Introduction

AMD surgically disrupted Intel's entire Core X series of high-end desktop (HEDT) processors with its Ryzen Threadripper family, and extended its competitive lead with its Ryzen Threadripper 2000 series this August. In its first round, the company launched 16-core and 32-core Threadripper parts, and today, it is adding two more options with the 12-core Threadripper 2920X and 24-core Threadripper 2970WX. In the meantime, the company also introduced the Dynamic Local Mode feature for its 24-core and 32-core Threadripper WX family, which helps end users overcome many of the design quirks of the multi-chip module (MCM) in which half the dies don't have local memory access, bringing about significant improvements.



Until now, Intel has had the upper hand in HEDT processor core counts. By tapping into its "Skylake-X" HCC (high core-count) silicon, Intel launched 12-core, 14-core, 16-core, and 18-core LGA2066 processors. The 14-thru-18 core SKUs beat the first-generation Threadrippers in performance owing to higher IPC and lower latencies thanks to the monolithic die design. AMD priced its 12-core and 16-core first-gen Threadrippers competitively to Intel's 8-core and 10-core SKUs, exceeding them on price-performance. This meant leaving the $1000-$2000 market uncontested, for which Intel had already built a use-case (prosumers who need a lot of multi-threaded performance and don't want to shell out a lot of money on workstations with 2P Xeons), and thus, we have new 24-core and 32-core Threadripper 2000WX parts from AMD. We are yet to get our hands on the new Core X 9000-series, but those are not architecturally new.

In this review, we take a look at the 12-core Ryzen Threadripper 2920X. Much like the Threadripper 1920X from last year that it succeeds, the TR 2920X achieves 12 cores by being a multi-chip module of two 8-core dies configured with 6 cores each, which are 12 nm "Pinnacle Ridge" in this case. Each of the two dies has a 3+3 CCX configuration. You get all of the new "Zen+" micro-architecture features and higher clock speeds. AMD is also launching this chip at an SEP of $649, which is $150 cheaper than what the 1920X launched at.

We are testing the Ryzen Threadripper 2920X at stock, with Precision Boost Overclock enabled and set to max, and at our highest manual overclocking frequency of 4.15 GHz.