have to excuse the mess i got set up pretty hastily as i'm late to this party and was keen to get the testing done after being away for pax both cpus were tested at stock speeds while manually overclocked and with precision boost overdrive enabled although keep in mind that the overclocks on your particular cpu will vary anyway based on many other factors such as cooling and the silicon lottery with that in mind i was able to get my 2920x to 4.2 gigahertz at 1.35 volts on all 12 cores and the 2970wx to 4.1 gigahertz on all 24 cores at 1.36 volts and overclocking was just done using the ryzen master software i didn't spend too much time trying to improve and tweak the overclocks though so they could probably be dialed in a bit better for instance i almost had the 2970wx stable at 4.2 gigahertz but after a long blender test it would fail so i drop back down to 4.1 precision boost overdrive on the other hand is a new feature present in thread ripper 2. basically it automatically increases frequency and power limits like overclocking but also still lets us use precision boost 2 and xfr2 so we might actually get better results compared to the manual or core overclocks particularly in single threaded workloads where the cores can still boost above what i'd be setting with my lower or core overclocks unfortunately like overclocking this does void your warranty although it's not exactly clear if anyone can actually determine you've done this just before we get into the results i'll also note that with these two new threadripper chips amd has released an update called dynamic local mode or dlm for short essentially this is new software that's included with version 1.5 of the ryzenmaster software which automatically migrates the most demanding processes onto cores with local memory access for the 2970wx and 2990wx processors this means that applications that prefer local memory should automatically get it without you having to manually swap between distributed and local modes which affect the entire system and require a reboot to apply so in most cases we should see worse performance with dlm off as we're relying purely on the windows scheduler alright that's a lot of explanation now for those results we'll start out with the cpu benchmarks followed by some games afterwards these tests were all completed with the distributed memory access mode enabled through the ryzen master software which is enabled by default and recommended for multi-core workloads kicking things off with cinebench straight away it's clear that the double core count of the 2970wx is pushing it far in front the manual 4.1 gigahertz overclock gives us the best multi-core result but as all cores have been set below what the chip could otherwise boost to we're looking at slightly lower single core performance compared to with precision boost overdrive listed as pbo interestingly we can also see dlm taking effect here dlm was enabled as it was the default for all 2970 wx tests except for the results specifically listing it off and we're getting slightly lower performance two percent worse than the multi-core and almost eleven percent worse than single core performance not much to say about the 2920x performance scales up in the multi-core results as we apply pbo or our manual overclock in adobe premiere i've tested using the latest version just exporting one of my laptop reviews at 1080p performance was generally the same for the most part with the 2920x improving slightly as we enable pbo or manual overclocking the 2970wx is more interesting though while the manual overclock does give us an improvement over stock pbo was consistently giving me much slower performance than even stock though with dlm off the 24 core chip is giving us the worst performance out of all tests i've also tested the warp stabilizer effect in adobe premiere granted i only did a single instance rather than multiple at once this is only the second time i've included this test and i don't have a standard method for testing multiple instances which would likely take better advantage of the additional cores in any case the 2920x performed a fair bit better in this test even with dlm on and the 2970wx overclocked handbrake was tested by converting a 4k video file to 1080p and then a separate 1080p file to 720p for the 4k exports the 2920x was performing the best although the differences closing together on the 2970wx with ppo or overclocking applied the 2920x was also performing better with the 1080p video file at least until we apply pbo or manual overclocking where the 24 core chip finally takes the lead performing almost 8 ahead of the best 2920x result the corona benchmark renders a scene using the cpu and straight away in this one we can see a big performance boost with the 2970wx for some reason i actually had better performance with dlm disabled in this test where it matched the pbo and manual overclocking results the 2920x on the other hand was just seeing very slight improvements upon enabling the pbo and manual overclocking blender shows a similar result and hopefully starts to give you an idea of the sort of workloads where the 24 core chip really shines which is rendering with the overclock applied on the 2970wx there's an 11 improvement to the classroom benchmarket stock and a 12 improvement in the bmw benchmark to put things in perspective at stock the 2920x is around 42 slower than the 2970w exit stock in the classroom benchmark and around the same difference in the bmw benchmark 7-zip was used to test compression and decompression speeds and the 2920x was coming out ahead in all encryption tests where the overclocking result from the 2970wx matches the stock 2920x decompression is another story though with a noticeable performance uplift seen from the 24 core chip in all tests which at stock speeds was performing around 44 better than the 2920x overclocking the 2970wx improves the decompression speed by about 7 while the improvement on the 2920x was around three percent veracrypt was used to test aes encryption and decryption speeds and this is another strange one where the 2970wx was seeing very similar results to running it at stock with dlm disabled while manually overclocked though there was a noticeable improvement compared to stock speeds the 2920x on the other hand saw more of a benefit with pbo and manual overclocking applied otherwise the 2920x was beating the 2970wx and all of these tests showing that more cores are not really helping in pc mach 10 i've only bothered testing both chips at stock settings as shown we're only seeing a small 1.7 performance improvement with a 2970wx in this particular test as we've seen the performance can vary quite wildly depending on the specific test the extra cores of the 2970wx seemed better suited to rendering tasks as it was giving us larger boosts over the 2920x in cinebench corona and blender this was expected before going into the testing as the same thing was seen a couple of months ago with the 32 core 2990wx and 16 core 2950x where these 24 and 32 core parts perform worse in some tests based on the architecture of the cpu now for some games while i wouldn't recommend buying a threadripper cpu purely for gaming for many of us such as myself the reality is that we have one main system that we use and while i don't primarily use my 1950x for gaming i definitely do play games on it and this seems to be how amd is marketing the x series so the 2950x and 2920x chips for the professional lore enthusiast that also wants to kick back at the end of the day with some games the 2970wx like the 2990wx is aimed more towards serious creators and designers those who will actually benefit from the huge core counts so definitely not a gaming cpu far cry 5 was tested specifically because i know it performs better when making use of local memory and legacy modes as shown by the results this is an example which demonstrates some games will see a performance improvement on threadripper when memory is made local or cpu dies are disabled this is made clear particularly on the 2970wx at stock it's performing quite poorly but then the results at least start to get closer to the 2920x with legacy half mode enabled which drops it down to the same 12 core count then improved further with legacy quarter mode which lowers the core count further to six this is not how all games perform though so you can't just drop into legacy mode or change over to local memory from distributed when you plan on gaming to always get the best performance as shown here by our favorite ashes of the singularity test the highest frame rates of the 2920x are seen with distributed memory enabled the default with local memory and half legacy mode lowering frame rates the 2970wx again also sees lower performance going to legacy half and quarter modes in this title as this game can actually make better use of the cpu than many other games at 1440p or 4k resolutions i'd expect much smaller differences even when compared to using an intel cpu with faster clock speeds if you're after more gaming benchmarks on these two cpus along with other thread ripper chips then i can highly suggest the hardware unbox video linked in the description realistically i think most people myself included won't bother swapping between distributed and local modes as it requires a reboot i know i'm personally happy playing games in distributed mode the small frame rate boost isn't worth the reboot but i've tested these games in both to try and show you that results vary on the game anyway for the temperatures as mentioned i'm testing with the nmax liqtec 240 all in one liquid cooler as it's designed for the tr4 socket testing was completed with an ambient room temperature of 22 degrees celsius with both cpus running the blender classroom benchmark so sort of a worst case but realistic load for these chips at stock both the 2920x and 2970wx were performing similarly in terms of temperatures which i found interesting considering one has doubled the core count once we start overclocking or using pbo things start getting warm especially on the 2970 wx under overclock here's what the total system power draw looked like with both cpus again running the same blender classroom benchmark again like the temperatures just shown the power draw of the 2970wx wasn't actually that much higher than the 2920x although once we start adding pbo or overclocking into the mix the power draw on the 24 core chip rises rapidly finally let's discuss pricing for updated pricing check the links in the description as prices will change over time at the time of recording the 2920x is going for 1019 australian dollars while the 2970wx is about double this at 2039 australian dollars in the us they have launch prices of 649 us dollars and 1299 us dollars so pretty good value for the core counts compared to the competition with that said though the 2920x seems to be competing with its first generation counterpart the 1920x although i haven't personally had a 1920x to test and compare with i suspect that the differences in performance may not be too different as they're both 12 core parts when i previously compared the 1950x and 2950x there was about a six percent performance improvement in single core workloads and a four percent improvement in multi-core workloads with the tests that i ran this boost wasn't excellent when you consider that at the time of recording the 2950x costs 32 percent more than the older 1950x making the first gen threadripper chip much better value for the money assuming the performance boost of the 2920x is a similar improvement over the 1920x then it may make more sense to pick up the cheaper 1920x if you're after a 12 core cpu which at the time of recording is going for 490 us dollars again making the launch price of the 2920x 32 more expensive for what will likely be a single digit percentage improvement the 2970 wx on the other hand doesn't really have anything in the threadripper range to compare to as generation 2 gave us 32 and 34 core options that weren't available with the first generation and i've never had any high core intel cpus to compare with so i can't talk too much about that other than it's clear that threat ripper is currently dominating in terms of cores per dollar so what did you guys think about the performance of the threadripper 2920x and 2970wx cpus it's great that we've now got the rest of the threadripper 2 cpus available with the 2920x becoming the entry point into the series however i am wondering how many will go for these new options when the discounted first generation options are looking so tempting at current prices let me know what you thought down in the comments leave a like on the video if you found the information useful and don't forget to subscribe for future tech videos like this onea couple of months ago amd launched some of their new threadripper 2 cpus the 2950x and 2990wx 16 and 32 core parts respectively amd have just now added the 2920x and 2970wx chips to the lineup which are 12 and 24 core parts respectively so let's take a look and find out just how well they perform let's start off by taking a look at the specs of these two cpus i've included the 2950x and 2990wx cpu specs here just for reference to provide a full picture of the now complete threadripper 2 lineup however i didn't have them available for this testing like the previous second generation chips these ones will work fine in existing x399 motherboards too although you'll want to grab the latest version of the ryzen master software before we dig into the results i'll briefly cover off the specs of the system that i'm testing with i've got the msi meg x399 creation motherboard with the latest bios update available applied there's four sticks of g-skill flare-x ddr4 3200 cl 14 memory running in quad channel and i'm also using my trusty evga 1080 for the win2 graphics card not the best but realistically threadripper isn't for pro gaming anyway so we should be all right for the cpu cooler i'm using the anomax lictech 240 with its included thermal paste as that's what was available so both the 2920x and 2970wx cpus were tested in the same system and conditions everything was packed into my thermaltake view 71 case as this is the only eatx case i've got you'll have to excuse the mess i got set up pretty hastily as i'm late to this party and was keen to get the testing done after being away for pax both cpus were tested at stock speeds while manually overclocked and with precision boost overdrive enabled although keep in mind that the overclocks on your particular cpu will vary anyway based on many other factors such as cooling and the silicon lottery with that in mind i was able to get my 2920x to 4.2 gigahertz at 1.35 volts on all 12 cores and the 2970wx to 4.1 gigahertz on all 24 cores at 1.36 volts and overclocking was just done using the ryzen master software i didn't spend too much time trying to improve and tweak the overclocks though so they could probably be dialed in a bit better for instance i almost had the 2970wx stable at 4.2 gigahertz but after a long blender test it would fail so i drop back down to 4.1 precision boost overdrive on the other hand is a new feature present in thread ripper 2. basically it automatically increases frequency and power limits like overclocking but also still lets us use precision boost 2 and xfr2 so we might actually get better results compared to the manual or core overclocks particularly in single threaded workloads where the cores can still boost above what i'd be setting with my lower or core overclocks unfortunately like overclocking this does void your warranty although it's not exactly clear if anyone can actually determine you've done this just before we get into the results i'll also note that with these two new threadripper chips amd has released an update called dynamic local mode or dlm for short essentially this is new software that's included with version 1.5 of the ryzenmaster software which automatically migrates the most demanding processes onto cores with local memory access for the 2970wx and 2990wx processors this means that applications that prefer local memory should automatically get it without you having to manually swap between distributed and local modes which affect the entire system and require a reboot to apply so in most cases we should see worse performance with dlm off as we're relying purely on the windows scheduler alright that's a lot of explanation now for those results we'll start out with the cpu benchmarks followed by some games afterwards these tests were all completed with the distributed memory access mode enabled through the ryzen master software which is enabled by default and recommended for multi-core workloads kicking things off with cinebench straight away it's clear that the double core count of the 2970wx is pushing it far in front the manual 4.1 gigahertz overclock gives us the best multi-core result but as all cores have been set below what the chip could otherwise boost to we're looking at slightly lower single core performance compared to with precision boost overdrive listed as pbo interestingly we can also see dlm taking effect here dlm was enabled as it was the default for all 2970 wx tests except for the results specifically listing it off and we're getting slightly lower performance two percent worse than the multi-core and almost eleven percent worse than single core performance not much to say about the 2920x performance scales up in the multi-core results as we apply pbo or our manual overclock in adobe premiere i've tested using the latest version just exporting one of my laptop reviews at 1080p performance was generally the same for the most part with the 2920x improving slightly as we enable pbo or manual overclocking the 2970wx is more interesting though while the manual overclock does give us an improvement over stock pbo was consistently giving me much slower performance than even stock though with dlm off the 24 core chip is giving us the worst performance out of all tests i've also tested the warp stabilizer effect in adobe premiere granted i only did a single instance rather than multiple at once this is only the second time i've included this test and i don't have a standard method for testing multiple instances which would likely take better advantage of the additional cores in any case the 2920x performed a fair bit better in this test even with dlm on and the 2970wx overclocked handbrake was tested by converting a 4k video file to 1080p and then a separate 1080p file to 720p for the 4k exports the 2920x was performing the best although the differences closing together on the 2970wx with ppo or overclocking applied the 2920x was also performing better with the 1080p video file at least until we apply pbo or manual overclocking where the 24 core chip finally takes the lead performing almost 8 ahead of the best 2920x result the corona benchmark renders a scene using the cpu and straight away in this one we can see a big performance boost with the 2970wx for some reason i actually had better performance with dlm disabled in this test where it matched the pbo and manual overclocking results the 2920x on the other hand was just seeing very slight improvements upon enabling the pbo and manual overclocking blender shows a similar result and hopefully starts to give you an idea of the sort of workloads where the 24 core chip really shines which is rendering with the overclock applied on the 2970wx there's an 11 improvement to the classroom benchmarket stock and a 12 improvement in the bmw benchmark to put things in perspective at stock the 2920x is around 42 slower than the 2970w exit stock in the classroom benchmark and around the same difference in the bmw benchmark 7-zip was used to test compression and decompression speeds and the 2920x was coming out ahead in all encryption tests where the overclocking result from the 2970wx matches the stock 2920x decompression is another story though with a noticeable performance uplift seen from the 24 core chip in all tests which at stock speeds was performing around 44 better than the 2920x overclocking the 2970wx improves the decompression speed by about 7 while the improvement on the 2920x was around three percent veracrypt was used to test aes encryption and decryption speeds and this is another strange one where the 2970wx was seeing very similar results to running it at stock with dlm disabled while manually overclocked though there was a noticeable improvement compared to stock speeds the 2920x on the other hand saw more of a benefit with pbo and manual overclocking applied otherwise the 2920x was beating the 2970wx and all of these tests showing that more cores are not really helping in pc mach 10 i've only bothered testing both chips at stock settings as shown we're only seeing a small 1.7 performance improvement with a 2970wx in this particular test as we've seen the performance can vary quite wildly depending on the specific test the extra cores of the 2970wx seemed better suited to rendering tasks as it was giving us larger boosts over the 2920x in cinebench corona and blender this was expected before going into the testing as the same thing was seen a couple of months ago with the 32 core 2990wx and 16 core 2950x where these 24 and 32 core parts perform worse in some tests based on the architecture of the cpu now for some games while i wouldn't recommend buying a threadripper cpu purely for gaming for many of us such as myself the reality is that we have one main system that we use and while i don't primarily use my 1950x for gaming i definitely do play games on it and this seems to be how amd is marketing the x series so the 2950x and 2920x chips for the professional lore enthusiast that also wants to kick back at the end of the day with some games the 2970wx like the 2990wx is aimed more towards serious creators and designers those who will actually benefit from the huge core counts so definitely not a gaming cpu far cry 5 was tested specifically because i know it performs better when making use of local memory and legacy modes as shown by the results this is an example which demonstrates some games will see a performance improvement on threadripper when memory is made local or cpu dies are disabled this is made clear particularly on the 2970wx at stock it's performing quite poorly but then the results at least start to get closer to the 2920x with legacy half mode enabled which drops it down to the same 12 core count then improved further with legacy quarter mode which lowers the core count further to six this is not how all games perform though so you can't just drop into legacy mode or change over to local memory from distributed when you plan on gaming to always get the best performance as shown here by our favorite ashes of the singularity test the highest frame rates of the 2920x are seen with distributed memory enabled the default with local memory and half legacy mode lowering frame rates the 2970wx again also sees lower performance going to legacy half and quarter modes in this title as this game can actually make better use of the cpu than many other games at 1440p or 4k resolutions i'd expect much smaller differences even when compared to using an intel cpu with faster clock speeds if you're after more gaming benchmarks on these two cpus along with other thread ripper chips then i can highly suggest the hardware unbox video linked in the description realistically i think most people myself included won't bother swapping between distributed and local modes as it requires a reboot i know i'm personally happy playing games in distributed mode the small frame rate boost isn't worth the reboot but i've tested these games in both to try and show you that results vary on the game anyway for the temperatures as mentioned i'm testing with the nmax liqtec 240 all in one liquid cooler as it's designed for the tr4 socket testing was completed with an ambient room temperature of 22 degrees celsius with both cpus running the blender classroom benchmark so sort of a worst case but realistic load for these chips at stock both the 2920x and 2970wx were performing similarly in terms of temperatures which i found interesting considering one has doubled the core count once we start overclocking or using pbo things start getting warm especially on the 2970 wx under overclock here's what the total system power draw looked like with both cpus again running the same blender classroom benchmark again like the temperatures just shown the power draw of the 2970wx wasn't actually that much higher than the 2920x although once we start adding pbo or overclocking into the mix the power draw on the 24 core chip rises rapidly finally let's discuss pricing for updated pricing check the links in the description as prices will change over time at the time of recording the 2920x is going for 1019 australian dollars while the 2970wx is about double this at 2039 australian dollars in the us they have launch prices of 649 us dollars and 1299 us dollars so pretty good value for the core counts compared to the competition with that said though the 2920x seems to be competing with its first generation counterpart the 1920x although i haven't personally had a 1920x to test and compare with i suspect that the differences in performance may not be too different as they're both 12 core parts when i previously compared the 1950x and 2950x there was about a six percent performance improvement in single core workloads and a four percent improvement in multi-core workloads with the tests that i ran this boost wasn't excellent when you consider that at the time of recording the 2950x costs 32 percent more than the older 1950x making the first gen threadripper chip much better value for the money assuming the performance boost of the 2920x is a similar improvement over the 1920x then it may make more sense to pick up the cheaper 1920x if you're after a 12 core cpu which at the time of recording is going for 490 us dollars again making the launch price of the 2920x 32 more expensive for what will likely be a single digit percentage improvement the 2970 wx on the other hand doesn't really have anything in the threadripper range to compare to as generation 2 gave us 32 and 34 core options that weren't available with the first generation and i've never had any high core intel cpus to compare with so i can't talk too much about that other than it's clear that threat ripper is currently dominating in terms of cores per dollar so what did you guys think about the performance of the threadripper 2920x and 2970wx cpus it's great that we've now got the rest of the threadripper 2 cpus available with the 2920x becoming the entry point into the series however i am wondering how many will go for these new options when the discounted first generation options are looking so tempting at current prices let me know what you thought down in the comments leave a like on the video if you found the information useful and don't forget to subscribe for future tech videos like this one\n"