Some Early AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X Linux Benchmarks

Yesterday along with the completely Linux-trouble-free Ryzen 7 (it indeed went overnight without any issues coming up via the kill-ryzen script), I finally got my hands on the AMD Threadripper. In particular, the Ryzen Threadripper 1950X that features sixteen physical cores yielding 32 threads via SMT, 3.4GHz base frequency, 4.0GHz boost clock frequency, and quad-channel DDR4 support. This Threadripper 1950X is a beast but will set you back $999 USD and has a 180 Watt TDP. I'll have my much more thorough AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X Linux review next week including many more benchmarks, performance-per-dollar, and system power use / performance-per-Watt metrics, but here are some very early results for those anxious to see this HEDT PC on Linux.

Accompanying the Threadripper 1950X was a Gigabyte Aorus Gaming 7 X399 motherboard, which is needed for the new Socket TR4 ushered in by Threadripper. There was also a Thermaltake Water 3.0 360 all-in-one water cooling system for keeping this 180 Watt TDP CPU nice and cool, a Thermaltake Toughpower 1250 Watt PSU for feeding this Threadripper system, G.Skill 4 x 8GB DDR4-3200 DIMMs, and the 1950X processor itself. Thanks to AMD for providing these review samples so Linux users can be informed about the Linux potential of this high-end desktop platform, especially with Linux users frequently running many thread-happy workloads from compiling packages to many open-source OpenMP/MPI using applications.

I was running kill-ryzen on the Threadripper 1950X as well as some Phoronix Test Suite stress-run workloads, and it stayed up all night without any segmentation faults or any other problems. Indeed, as AMD stated previously, Threadripper (and EPYC) are unaffected by the early batches of Ryzen sometimes experiencing a performance marginality problem.

Threadripper is a HUGE chip for those that haven't looked at the Windows reviews to date.

Next week's Linux review of the Threadripper 1950X will be much more thorough while today are just some initial impressions and some benchmarks done quickly via the Phoronix Test Suite.

No Linux compatibility problems or issues encountered yet with Threadripper on Linux. The only caveat remains is that like the rest of the Ryzen family there is not yet any Linux thermal driver for being able to monitor the Zen core temperatures under Linux, but hopefully that will be coming soon though shouldn't be much of a problem unless you are overclocking or running a weak heatsink with such a high wattage chip.