It's hard to overstate the power of a Threadripper. It's a product that exists in a market of its own, straddling the line between full-on server-grade hardware for enterprises, and the fastest desktop CPU money can buy. It's the defining product of the HEDT (high-end desktop) market, and Threadripper 9000 brings to that market an infusion of Zen 5 goodness.

With high clock speeds, a proven architecture, and a massive array of cores, it's hard to go wrong with Threadripper 9000. Despite how much power you get, the generational uplifts, however, aren't what I was hoping for. Thankfully, that's offset by the AVX-512 data path in Zen 5, which massively speeds up certain workstation tasks, and contributes greatly to the value that the Threadripper 9980X and 9970X hold.

AMD Threadripper 9980X and 9970X pricing and availability

The biggest thing Threadripper has going for it is that it's available. I'm serious. You'll mainly find the Pro models available in systems from OEMs, but AMD segments out some of its silicon for the HEDT market, where buying a massive, server-grade CPU involves little more than cash to burn and some time at your local Micro Center. The fact that you can easily buy a Threadripper 9000 chip makes a difference in the face of Intel's Xeon 6, which has a more traditional OEM-focused distribution channel.

For companies, that might not make a huge difference. For the prosumer, enthusiast, and rich guy who likes PC parts, however, Threadripper 9000 stands alone. It certainly helps that the new HEDT range uses the same sTR5 socket, and it's drop-in compatible with any TRX50 board, which launched alongside Threadripper 7000.

Nothing has changed on the pricing front, with the 64-core Threadripper 9980X clocking in at $5,000 and the 32-core Threadripper 9970X coming in at $2,500. Specs have remained mostly unchanged, as well. You're getting the same core counts, power draw, and cache amount as the previous generation, plus a minor bump to maximum clock speed. This really is an architectural shift, however, and that shows up clearly in some specific workloads.

One big perk with Zen 5

AVX-512 shines in the workstation

Zen 5 on Threadripper is really the logline for Threadripper 9000, and that says more than you might suspect. Although we expect new architectures to show up on Threadripper with AMD revitalizing its HEDT lineup, this architecture, in particular, is well suited for big, workstation-type tasks. A big part of that is the AVX-512 implementation. Zen 4 supports AVX-512 instructions, but the architecture separates them into two 256-bit data paths. With Zen 5, you get a single 512-bit data path, which makes a massive difference.

On consumer chips like the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, that data path doesn't do much. It's really something that shines in larger workstation tasks like machine learning, which I'll show in my testing below. There are some workloads where Threadripper 9000 sits in the low single digits for generational improvements, which is disappointing to see. However, if you're running a workload that can leverage AVX-512, you'll see a performance uplift on the magnitude of multiple generations of CPUs.

You'll see that benefit across both Pro and non-Pro Threadripper chips, but there are some big platform differences between the two. With the HEDT range, you have access to 80 PCIe 5.0 lanes and quad-channel DDR5, with support for up to DDR5-6400 RDIMMs and ECC. Pro chips with the WX suffix support up to 128 PCIe 5.0 lanes, and octa-channel memory, along with AMD Pro management features. Thankfully, both are unlocked for overclocking, and both use the same sTR5 socket — though the HEDT range will only work in TRX50 boards.

Unfathomable performance

It's hard to argue with how powerful Threadripper 9000 is

Before getting into the performance, here's a quick look at the test bench I used:

It's difficult to evaluate the performance of AMD's Threadripper (non-Pro) range, mainly due to the fact that it's a product that exists in a category of its own. For the HEDT market, it's Threadripper alone; Intel doesn't have an alternative. There's the Xeon 6 range with chips like the 32-core Xeon 6732P and 64-core Xeon 6774P, but they're mainly sold by OEMs. You'll have a difficult time finding them alone. AMD's unique angling on non-Pro Threadripper CPUs is what stands out. Sure, Intel has competing power, but Threadripper 9000 follows the same principles as AMD's Ryzen range, including drop-in replacement and availability at big box retailers.

Starting with the 64-core Threadripper 9980X, it's hard to contextualize results from Cinebench. Theadripper is leaps and bounds faster than the fastest consumer desktop processors, and it better be, considering its massive core array. Gen-on-gen, AMD delivered just shy of a 14% jump in multi-core performance, which is matched in Blender. I measured an uplift of just 9% on a single core in Cinebench, but, as you can see from the consumer desktop results, single-core speeds aren't the reason you pick up a Threadripper CPU.

7-Zip doesn't show much scaling, with last-gen's Threadripper 7980X actually coming out slightly ahead. As you'll see with the 32-core options below, it seems like 7-Zip hits a wall around the 430,000 mark and refuses to budge beyond that point. Y-Cruncher is a different story. I'm using the digit extraction benchmark here, which is almost squarely an AVX workload, and it's massively accelerated by the 512-bit data path for AVX-512 in Zen 5. You can see that on display with the Ryzen 9 9950X, while the new Threadripper chip absolutely runs away with performance.

Moving down to the 32-core options, not much changes. AMD is delivering a gen-on-gen improvement of about 13% in Cinebench and Blender — enough to outclass the M3 Ultra Mac Studio — and the Zen 5 chip clobbers the competition in Y-Cruncher. In 7-Zip, you can once again see the wall that these chips hit, with the Threadripper 9970X actually posting a slightly higher result than the 9980X.

Those are the standard CPU benchmarks, but the Threadripper 9980X and 9970X aren't standard CPUs. They're workstation chips, so I ran a pass of SPECworkstation 4 to see how they hold up with various workstation tasks. And the results are interesting.

Starting at the top, the Threadripper 9980X is 17% ahead of its last-gen counterpart in AI and machine learning tasks, and the Threadripper 9970X is even further ahead of its older sibling. It shows the power of that 512-bit data path, and in particular, how much it does for smaller core counts like the Threadripper 9970X offers. Elsewhere, the improvements aren't as stark. In energy, financial services, and life sciences, there's gen-on-gen scaling, but these workloads are mainly scaling with core count.

Most surprising are the media and entertainment results, where the Threadripper 9970X is 9% ahead and the Threadripper 9980X posts a meager 5% improvement. Part of these results are swayed by the GPU, considering I kept the RTX 4080 I tested constant throughout benchmarking. That goes to show how little a new Threadripper chip will do in certain workloads still.

A whole lot of power (but not much heat)

You'll forget how much power these chips draw

Despite such different core counts, both the Threadripper 9980X and 9970X can ramp up to 350W, and during a short run of Cinebench nT, both stayed exactly at that power draw. Nothing is surprising about power draw, but temperatures are a different story. Even in an all-core workload like Cinebench, neither of these chips topped 70 degrees while being cooled by the Silverstone XE360-TR5 on an open-air bench.

Even more surprising, the Threadripper 9980X managed to stay around 60 degrees during the run, despite packing 64 Zen 5 cores and a staggering 320MB of cache. The Threadripper 9970X surprisingly climbed a touch higher during my testing. Suspecting it was a mounting issue, I remounted the cooler and re-ran the test, but I still came away with slightly higher results.

That likely comes down to clocks. Both the Threadripper 9980X and 9970X are rated for up to 5.4GHz, but more cores working means lower clock speeds overall. While the 9970X was able to maintain speeds close to 5GHz throughout the run, the 9980X never topped 4.5GHz. That's still an impressive showing for a 64-core CPU, and lightly threaded workloads will still have the advantage of higher clock speeds. The trade-off for these lower all-core clocks is that the 9980X stayed remarkably cool under load — and with 64 cores working in tandem, even 4.5GHz is plenty to get you where you want to go.

Should you buy the Threadripper 9980X or 9970X?

You should buy the Threadripper 9980X or 9970X if:

• You have specific applications that can leverage such high core counts.
• You want a single processor for virtualization of multiple workstations.
• You're a prosumer or small business owner that doesn't work with OEMs.
• You have workloads accelerated by AVX-512.

You should NOT buy the Threadripper 9980X or 9970X if:

• You already have a Threadripper 7000 chip.
• You're focused on gaming and content creation.
• You aren't running any professional workloads.

Although AMD has kept HEDT alive with the last two generations of Threadripper CPUs, it's also redefined the market. What was previously a market of flagships among flagships, offering that extra hair of compute for the most extreme enthusiasts, has morphed into a market of true, server-grade CPUs with some manageability features and PCIe lanes disabled. These aren't CPUs for those who are just enthusiasts. They're professional-grade chips that can tackle professional-grade workloads.

Devoid of that kind of workload, Threadripper 9000 is a waste of money, power, and silicon. It's also a waste of money if you already have a Threadripper 7000 CPU in just about every workload except those that use AVX-512 instructions. There's a generational uplift here, no doubt about that, but it's somewhere between 5% at the low-end, and 15% at the high-end, ignoring AVX-512.