Platform Compatibility and Test Configurations
The X399 Platform
Unlike the launch of a revised chipset in the form of X470 that we saw with the release of AMD's Ryzen 2000-series CPUs earlier this year, 2nd Generation Threadripper is launching only on the previous X399 chipset.
However, the lack of a new chipset doesn't mean that these new Threadripper CPUs will be missing out on any of the features we saw added with Zen+ and the Ryzen 2000-series processors like XFR 2.0 and StoreMI.
Additionally, AMD claims all X399 motherboards already have compatible BIOS updates released, and that all of them support USB flashback methods (manufacturer specific) for updating the motherboard with any CPU installed.
Due to this, we were able to test both generations of Threadripper CPUs on the same ASUS ROG Zenith Extreme motherboard that we used all the way back at the initial launch of Threadripper. Forward compatibility is always excellent to see, especially considering the jump to a 32-core processor with the 2990WX.
While all X399 motherboards support the new Threadripper CPUs in stock configurations, there are still some considerations in motherboard selection depending on CPU selection.
At 250W across both SKUs, the WX-series Threadripper processors could present some issues with overclocking on older X399 motherboards. To combat this, ASUS has released a VRM cooling kit for the ROG Zenith Extreme.
This kit consists of a bracket and fan meant to help cool the main processor VRM, as well as a new passive heatsink to cover secondary power delivery hardware elsewhere on the board.
Overall, this kit feels like a fairly hacked together solution, but one that ASUS is providing for free to X399 motherboard owners who purchase one of these new CPUs.
In the other direction, however, are new, higher-end X399 motherboards being brought out from other manufacturers like MSI and Gigabyte. Both the MSI MEG X399 Creation and Gigabyte X399 Aorus XTREME both reflect X399 offerings designed with these new CPUs in mind.
As part of the 2nd Generation Threadripper review kit, AMD sent over the MSI MEG X399 Creation, which we'll take a look at in the overclocking portion of the review.
In the cooling department, AMD also provided the Enermax LIQTECH TR4 240 all-in-one water cooler. This cooler is unique to the TR4 socket platform, providing full block coverage across the massive Threadripper heat spreader.
It's worth noting that users of this Enermax cooler have reported corrosion and other longevity issues, and there is a new revision that will hopefully address some of these concerns. However, we had no problems during our review period.
Testing Configuration
- Geekbench
- Euler3D
- 7-zip Compression
- Cinebench R15
- Blender
- POV-Ray
- Handbrake
- X264 Benchmark
- Audacity MP3 Encode
- SYSmark 2014 SE
The full testbed configuration is listed below:
| Test System Setup | |
| CPU |
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX |
| Motherboard | ASUS ROG Zenith Extreme (Both Treadripper Generations) – BIOS 1304 ASUS PRIME X299 Deluxe (Skylake-X) – BIOS 1401 Gigabyte Aorus X470 Gaming 7 (Pinnacle Ridge) – BIOS F4g ASUS ROG Strix X370-F Gaming (Coffee Lake) – BIOS 0805 |
| Memory |
16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4-3200 Operating at: 2667MHz (Skylake-X, Coffee Lake, Threadripper)2933 (2nd Gen Threadripper, Pinnacle Ridge) |
| Storage | Corsair Neutron XTi 480 SSD |
| Sound Card | On-board |
| Graphics Card | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080Ti 11GB |
| Graphics Drivers | NVIDIA 398.26 |
| Power Supply | Corsair RM1000x |
| Operating System | Windows 10 Pro x64 RS4 (17134.165) |
“Due to this, the WX-series
“Due to this, the WX-series Threadripper processors must remain in a NUMA configuration, and present themselves as four individual NUMA nodes to an operating system, akin to a quad-CPU system. Additionally, the Infinity Fabric link between each of these dies is effectively running at half the speed of the 2-die arrangement found with the X-series processors.”
What are yoh refering to here? AFAIK, it is fully connected in the 4 die threadripper, just like it is in Epyc. In the two die variant, you only have one link between the two die and that is it. In the 4 die variant, they have 3 links in use each to connect to the other 3 die with a single hop latency. I don’t think I would refer to anything as half speed other than the memory bandwidth. I suspect that windows does not have the necessary NUMA optimizations to handle such a configuration properly anyway. I would be running linux on such a system. It gets a lot of use in HPC and can handle, in some cases, thousands of processor cores with a wide variety of memory configurations.
The mp3 encode as a benchmark does seem a bit odd. The gamming benchmarks, while not really odd, are of little importance. If you are going to buy a $900 or $1700 dollar processor for gaming at 1080p, unless you are using a software renderer, it would be a compelete waste. For game developers, this might still be a good system, assuming you are a developer capable of making your game perform well with many cores available, or at least not crash on start-up. As noted, windows looks like a problem here. It might have been good to test at 4k, just to see if it is graphics card limited, or whether the cpu is the bottleneck. It could hit windows scaling issues though. Also, nvidia’s driver is probably a near worst case scenario on any system that doesn’t have a single, last level cache. It seems to have a lot of fine grained, thread to thread communication. Maintaining a single last level cache with good latency is a major bottleneck to scaling to more cores, so it would be better in most cases if it would just go away, and developers would optimize their software for multiple core clusters They have to do that anyway for the consoles with similar 4 core cluster architectures. I wouldn’t be surprised to see cell phones go with core clusters also, due to better power consumption.
Well, off to look for linux compile benchmarks on Threadripper.
I stumbled on this customer
I stumbled on this customer review of the TR 1900X at Newegg:
“- Large 20% memory performance difference between NUMA and non-NUMA settings.
“On my system, the NUMA setting (memory interleave on) for some reason reduces CPU performance by
about 15%, while boosting RAM performance by 20%.”
…
“Wish amd could improve the memory controller and reduce CPU-RAM latency to competitive levels.”
Perhaps this is something to consider, and compare, when benching TR2 CPUs.
p.s. I believe der8auer at
p.s. I believe der8auer at YouTube switched memory interleave ON when running 2 x ASUS Hyper M.2 x16 add-in cards with 8 x Samsung 960 Pro NVMe SSDs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CoAyjzJWfw
fast-forward starting around 7:30 on the counter
for the BIOS setup in that video
@ 8:07 on the counter: “Memory Interleaving”
Paul Alcorn’s recent article
Paul Alcorn’s recent article is a fun and easy read:
“AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2 vs. Intel Skylake-X:
Battle of the High-End CPUs” (August 14, 2018)