The new 64-core AMD Threadripper Pro 5995WX and 32-core Threadripper Pro 5975WX are finally available at retail, breaking free from the confines of pre-built OEM systems to contend for a spot on our list of best CPUs for workstations . They have a tough act to follow: AMD's previous-gen Threadripper CPUs delivered a crushing blow to the entrenched Intel's HEDT and workstation lineup, with the consumer models essentially muscling Team Blue out of the high end desktop (HEDT) market entirely while the Pro models relegated Intel to an also-ran in the workstation market .

But there's a problem for enthusiasts — Intel abandoned the consumer-oriented high end desktop (HEDT) market after its crushing defeat three years ago , and now that AMD is the only game in town for HEDT chips, it's also dropping the segment.

AMD says it will no longer make the more affordable non-Pro Threadripper models. Instead, we get the Threadripper Pro chips that are priced for professionals and come with all the trimmings to justify the price tag, like the Zen 3 architecture, clock speeds up to 4.5 GHz, 128 lanes of PCIe 4.0, and eight DDR4 memory channels that deliver unmatchable workstation performance.

AMD's original Threadripper chips (and supporting motherboards) were geared for HEDT, meaning they came with higher core counts and access to more memory and PCIe connectivity than mainstream desktop PC chips. However, pricing was still mostly within reach for us mere mortals. After several generations , AMD released its Threadripper Pro models with twice the number of memory channels (eight) for professional users and unique motherboards, but the beefy chips carried the eye-watering pricing to match their incredible performance. AMD then maintained two lineups, one for consumers and one for professional workstations, but they had different pricing tiers even though they were based on the same underlying architecture.

AMD changes that with the Threadripper 5000 WX-series, unifying the standard HEDT models with the professional lineup, meaning there's now only one line of chips and motherboards for both OEM workstations and DIYers — Threadripper Pro and the WRX80 platform.

The problem for enthusiasts is that AMD has left the two lower-end 12- and 16-core Pro models as OEM-only , so they won't come to retail. That means entry-level pricing for Threadripper Pro starts at $2,399 for a 24-core 5965WX — and that's before you purchase the requisite super-pricey motherboard (more below) and enough memory to fill eight channels. You'll pay $3,299 to step up to the 32-core Threadripper Pro 5975WX, and $6,499 for the 64-core 5995WX, both representing big markups over the prior-gen chips.

It does make some sense for AMD to keep the 12- and 16-core models as OEM only, given that Ryzen 5000 and the soon-to-be-launched Zen 4 Ryzen 7000 mainstream platforms already support up to 16 cores. However, those platforms don't have quad-or octo-channel memory or more than 20 PCIe lanes, a common reason for enthusiasts to step up to HEDT. Unlike the previous-gen Pro chips, all of the Threadripper Pro 5000 WX chips do support core and memory overclocking, though. That's a slight consolation prize, but only a few motherboards support the feature.

All of this means that AMD positions the Threadripper Pro chips squarely for the workstation market, and there they deliver. Like its predecessor, the 64-core Threadripper Pro 5995WX is a specialized beast that delivers unbeatable performance in workloads that can leverage the parallelism. That said, some applications simply don't benefit from 64 cores, so you should know your workload before you pull the trigger. However, you won't find this many cores or PCIe lanes in a single-socket Intel workstation — the Intel Xeon W-3300 lineup is outclassed with its maximum of 38 cores and 64 PCIe lanes from a single chip. You'll have to pay a heart-stopping $6,499 for the retail 5995WX, though.

The $3,299 32-core Threadripper Pro 5975WX is the more rational choice for most professionals, again delivering stellar performance while offering all of the connectivity of its more expensive counterpart. This chip offers the lion's share of the 5995WX's performance and isn't as subject to finicky performance in some workloads.

We put both of these chips through a test suite of professional-class applications, like SPECworkstation and SPECviewperf, along with our standard application test suite. And yes, we put the chips through our gaming test suite to see how they fare.

Spoiler alert: they match AMD's fastest standard gaming chips.

Threadripper Pro 5995WX and 5975WX Specifications and Pricing

Threadripper Pro chips come with the 'WX' suffix to denote they are designed for the workstation market. AMD didn't introduce more cores with the two top-end models, but they're faster due to the step up from the Zen 2 architecture to Zen 3.

AMD has increased prices on the 64-core model by $1,000 and bumped up the 32-core chip by $550. All retail Threadripper Pro models have a top dual-core clock speed of 4.5 GHz, a generational increase of 300 MHz for the 5955WX and 5975WX. The 24-core 3975WX didn't have a previous-gen Pro counterpart, but its clock speeds are the same as the consumer 3960X. We also see a 100 MHz improvement to the base clock speed on all models except the 64-core, 128-thread Threadripper Pro 5995WX.

The Threadripper Pro chips have the same 280W TDP envelope as the previous-gen chips. Notably, the 280W limit is likely imposed by the sWRX80 socket design, so AMD doesn't have much room to increase frequencies for the highest-end part. As we've seen in previous tests, the core-heavy Threadripper models reach peak power consumption long before all of the cores are fully saturated, but the support for overclocking/PBO will help break those bonds.

Threadripper Pro has 128 PCIe 4.0 lanes (the CPU exposes 120 lanes to the user) compared to Intel's 64 lanes, an advantage because most workstations have plenty of additives, like GPU accelerators, NVMe storage, and high-speed NICs.

Except for the quad-channel Ryzen Threadripper 3000 chips, all of the above AMD and Intel processors support eight channels of DDR4-3200 ECC memory. Threadripper Pro supports a maximum of 2TB of memory in UDIMM, RDIMM, and LRDIMM flavors, while Xeon W-3300 supports up to 4TB. That's not to mention that AMD's core/thread counts weigh in at 64/128 compared to Intel's 38/76.

As you can see, AMD slightly undercuts Intel's suggested pricing for the 24- and 32-core models, but the flagship 64-core 5995WX costs $2000 more than the highest-end 38-core Xeon W-3375.

The Threadripper Pro chips drop into single-socket WRX80 motherboards, so existing WRX80 motherboards support the 5000 series chips after a BIOS update. The LGA4094 socket (aka Socket sWRX8) is physically identical to the previous-gen Threadripper consumer and EPYC data center platforms, so coolers are also compatible. However, the socket features different pin assignments: AMD enabled some pins to support more memory channels and PCIe lanes than are available on the old Threadripper consumer chips and disabled certain pins used to support multiple sockets on EPYC platforms.

Here's how Threadripper has progressed over the years:

That steady cadence of updates is a killer — just ask Intel.

It isn't all crimson and roses, though. The X399 platform was somewhat reasonably priced given its feature set, with most motherboards starting at around $350 (there was even a $240 model ). Unfortunately, we can't expect that kind of pricing with WRX80 motherboards — there's a limited number of WRX80 motherboards available to DIYers , and they start at $700. Prices top out at $1,300, but two of the motherboards on AMD's list aren't available yet.

You'll also need to be careful with motherboard selection — many vendors designed their motherboards around the previous-gen Threadripper Pro family, which wasn't overclockable. As such, the Supermicro and ASUS WRX80 motherboards don't support overclocking. Given the relatively poor selection, high pricing, and general unavailability of many models, AMD and the motherboard makers have their work cut out for them to make this platform more accessible to DIYers.

Threadripper Pro is based on a lightly-modified EPYC Milan design, so they move up from Zen 2 to the Zen 3 architecture. The Threadripper Pro chips still top out at an incredible 256MB of L3 cache on the highest-end models, but the cache is now a contiguous 32MB block for each eight-core cluster, improving performance over the prior gen. In contrast, Xeon W-3300 tops out at a paltry 57MB. The chips also bear all of the other benefits of Zen 3 , like a 19% increase in instruction per cycle (IPC) throughput.

The chips support AMD's Pro Security, Manageability, and Business Ready suites (18-month software stability, 2-year chip availability), an area where Intel's competing chips are lacking. AMD's Pro Security suite includes the same Secure Architecture, Memory Guard (memory encryption with a slight performance penalty), and Secure Processor features as the prior-gen Threadripper Pro models, but AMD added Shadow Stack, a mechanism to counter control flow attacks. In contrast, Intel's Xeon W-3300 series doesn't have an enterprise-class feature set.

AMD Threadripper Pro 5995WX and 5975WX Benchmark Test Setup

There are quite a few caveats to our testing. First, we tested the Threadripper 5995WX and 3995WX in the Lenovo ThinkStation P620 workstation, which is unabashedly designed for 100% stability and doesn't support the auto-overclocking Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) or any other form of overclocking. Additionally, we're constrained to the systems' installed cooler and power limits, not to mention that the 128GB of ECC memory operates at JEDEC memory speeds.

Lenovo uses AMD's vendor-locking Platform Secure Boot (PSB) feature to prevent using the processor with any other motherboard, which you can read about more in-depth here . This technique is used to improve security but is irreversible by the end user, which has terrible implications for the second-hand market. It also impacts our testing — we're stuck with testing the 64-core chips in an unalterable environment. Our results are still plenty valid for our stock configurations, but we can't test overclocking. It wouldn't be surprising if an enthusiast-class motherboard and cooler can extract slightly more performance from the 64-core models, even at stock settings.

Luckily we didn't face the same restrictions with the Threadripper Pro 5975WX. AMD sent us a sample, so we're free to test with any platform. We chose an MSI WS WRX80 motherboard because it features all of the high-end features you'd expect from an enthusiast-class motherboard, including overclocking (remember, only a few WRX80 motherboards support overclocking).

The MSI WS WRX80 gives you a good idea of some of the features you can expect from a high-end WRX80 motherboard, including eight DIMM slots, seven PCIe 4.0 x16 slots, two M.2 slots, two U.2 connectors, eight SATA ports, and a 10Gbps Aquantia AQC113CS LAN controller.

We tested the 5975WX at stock and PBO settings, with the latter using Advanced Motherboard settings with a 10X scalar setting. We used the 128GB of ECC memory from the Lenovo system with the MSI motherboard to keep our test pool consistent (we didn't have an eight-DIMM consumer kit for testing). As such, we use eight channels of DDR4-3200 and JEDEC timings for all tested Threadripper Pro configurations. The other platforms in our test pool have varying memory configurations, listed in a chart at the end of the article.

Intel hasn't sampled us any Xeon W-3300 chips, so our testing feels a bit incomplete. While the W-3300 chips lack the connectivity options and sheer threaded heft of the Threadripper Pro 5000-series models, they are known to have competitive performance in single-threaded work. That pays off in some workloads.

We're using our Windows 10 test suite for this round of testing, which does necessitate using our older game roster but allows us to compare to our historical results from the previous-gen 64-core 3995WX that we no longer have in the lab.

All of the normal caveats of Threadripper 3000 performance still apply. Windows splits cores into 'processor groups' of 64 threads apiece, so some applications and benchmarks that aren't tuned to span across the groups don't benefit from the increased thread count. For applications that can't span processor groups, some professional users will run multiple program instances in VMs to extract the utmost performance. Even without that type of arrangement, we see a marked uplift in several applications that benefit from 128 threads. Additionally, the software is rapidly evolving to support such large processors.

AMD's Ryzen Master software, which allows you to tune consumer Threadripper processors, is available with the Threadripper Pro chips, but only if the platform supports overclocking. For instance, the software is locked out on the Lenovo ThinkStation but works perfectly with the MSI WS WRX80.

Gaming Performance on Threadripper Pro 5995WX and 5975WX — The TLDR

The Threadripper Pro models aren't intended for gaming, but regardless, we couldn't resist the temptation to see how the chips fare when paired with a high-end GPU. The Threadripper chips don't impact competitive positioning in the gaming market, so consider this round of tests an exhibition/academic exercise.

We're stuck with JEDEC timings for the Threadripper Pro chips, and tuning those timings could lead to more gaming performance. However, the new 5000 series chips are much faster than their prior-gen counterparts.

The 5975WX ties the Ryzen 9 5900X in our cumulative measure of 1080p gaming performance, an incredible feat considering that the 5900X is the fastest standard AMD gaming chip on the market (the Ryzen 7 5800X3D is a special case). To put things in perspective, the 32-core 5975WX is a whopping 31% faster than the previous-gen 32-core 3975WX, beating the generational improvements we expect from advancing from Zen 2 to Zen 3.

As expected, engaging the auto-overclocking Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) feature with the 5975WX actually results in less performance in gaming — we'll see the benefit of PBO when we switch to application testing below. It also doesn't help that we're stuck with JEDEC timings and frequencies due to our ECC memory, so we could see overclocking gains in gaming with the proper memory kit. We'll suss that out in follow-up testing and update as necessary -- it will be interesting to see if an eight-channel memory config can hit a meaningful overclock.

We don't expect the 64-core 5995WX to beat its smaller counterpart, but the 32-core 5975WX is only 3% faster in 1080p gaming. That isn't too surprising, given that both chips have the same peak boost clock rate of 4.5 GHz, but it's impressive nonetheless. More impressive? The 5995WX is 43% faster than the prior-gen 3995WX.

The Core i9-12900K is Intel's fastest standard gaming chip, 11% faster than the 32-core 5975WX and 14% faster than the 5995WX. The Xeon W-3175X and Core i9-10980XE used to serve up noticeable performance gains over the Threadripper processors in gaming, but they trail behind the new 5000-series chips by large margins.

Despite their high pricing, HEDT chips have always lagged behind their consumer counterparts in gaming, but the delta between them has shrunk over the last few generations of HEDT. So even though the Threadripper Pro chips obviously aren't for gaming, it is good to see what would have once been an HEDT chip finally reach the pinnacle and match its mainstream PC counterpart. It's too bad it only comes now that HEDT is completely out of our grasp.

That said, if a professional user decides to unwind with a few games at work, Threadripper Pro provides more than enough performance for a high-end gaming session. And then some.

3D Mark, VRMark, Stockfish Chess Engine on AMD Threadripper Pro 5995WX and 5975WX

We run these synthetic gaming tests as part of our main application test script. We use an RTX 2080 Ti for these tests to facilitate faster testing, but we use the RTX 3090 for all other gaming benchmarks (we don't include these tests in the geometric mean listed above).

As we've come to expect, AMD's core-heavy Threadripper chips dominate threaded synthetic tests, like the Stockfish chess engine. The 64-core 5995WX isn't too much faster than the 64-core Threadripper 3990X, but that's largely because of the locked-down nature of the Lenovo ThinkStation P620s motherboard. In contrast, we tested the 3990X on an ASUS ROG Zenith II Extreme with superior power delivery and much more forgiving power limits.

UL Benchmark's DX11 and DX12 CPU tests also tend to scale well with additional cores, but those benchmarks obviously aren't optimized for the Threadripper Pro processors. As expected, the mainstream PC chips excel in these tests, though the 5995WX does pull off an impressive score in the DX12 subtest.

Far Cry 5 on AMD Threadripper Pro 5995WX and 5975WX

The Intel Core i9-12900K dominates in this title and takes the lead in many of the gaming benchmarks below.

Far Cry 5 's code isn't optimized for high core-count chips, which incurs a big performance penalty when all cores and threads are exposed to the operating system. For this title, we tested all the Threadripper chips except the 3995WX in 'game mode,' which disables half of the processor to enable compatibility with unoptimized code. This is the only title in our suite that requires game mode for the Threadripper processors.

The game mode option isn't technically available with the Threadripper Pro 3995WX (Ryzen Master isn't available, but you could enable a quasi-game mode via the Windows command line). We ran the game without this option on the 3995WX to demonstrate the erratic performance. This performance result doesn't matter for professional users, but it is interesting. (We excluded this benchmark from our cumulative gaming results.)

Hitman 2 on AMD Threadripper Pro 5995WX and 5975WX

Hitman 2 and its successor are heavily optimized for high core-count chips. That pays dividends for the 5995WX as it grapples with Intel's Core i9-12900K for the lead.

Project CARS 3 on AMD Threadripper Pro 5995WX and 5975WX

Project Cars 3 is a good example of a title that doesn't expose the best of a heavily-threaded CPU. As you can see, the three 64-core 128-thread models in the test pool — the 5995WX, 3995WX, and 3990X — all trail their 32-core counterparts.

Red Dead Redemption 2 on AMD Threadripper Pro 5995WX and 5975WX

The Threadripper 5995WX and 5975WX led the Ryzen 9 processors by decent margins in the last few benchmarks, but here we see that some games simply respond better to the scaled-down Zen 3 design present in the consumer chips. Of course, the higher core clock speeds and tighter memory timings help, too.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider on AMD Threadripper Pro 5995WX and 5975WX

There's little doubt that Shadow of the Tomb Raider responds well to hefty core counts, with the 5995WX taking the lead in the 1080p tests, followed closely by the 5975WX. These two chips trade places in the QHD benchmarks, but we're hitting a graphics bottleneck that introduces variability.

Desktop PC Application Benchmarks on Threadripper Pro 5995WX and 5975WX — The TLDR:

The above geometric mean of single- and multi-threaded performance only encompasses key workloads in our standard test suite for mainstream desktop PCs. We also have SPECworkstation 3, SPECviewperf 2020, and Adobe suite testing after our standard tests below.

Here, the Threadripper Pro 5995WX delivers class-leading threaded horsepower in our geometric mean of multi-threaded workloads. The 5995WX is 15% faster in threaded work than the previous-gen 3995WX, but bear in mind that the 5995WX is power-capped at 280W just like the 3995WX, so uncorking the power limits on a capable motherboard could extend that lead significantly. Unfortunately we can't test that due to the vendor locking we covered in the test setup section.

The 5975WX is 13% faster than its prior-gen counterpart, the 3975WX, in the multi-threaded tests but extends that lead to 22% after we remove the power limits with PBO. Overall, the Threadripper Pro chips take a comfortable lead over Intel in the threaded benchmarks.

As expected, consumer-focused chips still dominate our single-threaded rankings,  with the Core i9-12900K being 30% faster than the 5975WX. The 5000-series Threadripper chips offer similar performance in lightly-threaded work, which isn't surprising given that they have the same 4.5 GHz peak boost clock. They are also roughly ~17% faster than the prior-gen Threadripper Pro models.

Rendering Benchmarks on AMD Threadripper Pro 5995WX and 5975WX

The rendering benchmarks land right in Threadripper Pro's target market. Cinebench has long been AMD's favorite benchmark for a simple reason; the Zen microarchitecture has always performed extremely well in the threaded benchmark. The 64-core 5995WX basically ties the previous-gen 3990X that we tested with a drastically better motherboard and cooler, so this might not be the peak performance you can expect from the 5995WX. The 5995WX is ~6% faster than the previous-gen 64-core Pro model, the 3995WX.

Flipping over to single-threaded Cinebench shows the 5000-series Pro chips delivering ~15% more performance than the prior gen. The consumer chips dominate the chart, though.

The POV-Ray multi-thread benchmark scales great across the 5995WX's 64 cores, granting it and the other 64-core chips the lead. The 5995WX is 23% faster than the 32-core 5975WX, but that's not a bad value proposition — the 5995WX costs nearly twice as much.

The Threadripper chips trail the consumer chips in the single-core POV-Ray benchmark but slide past Intel's competing workstation-class chips again.

Intel's HEDT chips pull off a lone win in the PCMark 10 rendering and visualization subtest, but most of these threaded tests skew towards Threadripper.

V-ray and C-Ray expose some of the 5995WX's bipolar performance trends. The chip scales within expectations in v-ray, taking a 48% lead over the 5975WX and exhibiting nearly linear scaling. However, the C-Ray benchmark isn't optimized to span both processor groups, meaning only half of the 5995WX's cores come into play, giving the 32-core 5975WX the lead. There are techniques to sidestep these challenges, but professionals should carefully evaluate their workloads before dropping $6,500 on the 5995WX.

The Intel Open Image Denoise ray-tracing test uses Intel's oneAPI rendering toolkit. Hence, it provides an interesting take on performance that's more of an academic exercise than an indication of real-world performance — at least for now. OneAPI is still in the early days of development, not to mention adoption, but it is an interesting display of Intel's latest approach but in a decidedly Intel-friendly test. This test benefits from memory throughput, so the Xeon W-3175X shows its six-channel chops. Regardless, the eight-channel Pro chips take the lead.

Encoding Benchmarks on AMD Threadripper Pro 5995WX and 5975WX

Our encoding tests include benchmarks that respond best to single-threaded performance, like the quintessential examples LAME and FLAC, but the SVT-AV1 and SVT-HEVC tests represent a newer class of threaded encoders.

It's no surprise to find the consumer chips faring better than the Threadripper CPUs in LAME and FLAC, but the 5000 series have improved AMD's standing dramatically in single-threaded work.

The SVT-AV1 and SVT-HEVC benchmarks show that these threaded encoders respond well to increased core counts, which plays right into Threadripper's hands. However, the software doesn't appear to be entirely optimized for the 64-core Threadripper's unique architecture — the 32-core 5975WX leads in the HEVC benchmark. We also only see small deltas between the 32-core and 64-core in the AV1 benchmark.

Flipping over to HandBrake, we can see the Threadripper Pro chips leading the x264 and x265 tests, but it's important to note that these tests are of relatively short duration. We have longer-duration HandBrake tests in the SPECworkstation benchmarks below. Those workstation-tuned benchmarks expose bigger performance deltas.

Web Browsing, Office and Productivity on AMD Threadripper Pro 5995WX and 5975WX

If you're looking to build a screaming-fast workstation, you're probably not doing it to run web browsers and office applications like Word at breakneck speeds. However, these types of applications are ubiquitous the world over, so snappy performance is important for daily tasks. We test the web browser benchmarks in a version-locked Chrome browser, with the notable exception of the Edge test.

Most of the web browser benchmarks are lightly threaded, so Intel's 12900K puts on a show with leading performance across the board. However, the Zen 3 architecture in the 5000 series processors has improved Threadripper's standing - the new Threadripper chips show tangible generational performance leads over the prior-gen models, thus often taking the second and third positions in the charts. We also see a similar result with the responsiveness benchmark, which measures load times in common desktop PC applications.

Compilation, Compression, AVX Performance on AMD Threadripper Pro 5995WX and 5975WX

The Timed LLVM and NAMD benchmarks can't fully expose the parallelism of the 5995WX, resulting in sub-par scaling. We also see the 3995WX lead the 5995WX in the Timed LLVM compilation, implying some sort of odd interaction with the benchmark.

Our 7zip results are interesting, but this benchmark runs directly out of memory, giving the eight-channel Threadripper processors an unassailable lead. On the other hand, the y-cruncher benchmarks also operate from main memory, giving the Threadripper 5975WX the upper hand. However, the threaded test isn't of long enough duration to expose the full power of the 5995WX.

The AES, HASH, and SHAH3 tests scale wonderfully across the cores, giving the 5995WX the lead. The 5975WX performs much more admirably overall, but much of that is simply due to software issues with the 5995WX's prodigious core counts.

Workstation CPU and GPU Benchmarks Test Notes

Some of these applications also make an appearance in our standard test suite, but those test configurations and benchmarks are focused on a typical desktop-class environment. In contrast, the following tests are configured to stress the systems with workstation-class workloads, which is a particular strength for the Threadripper processors given their hefty core counts.

With the exception of the W-3175X and Threadripper Pro systems, we loaded down our test platforms with 64GB of DDR4 memory spread across four modules to accommodate the expanded memory capacity required for several of these workstation-focused tasks. Due to the W-3175X's six-channel memory controller and our limited stock of high-capacity DIMMs, we used six 8GB DIMMs for a total capacity of 48GB. As mentioned, we're stuck with testing with 128GB of DDR4-3200 ECC memory for the Threadripper Pro chips - and at JEDEC timings.

SPECviewperf 2020 GPU Benchmarks on AMD Threadripper Pro 5995WX and 5975WX

The SPECviewperf 2020 benchmarks show how well the Threadripper Pro processors can push along an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 in professional rendering applications. This has long been a weakness of previous-gen Threadripper processors, but the Zen   3 5000-series models build on the improvements we saw with the Zen 2 3000-series.

• The following short descriptions are from the SPEC committee. Each entry has a link to more detailed test descriptions on the SPEC website.
• 3ds max-07 - Autodesk 3ds Max 2016 - 11 tests representing rendering modes used in gaming, film visual effects, and architectural markets.
• maya-06 - Autodesk Maya 2017 - 10 rendering tests, including shaded, ambient occlusion, multi-sample anti-aliasing, and transparency.
• catia-06 - Dassault Systems Catia v5 / 3DExperience - 10 tests ranging from 2.1 to 21 million vertices. Viewsets include several rendering modes - anti-aliasing, shaded, and shaded with edges.
• solidworks-05 - Dassault Systems Solidworks 2020 - 10 tests ranging from 2.1 to 21 million vertices. Viewsets include several rendering modes - shaded, shaded with edges, ambient occlusion, shaders, and environment maps.
• energy-03 - OpendTect seismic visualization - 3D tests based on real-world seismic datasets.
• medical-03 - 2D slice rendering and raycasting techniques found in medical applications.
• creo-03 - Creo 4 - Model sizes range from 20 to 48 million vertices, with multiple rendering modes.
• snx-04 - Siemens NX 8.0 - 10 tests ranging from 7.15 to 8.45 million vertices with wireframe, anti-aliasing, shaded, shaded with edges, and studio mode rendering modes.

Per-core performance continues to reign supreme in most graphics-accelerated workloads, so high clock speeds and/or architectures with higher IPC tend to thrive in many of these benchmarks. As such, we see that mainstream desktop PC chips frequently lead, with the Core i9-12900K having a particularly strong showing due to its class-leading performance in single-threaded workloads.

It is important to note that AMD now offers very competitive performance in GPU-accelerated workloads where it had traditionally trailed by large margins with the 1000- and 2000-series chips. However, we don't have any Xeon W-3300 chips on hand for comparison. The Ice Lake architecture does have its benefits in single-threaded work, so we're missing a bit of the competitive landscape in this series of tests.

The desktop PC chips took an easy lead in the Creo, Catia, and Siemens NX workloads, but the 5000-series Threadripper Pro chips beat the other competing chips handily, showing solid generational performance gains in the process. The 32-core 5975WX even took the overall lead in 3DS Max, albeit by a slim margin.

The seismic modeling Energy benchmark and the Medical test sequence show that performance is comparable between the various processors in some of these applications. In those cases, other bottlenecked parts of the workflow become the deciding factor, like CPU compute, storage performance, or other factors.

AMD has steadily improved Threadripper's performance in GPU-accelerated tasks, reducing the deltas between it and competing workstation-class chips (like we saw back in 2017 with the Threadripper 1000 series ) to the nearly imperceptible range. Now it has finally taken the lead against the competing workstation chips in our test pool.

Puget Systems Adobe Benchmarks on AMD Threadripper Pro 5995WX and 5975WX

Puget Systems is a boutique systems vendor that caters to professional users with custom-designed systems targeted at specific workloads. The company has developed a series of acclaimed benchmarks for Adobe software, which you can find here .

Adobe After Effects CC Render Node Benchmark on AMD Threadripper Pro 5995WX and 5975WX

The After Effects render node benchmark leverages the in-built aerender application that splits the render engine across multiple threads to maximize CPU and GPU performance. This test is memory-intensive, so RAM capacity and throughput are important and can be a limiting factor.

Threadripper Pro's improvement here is incredibly impressive — the 5975WX is 45% faster than the prior-gen 3975WX.

However, the 32-core 5975WX beats the 64-core 5995WX in the overall score, so the application has hit a sweet spot at 32 Zen 3 cores. Again, not all applications will fully benefit from the 64-core design. The 64-core 5995WX also doesn't have as much room to stretch its legs within the same 280W TDP as the 64-core 3995WX, so it is 'only' 18% faster in this benchmark. Meanwhile, the Intel chips trail by large margins.

Adobe Premiere Pro CC and Photoshop CC Benchmark on AMD Threadripper Pro 5995WX and 5975WX

The Premiere Pro benchmark measures live playback and export performance with several codecs at 4K and 8K resolutions. It also incorporates 'Heavy GPU' and 'Heavy CPU' effects that stress the system beyond a typical workload. Storage throughput also heavily impacts the score.

The Threadripper Pro processors are well-suited for this type of work with eight channels of memory throughput and PCIe 4.0 storage accommodations. Threadripper Pro leads the competing Intel chips by huge margins, but the 5995WX trails the previous-gen 3995WX by 1%. The 5975WX is 7% faster than its predecessor, the 3975WX.

The Photoshop benchmark gauges performance in a diverse range of tasks, measuring the time taken to complete general tasks and apply filters. This test leans heavily on GPU acceleration, and it's clear that high clock rates benefit performance tremendously.

The Core i9-12900K takes the lead in the overall score due to its superior per-core performance, but the 32-core 5975WX takes a close second, surprisingly beating the Ryzen 9 processors in this clock-sensitive benchmark.

SPECworkstation 3 Benchmarks on AMD Threadripper Pro 5995WX and 5975WX

The SPECworkstation 3 benchmark suite is designed to measure workstation performance in professional applications. The full suite consists of more than 30 applications split among seven categories, but we've winnowed down the list to tests that largely focus specifically on CPU performance. We haven't submitted these benchmarks to the SPEC organization, so be aware these are not official benchmarks.

Even though the SPECworkstation 3 software supports spanning workloads across multiple processor groups, not all applications can take advantage of the full 128 threads. As such, we're only presenting a few of the CPU-bound tests.

Blender, HandBrake, LuxMark on Threadripper Pro 5995WX and 5975WX

It isn't surprising to see the 5000-series chips lead several of the Blender renders, but the Ryzen 9 chips are impressive in the 3BMWs render. Overall we can see that most of the renders perform best on the 32-core 5975WX, showing that some Blender renders can't extract the full performance of the 64-core 128-thread chips. The 64-core Threadrippers (5995WX, 3995WX, 3990X) all take a substantial lead in the Classroom render, showing that the Blender engine is capable of leveraging the full heft of the chip in some scenarios.

LuxRender shows the full 5995WX being properly utilized — here, the 5995WX is 57% faster than the 5975WX.

The HandBrake tests also expose meaningful performance gains from the 5995WX, with the Zen 3 architecture taking quite the lead over the 32-core Zen 2 processors.

Financial Services, Life Sciences on Threadripper Pro 5995WX and 5975WX

The Calculix workload is based on the finite element method for three-dimensional structural computations, and it typically responds well to both higher core counts and clocks. Once again, the 5995WX is significantly faster than the other 64-core Threadripper models. The 5975WX sees a similar speed-up over the 3975WX, too.

SPECworkstation 3's Rodinia LifeSciences benchmark steps through four tests that include medical imaging, particle movements in a 3D space, a thermal simulation, and image-enhancing programs. The 64-core models dominate the test group.

The earth’s subsurface structure can be determined via seismic processing. One of the four basic steps in this process is the Kirchhoff Migration, which generates an image based on the available data using mathematical operations. Cores reign supreme here as we see the full might of the 5995WX being utilized fully. However, application code and power limits could be limiting factors that hamper the 5995WX's performance scalability, as evidenced by the frequent ties with the previous-gen 64-core models.

Power Consumption and Efficiency Threadripper Pro 5995WX and 5975WX

There are a few caveats to our power testing: The Lenovo ThinkStation P620 delivers all of its power directly through the motherboard, which prevents us from conducting CPU power measurements from the physical layer that we typically use to validate the results we log from the sensor loop. However, the results do fall within our general expectations.

The Threadripper 5995WX exhibits the same trend we've seen in the past with AMD's high core count processors — they often draw less power when all cores are fully loaded than when the chip is partially loaded. These power management differences often occur at the behest of power limits and motherboard firmware. The Lenovo system doesn't expose any information we could use to tease out the different approaches.

The Dominus Extreme we used for the W-3175X also presents power measurement challenges. To sidestep the CPU's power limits, Asus offers a secondary power reporting option in the BIOS. Intel's recommended setting (default) reports current by dividing the value by 1.25x, and the readings can sometimes be inaccurate. As such, we've only included measurements we could verify with physical measurements.

As you can see, the Threadripper Pro chips consume much more power than their desktop PC counterparts, an unavoidable side effect of the high core counts. For example, the 64-core 5995WX peaked at 285W, nearly the same as the 32-core 5975WX. That explains many seemingly-errant benchmark results in the multi-threaded workloads in our test suite — the 5995WX is often power constrained.

Unlike the 5975WX, due to Lenovo's vendor locking, we can't break the bonds of those limits for the 5995WX. However, we can unlock the 5975WX, enabling up to 400W of power consumption in our stress tests.

The Threadripper Pro 5000 series chips are generally less power-hungry in real-world workloads than the previous-gen models, translating to improved efficiency metrics in our renders-per-watt-per-day stats.

Here we take a slightly different look at power consumption by calculating the cumulative amount of energy required to perform x264 and x265 HandBrake workloads and two Blender renders. We plot this 'task energy' value in Kilojoules on the left side of the chart.

These workloads are comprised of a fixed amount of work, so we can plot the task energy against the time required to finish the job (bottom axis), thus generating a handy power chart. Bear in mind that faster compute times and lower task energy requirements are ideal.

You probably already guessed it, but the Threadripper Pro 5000 series are the most efficient chips in the test pool.

A Farewell Ode to HEDT

AMD's Ryzen Threadripper Pro WX 5000-series represents yet another successful update to the series, delivering Intel-beating performance in both the 32-core 5975WX and the incredibly powerful 64-core 5995WX that reigns entirely uncontested by Intel's Xeon W-3300 lineup.

Below, we have the geometric mean of our gaming test suite at 1080p and 1440p and a cumulative measure of performance in single- and multi-threaded applications. We conducted our gaming tests with an RTX 3090, so performance deltas will shrink with lesser cards and higher resolution and fidelity settings. The Threadripper chips don't impact competitive positioning in the gaming market, so consider our gaming tests an exhibition/academic exercise.

The particulars of our test setups presented challenges in terms of 100% like-for-like performance comparisons with the various Threadripper processors in our test pool, especially given power constraints with the 5995WX. Still, the results tell us what we need to know.

The Threadripper Pro chips can handle pretty much anything you throw at them, including gaming. In fact, the 5975WX ties the Ryzen 9 5900X in our cumulative measure of 1080p gaming performance, an incredible feat considering that the 5900X is the fastest standard AMD gaming chip on the market. The 5995WX is also surprisingly competitive in gaming, only falling a few percentage points behind the 5975WX. It's also 43% faster than the prior-gen 3995X. Impressive gaming results all around.

The Threadripper Pro 5995WX delivers class-leading threaded horsepower in our geometric mean of multi-threaded workloads. The 5995WX is 15% faster in threaded work than the previous-gen 3995WX, while the 5975WX is 13% faster than its prior-gen counterpart, the 3975WX. That lead improved further when we engaged the auto-overclocking PBO. Both Threadripper Pro chips also notch a roughly 17% improvement in single-threaded work, capping an impressive performance in our standard application suite. Also, check out the extra SPEC and Adobe benchmarks further above.

There isn't too much more to chew over in the benchmarks. AMD doesn't have a clear competitor — its chips are generally faster, cheaper, and more power efficient than competing Intel chips nearly across the board. Yes, the 'cheaper' statement applies to the Threadripper Pro 5995WX, too, even though it has a workstation-market-high price tag of $6,499 — you'd have to build a more expensive dual-socket Xeon system to match a single 5995WX.

AMD's WXR80 ecosystem needs some work, but the class-leading PCIe allocation is still a big draw for professionals who need the ultimate connectivity for GPU accelerators, storage, and NICs. However, motherboard selection is slim. Additionally, some of the motherboards aren't available yet, and many existing boards pop in and out of availability. We can rationally expect that to improve over the coming months as supply chains recover, but we don't expect that pricing will: This is an expensive platform due to the copious slathering of PCIe 4.0 lanes, and that won't change soon. You'll spend $700 for a barebones board and up to $1,300 for a full-fledged model. Factor in the price of filling eight channels with memory, and you'll see why this isn't a platform for enthusiasts.

Threadripper arrived in 2017 with a then-mind-blowing 16-cores, a stunning and awesome show of force as AMD began muscling Intel out of contention in the enthusiast HEDT market. Three generations of Threadripper later, and Intel abandoned HEDT in 2019 after the Core i9-10980XE . It isn't clear if Intel will return with the Fishhawk Falls chips based on the forever-delayed Sapphire Rapids , but it's starting to look like those will also be workstation-focused.

Yes, AMD positions the retail Threadripper Pro WX chips for DIYers, but they're really geared for DIYers building systems for professional workloads. That's spelled out even more clearly in AMD's specs, which say these chips aren't for consumer use . AMD did add overclockability to the Threadripper Pro line for the first time with the 5000-series but given that very few WRX80 motherboards currently support overclocking, that's a future-looking feature that will severely restrict your motherboard options.

In many ways, AMD ended up cannibalizing its own HEDT market by blurring the lines between HEDT and the mainstream with 16-core Ryzen chips on mainstream motherboards, leaving little reason for most to spend more for extra cores on HEDT.

Sure, some users are looking for more memory throughput courtesy of quad-channel memory controllers or more PCIe connectivity, but the reality is that both of those needs aren't as prevalent now. We'll have higher-bandwidth and higher-capacity DDR5 memory available on all mainstream platforms when Ryzen 7000 arrives to tackle Intel's Raptor Lake , and many of the reasons we needed more PCIe lanes are now built right into the motherboard. For instance, PCIe SSD add-in cards are rare because most SSDs now ride in built-in M.2 ports, and high-end 10GbE connectivity is often built right into the motherboard, no longer necessitating an add-in card. Did I mention Thunderbolt?

All of these factors leave a slimmer cross-section of users to support an entire ecosystem of motherboards and chips, and it's apparent that AMD doesn't think that's enough to prop up what we would traditionally consider an HEDT platform. Such is truly the price of progress.

And speaking of progress, the 64-core Threadripper Pro 5995WX delivers unmatchable performance in workloads that can extract the fruits of its core-heavy architecture. Still, at $6,499, this chip is only for users with very specialized needs. The 5995WX reigns uncontested as the only 64-core workstation chip, and it'll take a dual-socket Intel system to match it, so AMD will find no shortage of users willing to pay the premium.

The 32-core Threadripper Pro 5975WX often provides a similar level of performance to the 64-core model, and when it trails, it isn't by much. At $3,499, this chip is half the price of the 5995WX but provides all of the same connectivity options, making it the more amenable chip for most professional users. The Threaripper Pro 5995WX and 5975WX both deliver incredible performance, but the chip, motherboard, and memory pricing all firmly relegate these chips to the professional market.

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