AMD has now launched the most core-happy desktop processor the world has ever seen, the Ryzen Threadripper 3990X, and it’s already bagged four of the eight CPU world records listed on HWBOT. It may not be the best CPU for gaming, but it sure can crunch them numbers…
This is the most powerful chip you can jam into your desktop PC today, packing 64 AMD Zen 2 cores into a Threadripper sTRX4 package with 128 threads of processing power. The AMD 3990X is a monster of a CPU, capable of chewing through professional workloads faster than any consumer processor ever has before. So it’s no surprise that it’s ruling the roost at the overclocking rankerer, though only where it’s sheer weight of cores count.
The AMD 3990X holds the top rankings for the wPrime 1024m, Cinebench R15, GPUPI for CPU 1B, and Geekbench 3 Multi Core benchmarks. Those are all places where its 64 cores and 128 threads really come into play, but the AMD EPYC 7742 – essentially the 64-core server equivalent of the 3990X – still holds the world record for the HWBOT x265 4K benchmark. Because Bruno, the overclocker in question, used two of them. And that kinda feels like cheating.
Where it’s more about having a super speedy single core, however, Intel’s own Coffee Lake king, the Core i9 9900KF, is still the world record holder preventing an AMD clean sweep. That may only be in two of HWBOT’s eight CPU benchmarks – SuperPi 32M and Geekbench4 Single Core – but shows that Intel still has the single core advantage.
| AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X | |
| Cores | 64 |
| Threads | 128 |
| L3 cache | 256MB |
| Base clock | 2.9GHz |
| Max boost clock | 4.3GHz |
| TDP | 280W |
Though that could all change once AMD gets the Zen 3 CPUs out the door later this year. The Ryzen 4000-series processors are expected to have far higher single core performance, and potentially the IPC improvements on offer with the brand new Zen 3 architecture could push the new chips past Intel. But only if AMD can match the sorts of overclocks HWBOT folk have been able to squeeze out of the 14nm Intel silicon.
AMD doesn’t really feature in the rankings tables for either of the benchmarks Intel still holds on to because it’s Zen processors can’t really hit the same 7.4GHz frequencies tweakers have wrung out of the Coffee Lake architecture.
That said, neither AMD Zen CPUs nor Intel Coffee Lake processors hold sway when it comes to the absolute highest core clockspeed world record. That particular record is still held by an AMD Piledriver chip, the FX-8370, with an 8.7GHz frequency.
Say what you want about Bulldozer and its derivatives, it sure can overclock – most of the top 20 highest clocked chips in the world come from the same AMD family.