Earlier this year AMD announced the Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5000 WX series but initially was limited to Lenovo workstations. Earlier this summer it was then announced the Threadripper PRO 5000 WX series would be heading to more system integrators and then the DIY market. Well, finally, these Zen 3 Threadripper chips are heading out to the DYI market and today the review embargo lifts. AMD recently sent over a Ryzen Threadripper PRO 565WX for my Linux testing at Phoronix and here is my initial review and performance benchmarks for this Zen 3 24-core / 48-thread HEDT chip.
I’ve already written in past articles on the Threadripper PRO 5000 WX-Series but the new line-up basically amounts to the Zen 3 refresh for Threadripper. But to some dismay it’s only the more expensive Threadripper PRO SKUs and this DIY launch coming just a short time ahead of the highly anticipated Ryzen 7000 “Zen 4” launch. The Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5000 series tops out still at up to 256MB for the L3 cache and a top boost frequency of 4.5GHz compared to 4.3GHz on the Threadripper PRO 3000 series. The other new features are common to Zen 3 like AMD Shadow Stack, the IPC increase, etc.
The Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5965WX provided by AMD for review features 24 cores / 48 threads with up to a 4.5GHz boost frequency and a 3.8GHz base frequency. All of the Ryzen Threadripper PRO SKUs are rated for a 280 Watt TDP.
An AMD WRX80 motherboard is required for the Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5000 series. The motherboard I used for testing was the ASUS Pro WS WRX80E‑Sage SE WIFI, which with a BIOS update is able to support the Threadripper PRO 5000 series. The motherboard arrived with the older BIOS and wouldn’t boot the new 5965WX CPU but fortunately there is the ASUS USB BIOS “FlashBack” flash capability from USB drive that allowed flashing the motherboard without needing a PRO 3000 series CPU. Like the PRO 3000 series, the PRO 5000 chips support up to eight channels of DDR4-3200 memory. For this Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5965WX test system with the ASUS Pro WS WRX80E‑Sage SE WIFI was 8 x 16GB Corsair DDR4-3200 memory.
For all of my initial testing was carried out on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS with the Linux 5.19 kernel while keeping the other software components at their defaults. The other systems I re-tested for this review included:
– Core i9 10980XE
– Core i9 12900K
– Ryzen 9 5950X
– Threadripper 2950X
– Threadripper 2970WX
– Threadripper 2990WX
– Threadripper 3960X
– Threadripper 3990X
– Threadripper 3970X
– Threadripper PRO 5965WX
The comparison CPUs were based on what I had available: Unfortunately I was never seeded with any Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3000 series processors for review and thus why there isn’t any comparison points there. Similarly, the 5965WX is the only Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5000 series processor I currently have. All of these processors were freshly (re)tested on this very latest Ubuntu 22.04 LTS + Linux 5.19 stack.
A wide assortment of Linux benchmarks were carried out for this initial article while further follow-up articles are on the way looking at the Threadripper PRO 5965WX performance under other open-source/Linux areas as well as the memory channel scaling performance and other interesting performance tests.
While not having access to any prior generation Threadripper PRO 3000 series processors, looking at the Threadripper PRO 5965WX performance over the prior-gen Threadripper 3960X 24-core HEDT CPU was very interesting.
For some HPC workloads, the Zen 3 uplift was enough to put the Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5965WX ahead of the 32-core 3970X for some workloads.
On a performance-per-Watt basis based on the real-time CPU power metrics exposed under Linux, the Threadripper PRO 5965WX to no surprise was looking especially good.
The Threadripper PRO 59965WX was coming right in line with its power rating — and generally similar to that of the Threadripper 3960X that is also 24-core and a 280 Watt TDP.
The Threadripper PRO 5965WX generationally was offering nice uplift over the prior Zen 2 Threadripper processors, granted those non-PRO CPUs also are limited to four memory channels.
The Threadripper PRO 5965WX with its 24 Zen 3 cores and eight memory channels can work out quite well for computational fluid dynamics with OpenFOAM and other HPC workloads if not needing to jump to EPYC for cost reasons or other factors.
They are quite nice improvements going from Zen 2 to Zen 3 for Threadripper though unfortunate it’s taken so long to get these new CPUs out to the DIY market and the lack of non-PRO SKUs.
The Threadripper PRO 5965WX can be used for a nice Linux developer box with being able to build the Godot game engine in under 50 seconds or to compile the Linux kernel in a mere 35 seconds (or 384 seconds for building all possible kernel modules).
The Linux kernel “allmodconfig” build took 6% less time to complete than the Threadripper 3960X at the same power level.
Threadripper processors continue to be quite attractive for developer build boxes/workstations.
The Threadripper PRO 596WX performance was performing aligned with expectations and as a nice upgrade over the Threadripper 3000 series.
The AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5965WX was performing very well under Linux and inline with expectations for healthy improvements over the Ryzen Threadripper 3000 series and in particular the 24-core Threadripper 3960X, based on the CPUs I had available for testing. Going from Zen 2 to Zen 3 offers terrific performance uplift and power efficiency benefits as shown for a while in our Ryzen 5000 series Linux testing.
Aside from the great performance, the Threadripper PRO 5965WX with ASUS Pro WS WRX80E‑Sage SE WIFI was working well under Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and using Linux 5.19 for the very latest kernel. Given the WRX80 chipset and this ASUS motherboard being out for a while now, the Linux support is squared away and no surprises on that front.
Deflating some of the excitement from this DIY launch of the Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5000 series is it debuting so close to the Zen 4 desktop launch and the Threadripper 5000 series being limited to PRO SKUs. Threadripper PRO 5965WX pricing is starting out at around $2399 USD for this 24-core model, significantly more expensive than prior Threadripper non-PRO CPUs. The WRX80 motherboards are also quite pricey at $800+ for just the motherboard compared to former Threadripper processors. The pricing makes the Threadripper PRO 5000 reach much more limited and primarily to professional artists, high-end content creators, developer workstations for corporate developers, etc — certainly less affordability to the enthusiast/hobbyist space. In any event, if you can afford it, the Threadripper PRO 5000 series does continue on in the legendary Threadripper performance we have come to love over the years but even if too pricey the Ryzen 9 5950X is a terrific 16-core alternative and the next-gen Ryzen desktop CPUs are also just around the corner.
When taking the geometric mean of all the benchmarks, the Threadripper PRO 5965WX was about 20% faster on average than the 24-core Threadripper 3960X available for testing. Around 100 benchmarks were carried out for this DIY launch-day review with all of the individual test data and per-test power consumption metrics, etc, being available via this OpenBenchmarking.org result file and this composite overview page.
Thanks to AMD for providing the Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5965WX review sample and stay tuned for more Linux (and BSD) benchmarks coming from this 24-core PRO workstation part.
