AMD Threadripper 2990wx slower than 2950x ?

[3d-laboratory]

I changed the CPU form 2950x to 2990wx because, for example the VRay benchmarks showed me nearly 80% more renderperformance. I rendered the same scenes on both prozessors via backburner. Small sceenes were a little bit quicker rendered. But a larger scene, which lasts 35min on the 2950x needed 42 min on the 2990wx. both without overclocking and with the balanced energy scheme.
All 32 cores on the 2990wx were on 100% and at about 3,4 GHz. The 16 cores of the 2950x runs mostly at about 3,7 GHz, some cores for a short time above 4,2 GHz. All at 100%.
Has somebody a suggestion how I get more performance out of the "beast". Both processors came out about the same time 3 years ago.
In an Corona test showed on youtube the 2990wx needed only 41 seconds while the 2950x needed 69 seconds.
To mention: potential for overclocking seems to be high for the 2990wx, all cores remain under 50°C during rendering...

[Muhammed_Hamed]

But a larger scene, which lasts 35min on the 2950x needed 42 min on the 2990wx

Hi 3d-laboratory

This is not expected to happen, what motherboard do you have ?
You will need an expensive board to handle the 2990WX, entry level boards is usually one big reason behind the loss of performance. Some boards VRMs are not enough for what this CPU needs
And what score do you have on the new Vray 5 Benchmark?

potential for overclocking seems to be high for the 2990wx, all cores remain under 50°C during rendering...

50 degrees is very low and might be unrealistic honestly
Use HWinfo and monitor CPU package and CPU Tdie sensors on a Vray benchmark run
If you have a good board you can OC for sure, enable DOCP for your memory, then set CPU ratio to 38
And use Core voltage of 1.225 volts, this should be a good starting point. You can then adjust voltages and find a sweet spot for your silicon quality
I have been able to do 4.1 GHz on all cores on my 2990wx, scoring more than 6k on Cinebench R15
And again before playing with any OC, you need a good board (+500 Euros)
X399 Zenith Alpha or X399 MEG creation

Best,
Muhammed

[3d-laboratory]

Thank you very much for the tips. I fear my motherboard is rather a simple one. Its an ASUS ROG Strix X399-E Gaming with 32 (2x16) GB RAM G.Skill F4-3000C16 DDR-4. I want to upgrade to 64GB because I had a memory overload the other day. Temperature is measured with Coretemp. According your tip I downloaded HWINFO (and donated but it showed the same temperatures. Before I bought the 2990wx I looked in the compatible motherboard list on PCPARTPICKER, where it was listed.
Now to the tests. At first I used the old VRaybench 1.0.8: It lasts 36 sec. to render the test. My 5950x workstation needed 34 sec.
The new VRay bench 5.01.00 showed 10.400 vsamples for the 2990wx and 18.709 vsamples for the 5950x.
Cinebench R15 showed 3.263 for the 2990wx and 4.097 for the 5950x
The 2990wx worked on mild OC Level 1 (BIOS), at 3,6 GHz under 50°C (AiO liquid cooling)
The 5950x worked with no OC, at 3,84 GHz, temperatures arround 65°C (also AiO cooling)
I did a lot of research and use ProcessLasso (which I already use for my workstation) and I found the CorePrio tool from bitsum which says it can overcome the issues of the Windows Scheduler with the 2990wx.
So my question in the end is: would you think, that I could reach better render speed with my motherboard and 4x16GB RAM or would you in every case don´t further try it with this ROG Strix motherboard?
Best regards,
Holger Drechsler

[Muhammed_Hamed]

The new VRay bench 5.01.00 showed 10.400 vsamples for the 2990wx and 18.709 vsamples for the 5950x

The 2990wx score is very low, it should be similar to that of the 5950X or slightly higher
You motherboard is one part of the issue for sure, and your RAM is a second part
You need 4 RAM sticks for quad channel, this is very important for the 2990WX because of its architecture

The 2990wx worked on mild OC Level 1 (BIOS), at 3,6 GHz under 50°C

Cannot OC with this board, it cannot handle the heat or voltage and might give up on you. Best is to stay at stock

So my question in the end is: would you think, that I could reach better render speed with my motherboard and 4x16GB RAM or would you in every case don´t further try it with this ROG Strix motherboard?

With 4 RAM sticks you will get better performance yes(but it might not solve the whole issue), the question now if this investment is worth or not..
The 2990wx is a terrible CPU, many issues on both the hardware and software sides and easily gets outclassed by a 5950X today
You either sell RAM, Mobo and CPU and go for 3970X and a good TRX40 board, and 3600 CL16 memory (4 sticks) this will be nearly double the performance of the 2990wx
Or you go for another 5950X and a good B550/570 board, it will be very close to the 2990wx in performance

Best,
Muhammed

[3d-laboratory]

And I thought it would be easy. In the old days, 1998, I bought a machine with a double processor board with one Pentium Pro 200. It was not cheap that time. Four years later I added the second processor and the "render performance" was simply doubled without any further things to do. In 2021 I change a processor from 16 cores to 32 cores and sit here hours and hours and get lesser render performance. You see, I had other expectations here. So I will go back to my 2950x which is my "no problem" configuration in this case. If time has come or it is urgent I will by a new machine. The trigger was, that I did an animation project with a short deadline. I know, may be Chaos render service would had been a choice too...

[Muhammed_Hamed]

I understand the frustration honestly, it is also something about early adopting new technology
The 2990WX has more cores than any other consumer CPUs at the time, it was ahead in every way. And the platform had some issues and limitations as expected
Most of which has been addressed with the following generation of Threadrippers 3970X and later 3995X Pro. These CPUs should be a much better experience today

Best,
Muhammed

[3d-laboratory]

It was most frustrting for me that again Windows, and not AMD, seems to be a major cause of these limitations. If you interested in, here is a video which seems to bring evidence for this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2LOMTpCtLA And, as I heard, also the new Windows 11 has issues with Ryzen processors, for which they will provide a fix in the next time. For me is frustrating, that Windows is slower with every new version on the same hardware. It´s a so overloaded OS with so many features which should not be part of an OS in my opinion. If they want they can pack it all in the Home edition. But who needs for example an XBox Console Companion in a professional OS. Thank you very much for your help and I will hold my eyes open for a 3970x for an affordable price.

[GLASS-CANVAS]

Just to say that we've been using Threadripper CPUs since they first apperead on the market a few years back, and the performance always scaled exactly as expected, including the 2990WX. FYI we've found the latest generation 24-core CPU gives roughly the same rendering performance as the old 32-core part. If you're not getting predictable results it sounds to me that you're either having a motherboard issue, or your RAM setup is causing a bottleneck somewhere. With the memory it's important that all the channels are populated to get best performance, you may need to refer to the motherboard manual to check the sticks are in the best slots for this. Also it never hurts to reset the BIOS of your motherboard to defaults before you start. And whilst I would never recommend overclocking on a production PC, at the very least you should enable XMP in the BIOS to gain some easy and free performance.

[3d-laboratory]

I think the motherboard is in good condition. As I said, I have at the moment only 2 RAM channels with 16GB each populated. I in every case will go to 64GB. So you can recommend suitable RAM for the 2990wx? So ill give it a try. Thank you for your thoughts!

[GLASS-CANVAS]

I suspect that no matter what RAM you buy it will scale down (but not up, sadly) in timings to match what you already have in the machine right now - so just buy more of what you already have. Unless your current RAM is particularly slow I would say don't bother doing a complete replacement, as it's just not good value. Having said that you may find it hard to buy 2 sticks of quad-channel RAM, as it's normally only sold in packs of 4. A quick look at my usual supplier here in the UK shows that they only sell packs of 4 or 8 sticks. For brands I tend to buy Corsair Vengeance series, so far it's always been reliable.

[3d-laboratory]

Yes, it was my intention to replace it complete as it is suggested so often to buy these kits together an not to mix it. Regardless of the 2990wx or the 2950x in that machine, Corsair Vengeance should serve well both I think . At the moment I have 32 (2x16) GB RAM G.Skill F4-3000C16 DDR-4, chosen by the professionel system builder / seller in Oct. 2018. What would you think of Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB 64GB (4x16GB) DDR4 3600 (PC4-28800) C18 1.35V AMD Optimized Memory? Give it a try? Is it better to by AMD optimized RAM or it is rather an advertisement gag? I hope I don´t stress you too much

[GLASS-CANVAS]

It will be excellent RAM, no question, but the performance uplift will be small by comparison to increasing core count or core frequency. If you have money to spend then go for it! But otherwise I'd save it for something else. I actually have a pretty much standard 128gb 2990wx machine here in my office right now I can run the V-Ray benchmark on if you'd like to get a baseline? We don't overclock our CPUs for the sake of longevity so you can expect to score better on yours if you do

[3d-laboratory]

I don´t overclock also, I did it only with the 2990wx because I was disappointed. Once I did a test with the 2950x and found, that the default optimized scheme in the UEFI runs better as some mild overclocking. But I didn´t invest much time to it. It is also my basic principle: don´t touch a running system. You see what happens if I leave my principles If I make new experiences with RAM or something else I will post it here. A Vray score on your 2990wx would be very interesting for me!

[GLASS-CANVAS]

I just downloaded the latest V-Ray benchmark app and the 2990wx scored right on where the non-overclocked systems are in the leaderboard i.e. around 22000. Hope this helps!

[3d-laboratory]

Thank you very much. There iare 5 results listed in the VRay benchmark, over 27000. in 4 entries and one at 26950. So I really interested in how they did it. Sadly VRay bench give not enought information on the configuration. My 5950x was at 18709.