New workstation :New Threadripper 3960X or 3970X or Ryzen 3950X

[Morbid Angel]

Congrats on the new system! There's really nothing like it on the Intel side, even if you splash an outrages sum of money for a dual 28-core Xeon Platinum system which would still be slower in most workloads. The Threadripper will be quite a bit faster in single-threaded workloads too with its 4.30 Ghz boost vs only 3.00 Ghz boost on your old Xeons.

BTW, Threadripper 3990x is actually made out of 8 x 8-core chips connected together via Infinity Fabric, not 2 x 32-core chips. The giant chip in the center is the IO die that houses the memory controller and the PCI-E connections.

I see, makes me wonder why it uses 50% of the cpu a lot of time? Like simulating with phoenix it sees 2 NUMA nodes, hmm.

[squintnic]

I got a new build that's 3990x 64/128 cpu with 256Gb ram. Its been my workstation for last 3 weeks. Rock solid so far. The benchmarks tho are only benchmarks as in real world testing it does about x2 times faster then those of the xeon machines. For example a dual e5-2683v4 (32core total) 64 thread is exactly twice as slow. So those 32 xeon cores are running at 2.5 Ghz when at full load, while 3390x runs at 3.2 Ghz It almost seems that the 3990x is just two 32 core cpus sandwiched together in one chip, just my imho tho, but when I see stuff being processed before rendering like compiling of geo for example cpu is often at 50%, then upon start of rendering goes to 100%. Its still an incredible value because intel just does not offer anything close to this at this price range.

can i ask what MB and RAM you got for this one and what speed the RAM runs at?

[Alex_M]

I see, makes me wonder why it uses 50% of the cpu a lot of time? Like simulating with phoenix it sees 2 NUMA nodes, hmm.

The 64-core Threadripper 3990x is single NUMA node.

BTW, I might be wrong, but isn't Phoenix FD single-core heavy (with some occasional instances when all cores are used)? Here's how my CPU activity and frequencies look like 3 minutes in on the "Beach waves" test scene. If you look for the fastest single-core performance, you might want to check out the brand new Ryzen 5950x which should be faster in single-core operations than even the fastest Intel CPU with its 4.90 Ghz boost and 19% IPC increase.

[dean_dmoo]

The 64-core Threadripper 3990x is single NUMA node.

BTW, I might be wrong, but isn't Phoenix FD single-core heavy (with some occasional instances when all cores are used)? Here's how my CPU activity and frequencies look like 3 minutes in on the "Beach waves" test scene. If you look for the fastest single-core performance, you might want to check out the brand new Ryzen 5950x which should be faster in single-core operations than even the fastest Intel CPU with its 4.90 Ghz boost and 19% IPC increase.

Yeah I'm wondering what would be a better set-up for me. A workstation for testing (ipr and some full res 5k regions) as the drafts and finals all go to the farm anyway. Currently working with an older dual-xeon setup (128gb) but it can be so slow at times when only the single core is being used. A 3970x seems like a good fit, but maybe one with less cores and higher ghz would be better...although the ryzen 5950x doesn't seem much difference to me (3.4-4.9ghz vs 3.7-4.5ghz).

[Alex_M]

although the ryzen 5950x doesn't seem much difference to me (3.4-4.9ghz vs 3.7-4.5ghz).

You can't really compare CPU performance by only comparing Ghz. If that were the case, a 5 Ghz AMD FX 9590 would be as fast as Intel i9 9900k at 5.0 Ghz when in fact the AMD FX 9590 is immensely slower. CPU architecture matters a lot too. The new Ryzen 5000 series CPUs are not only high single-core frequency (up to 4.90 Ghz), but also much faster for the same frequency compared to the previous Ryzen 3000 series CPUs - up to 19% faster in single-core workloads for the same frequency. So a 4.90 Ghz Ryzen 5000 CPU is roughly equal to a Ryzen 3000 CPU working at ~5.80 Ghz due to the 19% IPC increase. Of course, wait for benchmarks for the full picture.