AMD Threadripper 2950X Offers Great Linux Performance At $900 USD

Next up is a look at the current performance-per-dollar with the current retail pricing levels from NewEgg.

The Ryzen 7 2700X remains a much better value over the Core i7 8700K for the desktop CPUs while AMD Threadripper 1950X/2950X remain much stronger value propositions at the top-end of the spectrum too. The Threadripper 1950X at its current $779 price-tag offers tremendous value and it will be interesting to see if the price on the original Threadrippers will drop further until the inventory clears out over the next quarter or two. With the Threadripper 1950X at its $899 USD launch-price, it delivers tremendous value over the Core i9 7900X that is often slower by double-digits while still retailing for above $900.

It will be interesting to see how Intel responds as dropping prices will cut into their margins and their next-gen high-end desktop CPUs cannot come soon enough in order to present a viable challenger to the Threadripper 2950X. It will certainly be interesting to see what Intel introduces soon as the successor to the i9-7900X and at what price. For now, AMD has tremendous opportunity to gain market-share in the high-end desktop/workstation segment.

The multi-threaded performance of the Threadripper 2950X was great and generally 7~10% faster over the previous-generation Threadripper 1950X. The 2950X tended to be 30~50% faster than the Core i9 7900X depending upon the workload. For those in the market for a sub-$1000 processor, the Threadripper 2950X has a lot to offer and can certainly cope with the many thread-happy Linux workloads from code compilation to OpenMP multi-processing. The only caveat to note in the Linux support for these Threadripper Zen+ CPUs is just to be aware of the temperature offset as not to be alarmed if reading the temperature (27 degrees higher than actual) on a current Linux kernel release.

If you would like to see how your own Linux CPU performance compares to the results shown in this article, simply install the Phoronix Test Suite and run phoronix-test-suite benchmark 1808102-RA-AMD2950XT81.

Check out the AMD Threadripper 2990WX Linux Benchmarks for more test results and additional data points. Thanks to AMD for providing the review hardware for allowing us to carry out these Linux tests.